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44 minute read
Most contractors know they should do load calculations. Most know airflow matters. But knowing and doing are different things—and having a repeatable system that ensures it happens every time is rarer still.
Paul McHugh has that system.
Paul is the Senior Estimator at Ray O. Cook Heating and Air in Roseville, California. He's been in HVAC for 35 years and personally handles around 350 installs per year. When he presented his sales process at the U.S. Heat Pump Summit, it was one of the standout sessions. We invited him on the podcast to walk through his complete 8-step process—from first contact through commissioning.
Step 1. First Contact
Paul's system begins the moment a lead comes in. His CSRs are trained to have real conversations—not just collect information. "Conversational wins," Paul explains. Customers receive a comfort survey asking about heating, cooling, and air quality concerns. This does two things: it surfaces problems to solve, and it protects Paul later if a customer complains about something they never mentioned.
Step 2. Pre-Appointment
Before Paul arrives, customers receive a 90-second video explaining exactly what to expect. It covers how long the visit takes, that he'll scan the home with LiDAR, and that decision-makers should be present. Paul made the video himself using basic editing software and an AI voice. Total cost: under $200. Then, on the day of the appointment, the comfort advisor calls when they're on their way to confirm the homeowner is ready and has time. If they're rushed, Paul reschedules. "The last thing you want is to show up and give your price on the back of a business card," he says.
Step 3. Discovery
At the kitchen table, Paul reviews the comfort survey and learns the homeowner's priorities. Then he explains "The Big Three"—load calculation, duct assessment, and equipment selection. "If we don't know how many BTUs are leaving and how many are coming in, we don't have the right to pick equipment," Paul says. This sets the stage for everything that follows.
Step 4. Load Calculation
Paul scans every room with LiDAR, building an accurate model of the home. He watches for problem areas: two-story homes with leaky ceilings, bonus rooms with three exterior walls, raised foundations. He also does a quick pressure test with a micromanometer to gauge envelope leakage. "You're not gonna equipment your way out of this," he warns. "You're going down dangerous roads if we don't know the loads."
Step 5. Duct Assessment
Paul measures total system airflow with a Testo 420 flow hood and room-by-room delivery with a vane anemometer. He demonstrates pressure problems in real-time—closing a bedroom door and showing the homeowner how CFM drops from 120 to 80. "That alone shows them why their room is uncomfortable," he says. Making the invisible visible builds trust and sells the right solution.
Step 6. Equipment Selection
Only after load calculations and duct assessment does Paul select equipment. He uses extended performance data—not just nominal tonnage—to match equipment to actual conditions. Then he circles back to the comfort survey, showing how each recommendation solves a problem the homeowner identified. This is where the rubber meets the road on differentiation.
Step 7. Install Handoff
Paul documents everything for the install crew: blower settings, line set lengths, charge specifications, photos. He pre-profiles thermostats in the office before they ever reach the technician's hands. "You can't rely on the field to figure it out," Paul says. "You need a predictable result."
Step 8. Commissioning
After installation, Paul's team verifies airflow, confirms refrigerant charge, and completes ACCA Quality Installation certification. This third-party verification reduces callbacks and gives homeowners proof that their system was installed correctly. "Prove it," Paul says. "That's what the QI certificate does for us."
The Payoff
When customers say "you're more expensive," Paul asks one question: "Did the other contractor give you load calc numbers? What was the airflow measurement?"
The answer is almost always the same: "They didn't do it."
Then silence.
For contractors looking to win on trust instead of price, Paul's 8-step system is the blueprint.
Timestamps:
[00:00] – Introduction to the Episode
[03:11] – Paul's Career and Industry Evolution
[08:47] – Defining the Core Problem
[10:40] – How the Process Was Developed
[19:03] – The Comfort Survey: Understanding the Homeowner
[25:00] – Leveraging Technology and Customer Education
[30:10] – Initial Appointment: Setting the Stage
[36:34] – Load Calculation and Air Leakage Detection
[47:55] – Diagnosing Room-Level Comfort Issues
[55:52] – Equipment Selection Using Extended Performance Data
[01:02:31] – Commissioning and Final Thoughts
Connect with Paul:
Transcript
00:00:00.040 — 00:00:39.280
Once you leave that house and the customer calls you back and says, we like what you said and we get it, we all get it. We like what you said. You really seem to know what you're talking about. But you always know what's coming. The butt and the butt is your $1,000. Or I'm just throwing out numbers, or you're $2,000.
And it's very easy, very easy to respond with a resonating response, to respond with, did you have the load calculation numbers from the other contractors and what was the airflow measurement? I'm curious on what they came up with. They didn't do it. And there's dead silence. There's always dead silence.
00:00:43.360 — 00:01:44.870
Hey everyone, we've got an incredible episode for you today. It's with Paul McHugh, senior estimator at Ray O. Cook out in California. If you have ever wanted a masterclass on the heat pump sales process. This is the episode. Paul goes step by step, tool by tool, walking us through his entire system from the first phone call all the way through commissioning.
He shares stuff like the exact questions he uses on his home comfort survey, the airflow tests he runs in front of homeowners. He even plays the 92nd video that he emails to homeowners before anyone from rail cook shows up at the house. I love that video in 90s. With very little effort, he has completely reframed the home visit and started to separate his team from the competition. This is not theory. This is a practitioner sharing the actual playbook he's built over decades. So if you want to know how to differentiate on trust and stop competing on price, Paul shows you exactly how. So that's what we've got for you today. Before we get into it, I have a fun announcement. We have our first podcast sponsor. We've been doing this show for a while, and we've turned down sponsors because we didn't want the wrong fit. We didn't want you all to think we were saying anything other than we truly believed it. But when the Building Performance Association reached out, we were thrilled. BPA's mission aligns perfectly with what we're trying to do on this podcast and what we're trying to do with our software.
So they're our first sponsor. As part of that collaboration, we're doing a live training event with BPA on Thursday, February 5th at 2 p.m. eastern. The link is in the show notes if you want to click it and sign up. The training is based on our article. Stop competing on price. Start winning on trust. The core idea is super simple, and frankly, that's what Paul goes over in this episode. There are two ways to win outside of price, expertise and process. If you plot those two on a matrix, you can see exactly where your business is today and where you need to go. We've given this training a few times and the reception has been awesome. So if you want to see our trust checklist brought to life and walk away with a clear framework for building a sustainable, profitable business. Join us on that training. Again, the link is in the show notes. We're super excited for it. All right. With that, let's get on to the episode.
00:01:48.830 — 00:27:07.230
Hi and welcome to the Heat Pump podcast. I'm Ed Smith and I'm Eric Fitz. We are co-founders of Amply Energy. Today our guest is Paul McHugh, Senior estimator is your title. Technical title? Yes. Senior estimator. Correct. Awesome. So Paul is the senior estimator at Ray O. Cook Heating and Air in Roseville, California.
He's got 35 years in the HVAC trade and I spent the last 19 Ray O. Cook. He personally handles around 350 installs per year, and he's developed a systematic sales and installation process that is an exceptional model for quality. I had the privilege of seeing Paul present his system at the U.S. Heat Pump Summit in November in Worcester, Massachusetts, and it was one of the best summaries of how to do a soup to nuts, systematic, exceptional process for orienting a customer to what they can expect, doing a great job, sizing and designing in the home, and then closing the deal and differentiating from the competition.
So we invited Paul on to give us a taste of that on the Heat Pump podcast. Paul, Welcome. Thank you. Glad to. Glad to be here. Appreciate the invitation. We appreciate you taking the time. All right. Paul, we want to get into your presentation. But before we dive in there. Give us the couple of minute overview of who you are.
Your background, that sort of thing. I came up in the trade in the foothills in Sierra Nevadas, in California. When we talk about the heat pump summit and we talk about California. You don't think a lot about snow and cold temperatures, but we come up in a design temperature of about 18 to 22 degrees in the Sierra Nevadas South Lake Tahoe area.
My parents owned a mobil oil fuel oil bulk plant and delivered diesel fuel for oil furnaces. For years, my dad was an oil furnace specialist as well as a boiler guy, a lot of hydronic, a lot of snowmelt systems in fancy driveways in South Lake Tahoe. Spent about four years in the Marine Corps to figure out.
My dad taught me a good trade and came out and started in the industry. That was back in a long time ago, in the year about 1990. So that was around where the first year ratings came out, and the Department of Energy was getting its legs and really doing a lot of mandates toward energy efficiency, energy Star, those kind of things early on, a lot of track home, California running track, home duct crews and a lot of flexible duct.
Before I came to Rio Cook about 20 years ago, I managed a large Union mechanical shop. I was an operations manager, a lot of built ups, chillers, valves, as far as I could see, made a lot of the transition between pneumatics to DDC in the back neck controllers and stuff like that. That union shop did also residential and was one of the last actually residential shops in the area that was Union and about 20 years ago.
Actually 20 years ago, I think in June. Coming up, I'll be at Real Cook about 20 years. And that is predominantly on the residential side where a residential heating and air contractor retrofit and service. We do not do any new construction and we don't do plumbing. We don't do solar. We don't. We do have electrical licenses as well as plumbing licenses, but we basically have a warm air C20, which is a California HVAC license, about a 45 to 50 company or a person company very, very established in the Sacramento Valley, where upper end, the west slope of the Sierras, where I'm at right now, at my house, I can drive 40 minutes and I can be at 4000 foot elevation very quickly.
But right now I'm sitting at about 20 foot elevation, sea level. So we do have a lot of different climates. There's a lot of people here. There's all types of climates in California. We're kind of where it can get 112 degrees and was for many days on end a few years ago, and we can drive and be in the same day at 75 or 80 within an hour.
So most of what we do, design temperature wise, is going to be 103 out on in summer and 32 degree winter. But like I said, we can drive very quickly and be in the Sierras and be 85 degree high and 1718 degree low on design. So that's kind of got a lot of background in management and sales. I do a lot of in-home sales.
I have people that work for me that do that. I do a lot of training at rail cook a lot of early on with Measure Quick and Jim Bergman and that side of the industry, we are aka Veo certified, so we're now certified contractor and leverage that a lot. We'll get into that with the commissioning and stuff. But with all that being said, I'll probably learn something every day.
And that's kind of the reason why you get up and do this every day is, boy, for the last five years, this industry is really changing. And there's there's a lot of challenges to be had. And you welcome them firsthand and that keeps you going. Paul, what an awesome background. I love that you've seen almost every angle of this industry, including Vav systems.
Those are a whole interesting ball of wax. And that for your residential experience, is that you're going between these very different design conditions. That's just got to make you you must have gotten into so many interesting challenges and had to figure out a lot of interesting solutions. So I love that, and I can't wait to dig into that a bit more.
So we saw you present at the Heat Pump Summit and your session was fantastic. Before we get into sharing your screen and kind of diving into that presentation a little bit more, can you set the stage a little bit for our listeners? What exactly was the like? The problem that you were trying to solve when you started to put together this process, and to put together this talk that you gave.
Yeah. When I talked to Brant, the gentleman that put it all together, I said I could offer some insight on some basic. I get kind of tired of the term process and procedure, but it's what's needed at the root of any organization to be able to have a predictable result out the other end and the processes and procedures that I intended on sharing, the ones that really matter to move toward a result.
And that result was and is a quality installation that the homeowner is left with, with a product that is something a contractor can be proud of, can make a good, decent profit on, and have a customer for a good long time by following some very simple basic approaches. In phone call or the the online reach out from the customer all the way through to commissioning and maintenance and all the way through.
So it was sales, installation and commissioning if you break it down into three major components. But that was the intent is kind of simplify some of the processes that a lot of younger contractors or even older contractors, they will struggle with getting mired down with the day to day grind of making payroll and keeping the guys moving.
You know, some good things to focus on of that. And just curious, is this something that you think if we take those three major components of the process, did you kind of pull this together in the last few years? Like, how long did it take to develop and refine these different pieces that you're going to show us?
So a lot of what I've been very fortunate to, to do in my time in this, this lovely career is to steal things from other people. And I admit that I take no claim of any of this. The only thing I could claim is the actual will and want and desire to implement them and make them work. And that's where I'll take the claim on that.
But there's so much good information out there. You take the good with the bad, but where you when you look at how long this is come to fruition, it's a good long time. At Ray cook, we've been doing static pressure for 20 years. It goes clear back to stealing ideas from Rob Falck, their founder, and using magnetic gauges this big.
This is before Tesco even really had a good digital. I mean, they had one, but nobody paid for it. It was too expensive. We carry around a big gauge in a box and that process. It doesn't matter whether it was 25 or 30 years ago. That's a measure of airflow. And it's a very simple way for an installer, a service technician or whoever to be trained.
If they grasp the concept and be able to leverage that training to a predictable result, which is indoor blower motor, that's not going to murder itself by year five because it's over. Over amping. That's all tied back into as an example to the sales side on if somebody else is not doing this or they did not talk about this, you're running a chance of murdering your indoor motor and paying for a very expensive motor that's probably out of warranty.
That's just an example. But, you know, it's a matter of taking the things that we all hear in seminars to all the things we hear in the classes we go to, and actually taking something back and implementing it. It doesn't even have to be all of it, just 1 or 2 of it, and implementing it and adding it to your repertoire every day during the workday and things change.
Things get better. Speaking of stealing, I want to quote at John Wick, we were just talking to him recently. This concept of having predictable results, like we owe that to our customers to have a predictable outcome. If you flip it in reverse, this is what Ed said. How would you feel if the customer kind of ballparks the when they send you a check if the job was 15 grand?
They're like, oh, I want to. I was pretty close. Here's 12,000. How would you feel about that? So like, we got to do it right on the contractor side and have a predictable process. We have predictable outcomes and we have a great end solution for the homeowner. So full disclosure, probably watching a bunch of Ed's videos.
Predictable result. I mean, not that you bring that up. That's probably where that that came from. But that's what we do owe our customers. We do owe that to them. And we get a little jaded sometimes in the contracting world of what? Why? How is that really needed? And sadly, over time you find out. The more you do this, you find out sometimes the hard way.
That's probably the right way to do it, and you have to come to fruition with your mindset on really what is a predictable result and what are you willing to accept. And that's that's important to really know because the trade is not that hard. I mean, it's challenging, but we're not putting people into space.
We're not NASA, we're just moving heat around. We're moving heat from one place to the other. And how we do that, or we make the heat with a gas furnace and how we do that is there's a lot of different opinions on how to do that. That's why Arca does a very good job with their manuals and some type of path forward.
On at least getting on the barn with Eamon. You don't necessarily have to hit the barn door first time, but at least hit the barn and then start zeroing it in. That's great. All right. With that, I think let's talk about your process for predictable results. Do you want to pull up your slides? And while you do that, I'll say for the audience, we asked Paul to do this because we think 95% plus of his points land without seeing the visuals.
But if you want, we'll put this on YouTube as well. And you can kind of bounce over there to see the visuals that go along with what Paul's saying. But yeah, that's what we'll go. So Paul. Thank you sir. No worries. So when we talk about heat pumps there's a lot of questions. And we went through them. But it really comes down to what what can a homeowner expect.
And whether it's a heat pump or I understand and recognize this is the heat Pump podcast. But there's this applies to anything in our industry is what is the perception of whatever we're doing for the homeowner, what is the perception of the homeowner? And that's the one that's actually writing the check.
And that's important. So whatever they perceive is going to be the reality. And if they think the heat pump is junk and you don't have the ability to explain the benefit of a heat pump, then in their mind, heat pump is junk. And that's where you kind of got to go through the processes. So we already went through some of what my background was.
We talked about the sales and the initial contact. That is a major first impression is one loss with that initial contact. And we always tell our folks that answer the phone is conversational wins. The folks that take the call, get the information and get them off the phone really quick. To do another one is probably going to sound a lot like the rest of the other five contractors they called before are going to call after you.
The major point is to try and get as separated and as different as possible and get folks thinking. And some of those things are is what's going on with your system? How long has that been? How long has that been going on? What brings you our way? You kind of have to have some responses ready, and it doesn't have to be rehearsed, but just ready responses on.
I'm sure that's frustrating. We can help you with that. Let me get some more information. The key is to keep the customer or the client engaged in talking and getting as much information to solve their issue as possible. We always want to reassure the customer, and that comes from we can help you with that.
Those are common issues that we're able to solve, those kind of things, that it helps the customer. We always want to explain the process. So in our world at Red cook we send out a short survey. And this is for a new system estimate. And that they'll get a video that walks you through the process. Electronic.
This is where a lot of our business is going to come from nowadays. Websites, social media, anything to do with a device. When that happens, you don't have a lot of contact with the customer. There's no personal contact there. So we got to make sure that we have a schedule now ability and that friction is very, very low.
And that's not a matter of forming a form fill function. A lot of people don't even really want to get into filling out a form and having somebody call. They want to be able to give their information. Schedule now, book now, and go on with their life. When that happens, we want to attempt at least twice to go back and do the conversational part of it.
And that's once we get the customer's information, we want to follow up and speak with the customer and get that personal contact if we can. We want to do that and try at least twice to reach out to the customer. So, Paul. Yes, sir. Go ahead. Just to clarify here. This is your inside sales team or like central office staff who you have trained on this so that they know when a new lead comes in.
They've got to do all of this stuff. That is correct. That's going to be the first contact with the company, which is going to come through CSR, customer service rep. That is correct. When you continue on with this, we've got the CSR doing their job. We look at the comfort survey. And you know, I would urge anybody that is in this scenario in home to have some type of survey as a roadmap and doesn't have to be 80 questions.
In fact, you don't want it 80 questions. You want to pick off the most important stuff to a homeowner that makes sense. And that basically is comfort. And the first thing is issues with cooling. We have the ability for the customer to tell us about their experience with cooling. How does it run? Do you have a two story, two story house?
If we're going upstairs in the summer, is it warmer up there? Start the conversation on what's going on with the comfort in the house. Do that with the heating as well. Give them the opportunity to tell you problems. And if we don't ask, then a lot of times nothing is set. So you got to give them the opportunity to to talk about the comfort in the home.
Some examples on even temperatures throughout cold rooms, short cycling, those those kinds of things. We want to get those things documented so that we can address them. If we get them documented and they're told to us as a problem, you are now starting to separate yourself from others that didn't ask the question and didn't offer solutions.
And that has to do with the conversational side of this. So we continue on health concerns. Do we have issues with breathing issues in the home? An example is a longer run time with the correctly sized heat pump. It will. We'll put air through the filter more of the time. As an example, a noise. Do we have issues with noise?
Soft start technology with inverters. Outdoor unit is not going to come on and off. It's going to be more smooth and gentle. Those kind of things. So noise is an opportunity to ask the question customer and then any other concerns that they have. So this is actually emailed to them and they on a link. And they have the ability to fill that out.
And if they do prior it gets sent to our new system engineer. And we review that before we go out. So we know before we even get there some of the concerns that they have. Some people will never fill this out. If they don't, we still bring it up in front of the customer when we sit down at the table with them to go through expectations of an needs and wants and etc. so we hit it again with a comfort survey when we get there.
So that's the comfort survey process. And Paul, just remind us like why is this so important to do. Why do it initially. Why is it so important if they for whatever reason you didn't collect the information at the front end, You do it at the kitchen table, or at least at some point when you're sitting down with a homeowner.
So on the negative side of it, we'll go to the negative first. We have a roadmap, and we have a process that if the customer, after acquiring a $20,000 VRF system with us, complains about a bedroom being warm or too cold and wants that corrected, we can delicately and respectfully refer back to the survey and explain.
We had asked about all of these things, and we can't fix what we didn't know about. We would be more than happy to provide you with an analysis of that problem and give you a, some solutions and, and opportunities to fix that, but that that was something that was not included with the original quote. We did not know about it.
So it protects you against that. and that's important for whatever reason nowadays. And when I say nowadays, I think that's people are looking a little more toward getting things that are maybe not covered, and that is not everybody. And that's not by any means all people. But you can protect yourself with the survey on that.
But most importantly, it gives you the ability to first off separate yourself from the others, and that is them subconsciously in their mind, talking about how thorough you are and how you are asking the questions that are actually going to solve issues that they didn't actually sometimes know they had by, but by asking the questions.
On the positive side is that you're building this relationship. The customer like, gets to see you take this time and and you're demonstrating that you care about what their actual problems are, that you're going to figure out how to solve them. And that builds confidence and trust and allows you to to build a solution that's actually going to solve the problem.
And then everybody's happy. That's correct. And we will normally follow up once we get the the comfort survey finalized at the table. Before we do anything else. Is there anything more you'd like to add? This is the key time and point in our time together here to go through this and get all of what expectations you need addressed.
This is the time to do it. And then once we look at the house and we do whatever and we'll get through that process here in a second, we'll circle back to the survey, and there's a spot on the survey to bullet point exactly what we're going to do to solve the problems they said they wanted solved. And that's where the rubber really meets the road on all of this is not just asking the question and acknowledging it, but you got to offer a solution and then it's there They're right to accept that solution or decline that solution.
But you got to be able to, at one point in the future, be able to say, I offered a solution, whether they choose or to accept or decline, that's their thing. It's not our right to force any of that. It is our responsibility, though, to provide solutions and to nitty gritty questions. Paul. They're very similar.
What percent of your customers. Does your CSR get through to after trying twice to have that pre conversation? And then what percent of your customers are actually filling this out beforehand versus it's done in the home. So on the folks that will book now or that we haven't talked to that we try to get back to.
It's about 50% 40 to 50% that we talk to. We can actually talk to before we go out there. There's really easy reasons why they already are using a book now feature or some type of I don't want to talk to anybody approach. And there those folks are busy for whatever reason. They're less apt to call back on a voicemail or an email or etc..
All they know is we're coming out and they'll just deal with it then. So about 50 per, I'd say 40 to 50%. Last time I looked at that, and then the folks that do fill out the survey prior, of the ones that are booked as an estimate, we're about 50% on that as well. But 100% of them will get a second chance with our new system engineer to do it if they didn't do it.
And 100% of those with people in the house are new system engineers, 100% will be acted upon if they did do it. Great. Thank you. So I don't know if you guys do you want to watch the video that we send, or do you want to move on to the next stuff? Nope. I'd love to. That video. Some people do this, but a lot of people don't.
Yep, I got it. I think this is very powerful. All right. So this is the video that we send to our customers before we send out a new system engineer for a quote to. Thank you for scheduling a visit with one of our new system engineers. Before we meet. We'd like to share a few tips to help us serve you better. Please plan for about an hour of your time. Heating and air conditioning can be a major investment in your home. It's worth taking the time to get it right. We highly recommend that whoever is making the decision about your new system be present during the visit. Hearing the information firsthand helps ensure your final choice meets your needs and budget. If possible, provide a table where you and your new system engineer can sit together. We'll use a laptop and mirrored display to walk you through everything. Be sure to complete the Short Comfort survey before our arrival. It helps us focus on what matters most to you. During the visit, your engineer will perform a load calculation using state of the art LiDAR technology. This ensures we size your system accurately, not just based on square footage. We may also measure airflow to confirm your ductwork is compatible with your new system.
Finally, we'll review your comfort survey and walk through your heating and cooling options using today's modern, high efficiency equipment. Thanks again for choosing us. We're excited to meet with you and provide solutions that truly matter to you. To say I love that is an understatement. And like it hits everything. Like you said, expectations on the time. Make sure the decision maker is home.
We're going to sit down and talk with you at the table. We're going to scan your home to do a load calculation. We're going to do air flow measurements. It was only 90s like. And you said this during your presentation, Paul, how did you create this? How long did it take you. How much did it cost that video. So those are pictures.
And you know, the content of the video was from a photo shoot that we did from our website. So it was just be footage, B-roll stuff, and it was created in just a basic video editing software program, you know, is about 2020 five minutes. The voice is AI. So I think that voice is through ChatGPT descript program.
But you could buy that video made from somebody that would do it for you for less than $200, for sure. Yeah, it's a wonderful world we live in now with technology. Yeah, I just think that's super impactful to set those expectations because it's so often not set and it's such a valuable way. Everything about your process so far is communicating to the homeowner.
You guys are different. You guys take your time. You're diligent. You're thorough. Like and this just continues it in a very vivid way. I think it's great. It does help with setting the expectations. And
00:27:08.310 — 00:37:30.990
that's going to be done more with digital And social media and all of the things that are channels. Now to the end buyer that years ago was somebody talking to them over a phone that's less and less. So the more you can get out in front of that process and get the message to the to the buyer, the more successful you're going to be.
So moving on with the appointment process. Our CSR has set the appointment. They've been sent the survey and they have been sent the video. So when we talk about the appointment, we always want to call when we're on our way. And that's another big thing that kind of starts the process of. My name's Paul, I'm with Rio Cook.
It looks like we're scheduled to meet today. And we just stop and you'll get. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I'm waiting for you. Are you on your way? Yes. I'm about 20 minutes away. Great. We'll see you then. Or you'll get. Oh, it sounds like maybe we're not remembering. So we'd say. Are we still okay to meet today? Oh, yeah.
Yeah. Come on ahead. Just remember that this does take about an hour. Are we okay on time? And you can head off a lot of showing up at the door. And given your price on the back of a business card, proposals by at that point calling and making sure that everything is on. We're all still on the same page. And that's important, especially when you have a lot of calls and you're burning time with a customer because they were not prepared, which is, hey, life happens, that's okay.
But at that point we would say, and it's not very common, but it's enough to mention we would say it's okay to reschedule when you do have time. What's a good time and do that because the last thing you want to do is show up and be rushed. Because the, you know, the homeowner has to pick the kids up in 20 minutes.
That's not doing anybody any, any justice. So we call and we set the expectation on the way. When we get there, we're going to review or we're going to create that survey as we discussed. We're going to learn the priorities. We're going to have a conversation about the comfort in the House. And we're going to explain the process.
And this is important and what the process is very simple. The big three and this is where the rubber meets the road. We're going to do a load calculation. So we're going to explain what a load calculation is and why we need to do it. We're going to look at the duct work. And we're going to talk to them about duct work and how important that is to delivering what the load calculation says we need.
We're going to select the equipment and that equipment is not. We're not talking about brand name. We're not talking about shear rating. We're not talking about those points at this point in the conversation. We're just talking about equipment selection. So those are the big three. When we look at the load calculation, we're going to explain that we're going to scan the house with lidar.
That in our market in California here with the California Energy Commission, there have studies at nauseam that 80% of most systems are sized wrong, and most of them are actually oversize, and that the issues that are caused with over sizing is quieter operation and balanced temperatures and a lower energy bills.
So that's where all of this starts. So if quieter operation balance temperatures and lower energy bills is something that's important to them. Back to their survey then. This is a real good place to start. And that's with the right size equipment. And that's going to be with the lidar scan on the load calc.
So that's a big one right there. And you tie that and we do that because nobody else does it. And that right there is a big separation between us and others is they see us going through the house, waving our iPad, painting pictures with lidar and 3D rooms, and it just immediately starts separating us from others.
So if we don't know how many BTUs are leaving and how many BTUs are coming, we are absolutely making dangerous assumptions on what this homeowner needs and that you're not going to equipment your way out of this. You're not going to variable speed your yourself out of this with an inverter. You are going down dangerous roads.
If we don't know the loads on the house. And that's a big takeaway on all of this. So that's why we do a load calculation. Moving on. Any comments or questions on that. This is so good. Paul. That's all I wanted to say. that just. Yeah, you're just nailing the most important pieces. This is just so clear. It's fantastic.
I appreciate that, and I'll. I'll share with you. This is not what we think we might want to do because it sounds like a good idea. This is because it is at the root of again, back to that predictable result out the other end. And that's very, very important. So things to watch for. These are things that we see in our market.
Every market is different. But as we're walking through the house and we're scanning two story homes with leaky ceilings, we have a big deal with that in our area, a leaky home in other areas, it's still a leaky home. That's a two story house. So stack effect is a big deal in our area, and reverse stack in the summer is even bigger.
So I always urge most folks, if they don't know what a stack effect is or reverse stack, they really should train that, learn about that and understand it and how to recognize it, because that will train wreck your load out quicker than anything. If you're in a climate that is especially inherent to two story homes, a large exterior surfaces.
So we got rooms with large outside walls, large windows, bonus rooms. That's another big one in our our in our area bonus rooms, three outside walls with a fourth floor to a unconditioned garage. A lot of knee walls if we got knee walls, if we don't know what a knee wall is, we gotta know what a knee wall is. To be able to access and understand and acknowledge that a raised foundations in our world, if we have a 1400 square foot house with a 1400 square foot ceiling and we got a raised foundation, we just got 1400 square foot of floor that can leak to the outside, and we have to be able to acknowledge that, and we have to be able to recognize that, and we have to be able to put that in the load calculation that we actually are not slab on grade.
We have a raised foundation on older homes in our area that's going to be like 1975, 80 ish forward, better than before 1975 and 1980, which the codes were very minimal. And that's the homes that you're going to be looking at. 4 to 600ft² per ton is was exercised as a rule of thumb, and that's needs to be recognized.
Leaky homes on those older homes are going to be they're going to be noticeable. And you need to know the age of the home and what to watch out for. Those are also the homes that had updated windows many times that you got to account for. Those are also homes that are old enough that somebody may have increased the insulation in the home, and you need to account for that.
You just can't go off of 1975 standards because the load may have changed with improvements, and there's a good chance it did change with improvements and pulse. Yeah. Speaking of air leakage, you mentioned at the beginning you're doing airflow measurements. Are you also doing blower door tests as part of understanding the early kitchen homes?
I'll hit that in about two seconds. I think we got a slide. That's what I thought. Great. Yeah. I'll have to acknowledge the leak of the home in a very, very general way. We will use micro manometer. So we use the DG eight all the time. And we will do a very quick pressure test on the home. And basically, you know it comes down to can I change the pressure on the home with a 50 CFM bath fan.
And if I'm neutral with nothing on zero pascals and I can make that house go negative, you know, three four pascals with a bath fan, and I don't have to keep adding fans to try and compensate for the leakage. I'm in a safe zone with not having to do a blower door, but the more pascals or the more fans I have to add to compensate for the hole in the house.
The more I get into the danger zone of stop. Let's talk about blower door. Let's pay our Herz Rader $350 in our market to come out and do a test on this house, because it's scary, leaky, and my load calculation is in unchartered territory. I need to know the leakage, the CFM 50. I need to know what those numbers are on this house to be able to accurately size it.
Or we can just oversize it so much that we cover the load, and we give you a big enough unit to satisfy your thermostat, but we don't recommend that. So that answer your question on the leakage. Yeah, I love that when you're doing this simple micro manometer test, where's your range? Where you're like, are you looking for seeing any negative pressure and then you've got a reasonably tight home.
Where's your level of like, hey, we need to get the blower door out here to do the full test. So before you get pounded with a bunch of weatherization guys and I understand exactly where they're coming from, I'm going to hate rules of thumb more than anybody. But to answer that question and what we've been very successful at hundreds of homes is if we're over two inches of pass or two pascals, we're in a danger zone.
00:37:32.230 — 00:55:47.970
as a general rule, if I have a relatively tight home that you can call in the load calculation average on leakage, I'm immediately going to see a 1 to 1 and a half Pascal change with a bath fan. Because we live in a world in California where we have a lot of Tyvek wrapped homes, and on those type of homes. We can change the pressure very quickly with a very small negative pressure.
So that number we're looking for is 2 to 3 as a range. But what I can guarantee you is if I'm in a 1975 tri level home and it hasn't been the envelope has not been addressed. I can't turn on enough fans to change the pressure. And that's where the danger zone is. And that's where we get into the blower door testing.
Yeah, I love that. It's I just wanted to I think it's helpful to tap through it. If folks are not familiar with this process, it can be sort of counterintuitive that you're trying to measure for something and you're seeing zero on your tool that's actually getting nothing means you got to. This is scary.
Like, we need to do something. We need to get do another level of testing. So thank God it has proved well for us. And we have literally, honestly walked away from Installations because it's a three tonne house. But the leakage without even doing a blower door tells us it's probably a four. And the customer has been given five ton quotes, and we're just going down a road that we don't want to go.
And that's where you got to draw the line and stay within the safety in the guardrails, because you that's the last thing you want to do is oversize equipment to compensate for leakage and not have airflow. And having walked down the aisle and married that job for the rest of time. And that's it's better to walk away.
So negative pressure, we'll use that as we go through the home. We're going to look at the register placement. So as we're scanning and we're looking at rooms we want to see where the registers are. We want to see what the throw is. And we're going to go through why that is. Temperature changes as we walk through the home.
Like right now we're sitting in the Sacramento Valley. We have not literally seen the sun for valley fog for the last ten days. Our outside ambient right now is 46 degrees and has been that up or down for two degrees for ten days. So as I walked through a home on an estimated day, I get a very good idea on hot and cold spots with the ambient outdoor temperature where it's at.
I acknowledge those open and closed doors pressure differential in those rooms with bedrooms. We want to see what the state is that we're given as we walk through the house. A windows and coverings. Do we have blinds? Do we have window coverings? What do we have a West exposure or southwest. And we've got 18ft² of glass with no blinds because we're looking out into a garden.
That homeowner has said the room with that window never cools. And we're acknowledging probably why as we're walking at this point, we're not bringing any of this up. We're just acknowledging it. A return duck, Location and sizing. Do we have path of error? Back to the intake. Where is the intake? What size is the intake?
Those things are all things that matter with correct design. So you got to be observant. These things are all happening. As we're walking, we're doing 5 or 6 different things at once. But we're being observant and that's the key. Be observant. This open or closed door piece you're doing this with, the system is running.
You've got airflow going through the house you're trying to check for. Do we have negative pressure or positive pressure in a room? When you open and close that bedroom door, is it like slamming closed and that's helping you with what are you trying to figure out there? So if as we go in and out of the room, yes, I'm making a note in my mind as I'm walking that Jimmy's room is always hot in the summer, cold in the winter, and lo and behold, we're walking down the hallway and the homeowner many times will be with us and says, let me scan Jimmy's room, which one's Jimmy's room?
And as I open the door, we can feel the pressure. We know that if we have more than about three pascals of pressure in that room with the door closed, we're going to need a path of air back. So we're going to present a relief duct or a ducted return. In our world, we do a lot of relief relief ducts to relieve the pressure.
It's actually a California code now on new construction. So we pretty much just by scanning the room with the leader, we already have solved the problem. We know what the solution is, but we'll show the customer the pressure in the room as we walk. We have a DGX eight and we have a retro tech smoker that we always within arm's distance that we can explain what's going on.
If you can't push the hot air out to make room for the cold air in the summer, and vice versa in the winter, you're going to have a uncomfortable room. So we want to be able to relieve those pressures. And if it's a problem that they brought up, you got to be able to tie that into how you're going to solve it. Awesome duct work.
So we know the BTU lost and we we know the BTU gain. We've got to have the duct system to deliver it. So air flow basically how much can we move duct leakage. Are we leaking what we're moving to. Are we leaking the conditioned air or are we drawing bad air in. So obviously supply duct leakage and return duct leakage.
Air delivery at the diffuser. What are we actually delivering into the room. Duct insulation. The R factor. That's more going to be when it's in unconditioned space. We have a lot of that in our area. Attics in a lot of places in the country are attics unconditioned space. Those are the big four on duct work.
And we break those down airflow total system. So we can do a whole array of tests on the system. The easiest and the least expensive is going to be static pressure. You can do that with a micro manometer. You can do that with relatively inexpensive static pressure probes and convert the static pressure to the blower performance chart.
There's more room for air on that. Nothing wrong with static pressure, but there are more steps, and more steps equals more room for error on actually CFM flow we all carry. Testo for 20s. So we use flow hoods and basically we're going to do a total flow in at the return grill. We're we're blessed with a lot of ceiling returns.
So we were able to cover the hole and mash the button and get a total flow CFM in at the grill. We do that with doors closed, and when we do that, we can also show how the CFM into the equipment actually increases. When we open doors and show the importance of relief ducts. Digital to flow grid if we were in a predominantly up flow basement or equipment room market, etc. we would have many of these, but because we're pushing the time that we have with the customer with what we do already.
The act of going up into the attic and using the true fro grid, plotting the air flows with the micro manometer. It's just too time consuming. It is a great product. I love it, but the digital flow hood, the 420 testo works better for us. So that is airflow total system. We do it with flow hoods. If you're going to do it, you should do it and pick a way to do it.
So any input on air flow? I just have to make the comment. Now that all of these things are going through, you're making the invisible visible for the homeowner. Not only is it the technical aspects of their home like you can't see pressure, can't see airflow, you can't see how heat is lost or gain in a home.
You're bringing this to life for the homeowner and you're making before you've shown up at their house. They don't know you very well, but you're doing this process. It's making it abundantly clear how you are so different relative to your competitors that you are experts. And it's making that incredibly clear and obvious to the homeowner as well.
So I just I love that aspect of taking something that's so hard to understand. And you're making it practical, accessible, and it's leading to great design all at the same time. It also lends to once you leave that house and the customer calls you back and says, we like what you said, we get it, we all get it.
We like what you said. You really seem to know what you're talking about. And but you always know what's coming. The but and the but is you're $1,000 or I'm just throwing out numbers or you're $2,000 and it's very easy. Very easy to respond with. With a resonating response to respond with. Did you have the load calculation numbers from the other contractors and what was the airflow measurement?
I'm curious on what they came up with. They didn't do it. And there's dead silence. There's always dead silence. Yeah, like I said, you're more thorough. And it really comes down to if you want it done correctly and you want a predictable outcome where your people. And that's why we do it. So you can use that leverage later in the conversation sales process as well.
And quite honestly, there are people that don't care about any of this, and that's perfectly okay as well. If they don't care about doing these items and what they bring to the table, that's okay. But there also might not be a customer that is in your best interest because they're just wanting to replace it and they don't.
They're okay with it blowing up in ten years and that's okay. But you got to set the rail. You got to stay in the guardrails. And you can't say we didn't tell you about the airflow and those kind of things. So yeah. So something to leverage back on. It doesn't matter how you measure it. Problems in room air rooms with problems with airflow.
So we carry 417. So we use vanes 100 millimeter vanes very simple to measure airflow in a room. With that, with the app you got to know the airflow into the room. If you're going to diagnose a room. I can't tell you how many times we'll close the door. 100 millimeter vane on the duct. Have the homeowner in the room with us.
You'll see 80 CFM. Open the door. It goes to 120 CFM. Close the door. It goes back to 80 CFM. That alone shows them that closing the door, you get less air. And that's why we have to either crack the door or give them a relief duct. So we use 100 millimeter veins. We can use the flow hood. The flow hood is a little problematic on that because it's more.
The 420 is better for larger airflow volume total system capacity. So usually about 12 1400 cfm bigger grills returns is where it shines. It's less accurate than the vein when you get down to the smaller readings. And of course you wouldn't use the vein on a return grill, so you got to know your tool of choice.
If you want to be 100% accurate and be the best of everything, have a powered flow hood. That is, they're very, very costly, but it's going to be the most accurate on the 4/17. They proved good for us and they do the trick. So any comments on the air flow on problem areas rooms. You just remind remind folks on the vein anemometer versus the powered flow head.
What are we talking about in terms of cost for these typical tools? I know there's a bunch of different manufacturers now. Yeah Tesla just came out with the for 17. And the last one we bought under 500 bucks about 450 works nice with their app power flow hood. You're going to be north of 25 3000 bucks. And if I was doing an air balance every day in the commercial application and we were balancing cubicles supply to return forever, power flow hood is the way to go in my opinion.
But the difference in cost, I mean, I can run 20 leads and I'm going to use the 417 on those 20 leads. I'm going to use it five times maybe. So it's hanging with the yang. But I can tell you as far as reliability, the 417 for what it does, it has been very good for the price. I will also share do not measure 3 or 4 supply ducts with the 420 using the hood, and then do some with the 417.
If you're going to measure supply, measure supply with one device. You'll get more continuity. You understand what I'm saying? Don't mix and match the testing sources. Absolutely, absolutely. And that's a big deal because each of these tools have a different sort of band of error. And if you are mixing different tools that have different error bands, you get all kinds of wacky things.
So we're not trying with a vain anemometer like this. We're not trying to get like absolutely 215 CFM differences. We're trying to get like a reasonable range. We're trying to have that opening and closing that door and seeing a big difference. But we don't for these kind of diagnostic tools, we don't need that incredible level of accuracy.
Yeah, the anemometer is fantastic. And the other thing I'll share is, is that through tech tools is not going to appreciate me saying this, but that, uh, that power head. So the micro manometer on the 420, it pops right off and you can use it as a DG. So when you pop it off, there's a supply, there's a negative and a positive port that's actually connecting to the grid on the hood.
That device is made to pop off. And if you have your screen set to pascals you can measure room pressure. So you got two tools and one is what I'm telling you. And we did that. I used to do that all the time. So you don't have to necessarily buy a date. You can buy a for 20 and you got a flow hood and a very good micro manometer all in one tool.
We won't tell Bill. You said don't tell Bill. I said that. Just a quick Zach Morris time out. We had booked you till about five minutes from now. Paul I can go to the top of the hour. And this is spectacular. And I'll say, having known Eric for 25 years, he's never been more excited on a podcast by what anyone has said.
So like, this is amazing. I want to make sure we hit the main points though in the next. Can you go to the top of the hour? Paul? Yeah I can. Awesome. So you've got great stuff on commissioning and everything too. So I know long winded right. But it's great. It's awesome content like yeah it's incredible. I'm gonna go we'll keep moving on here then.
So basically we're going to measure the airflow. We got a no doors closed path of air back to the intake. All the stuff that we talked about when we look at the ductwork, you got to break it into supply and return. So we need to know the air in and we need to know the air out. But the big contributors or contributors to lack of airflow is going to be too small a filter area, restrictive duct fittings, evaporator coils that are very restrictive and supply ducts and things like that.
So try to make sure it's in the path of error and focus on the ones that matter. So more on duck work. NCI has really good training on this. The first training I had with all of this was going to be I was trained by Rob Falck. He was a field trainer and in the Bay Area in California. So we got to know our mean radiant temperatures and we need to know how that all affects the operation, especially of a heat pump, and that MRT is a big deal.
So I don't know if you guys I mean, if you want to take a time out, do you want me to just go to commissioning or I mean, there's a lot of real estate between that and commissioning, I think we can skate past. There's so much on duct work you have in here. Unless Eric disagrees, I would go to equipment selection.
Okay, unless Eric's disagreeing. Man. Ductwork is just so often overlooked. I mean, so is anybody doing proper equipment selection? I mean, part of me, I don't I almost don't want to rush through this. I feel like maybe this is a terrible idea, but I almost want to do like a second session. All right, so when we get into get past duct work, we get into equipment selection.
This is where the magic's going to happen. So we're going to rely back to our comfort survey and rooms to warm to cold temperatures. Swings. The things that they had said were issues. So when that's when we can start plugging in the load calculation, the sensible and the latent, if we don't know these numbers that we don't have the right in our world, we don't have the right to pick equipment.
So you got to know those numbers. The duck works going to deliver the extended performance that the data states. So the key word there is extended performance. And that's where our industry is going to fall short on not knowing what the extended performance is of the equipment we're selling. We're basically going off of basically the three blind mice approach, which is nominal tonnage, which drives people that actually use extended performance body.
Extended performance is going to give us what the system does, at what temperature. And if we don't know that, we're just guessing. So this is just a basic extended performance. This is a 20 seer Bosch. And these charts need to be utilized to plug in with the load calculation. So
00:55:49.090 — 00:56:03.850
basically on this chart we're going to know our design temperatures. We're going to know our indoor temperature that we want. We're going to know the outdoor design temperature. We're going to know the airflow
00:56:04.930 — 00:58:43.179
across the equipment and what the equipment's rated at. And if we don't know those items, then we don't know what the equipment is actually going to deliver. And that's where things are going to be a train wreck with heat pumps, especially variable volume heat pumps. And I'll let you jump in here. You probably have some comments about this.
This is so important. And just to remind folks like these extended performance tables, you're not like you need to dig deeper than just the engineering submittal. You got to go into the actual design manual for your piece of equipment. It might be behind like a password sign in page on your manufacturer's website, but you got to dig into these details to get this information because like like you said, Paul, you're just you are flying blind if you're actually not digging into what's how the equipment really performs the given conditions that given your load calculation and understand too, we're in a dry climate.
And I'll say it, our sensible heat is well over 98. So where we are, the Sahara desert. We're not the Sahara Desert, but our design criteria is basically no latent for folks that are in are in the latent world and have a lot of moisture, humidity needs and a lot of the capacities going toward moisture removal.
With inverters, there's no way you can design correctly without having the correct extended performance. So you got to know your extended performance. A hint that I can share with you hack is if you're selling a three ton company X brand X unit, have these already printed or PDF in a file so that you can readily access them and not have to hunt through hills and valleys of data on a website that now you have an access to.
We do the same thing over and over again and it just costs time. Have them all pre canned and pre done. And I mean for Bosch, they have a two ton, a three ton, a four ton, and we never sell a five ton. But on this particular model, we have them already. This was taken off of one of my iPad screenshots that we have for above 2036, which is a 20 Seer three ton inverter with their air handler.
So the data never changes. And when the data change is updated so you can save a whole bunch of time by just doing it, by having it pre saved and readily available. So once we know
00:58:44.180 — 01:04:28.340
the extended performance of the equipment, and if it does do in fact satisfy the accurate load, and that we know that we have the airflow, we have the airflow available to deliver the capacity and the load. Then and only then do we get to expand on all of the modern benefits of a heat pump. So year round comfort.
So that's a big deal. With even temperatures we're not going to blast hot or cold, which is common with older systems that are grossly oversize. Especially gas furnaces that are normally 50% or more. Bigger than what they need to be. Quieter operation. The ability to use that variable speed compressor and the fans that come with them to have whisper, quiet, constant operation.
And we have equipment operating where we don't have to turn the TV up. We don't have a patio mounted unit that we can't have a party in the summer because the the compressor slams on and people jump. It's a common thing that we live with with older technology. The offering with correctly sized and designed equipment is eco friendly.
We're moving heat instead of creating it, so a heat pump is going to use the heat that's free outside to move into the house. With the technology that modern inverter gives to us versus trying to make that heat with a fossil fuel device that is a gas furnace or a boiler, etc. that is commonly grossly oversize, we get cleaner air.
Modern inverters are going to run longer at lower speeds. We're going to move air through the filter longer and slower, so that we can do what we do with filtration, and that's extend the run time so that we can catch more particles. So there's a lot of things that come from doing things correctly, but we don't really have the right, in my view, to be talking about these type of benefits with modern equipment unless we do these other things first, because not doing those other things is going to jeopardize getting these things out the other end.
And that's what the homeowner has to live with. And that's what we have to live with as well. So very, very important that we we do those things. And then finally lower utility bills. We talk about this, but we don't sell off of efficiency. Efficiency is a word, and to homeowners, efficiency means lower bill and efficiency needs to mean more things and needs to be explained.
That efficiency is comfort. And if you have a comfortable house, you have an efficient unit. But efficiency can't come without comfort, and that's important to know. So if we deliver comfort, we have a real common agreement on room to room temperature. Chances are you're going to have a very, very efficient house, but only then you're not going to buy a heat pump that's going to save you money unless these other things are done.
So we want to make sure we set up the installation crew for success. Tell them what you want your blower settings at. Make sure that they know the length of line and how much to weigh the charge into. Provide the duct modifications that you're in. Simple forms on what you're doing. Profile the controls have a way to profile these thermostats in the office before they even get an installation.
Personnel's hands. There's so many different variables you can't rely. It's not nothing against the guys in the field, but you got to have a predictable result by profiling the control in the office. Give them the blower settings. Make sure that they know what taps you want for the different settings on the equipment.
Pictures are worth a thousand words and make sure you give them pictures and installers. Understand pictures. Here's our profiler. It's just a 4x4 electrical box with a 24 volt transformer. Our install Foreman's profiling in Ecobee here for one of our installs gets put back in the box. They snap it on the wall.
It's done. They commission it. We're done. Just more installation stuff. Use the blue vac. Make sure that you get all of the moisture and all of the stuff out of the equipment, and that you have no leaks. All of the airflow needs to be verified. Make sure you verify. Make sure you verify the refrigerant charge by how much did they put in.
All of these things come from good field management commissioning. Prove it. If you need more information, prove it with a V0 certificate from Akka. All of those things add up to proving you did what you say you're going to do. So in closing, there's processes and procedures. Make sure that you follow them.
Make sure that you reach out to people that are better at it than you are, and you learn on the methods that work and implement them. And you'll all everybody in your organization and your customer will all be better for it. How's that? Too fast. No. That was I mean, we could have spent another 30 minutes with you, Paul.
I think that was awesome. Thank you for giving this at the Heat Pump Summit. Thank you for agreeing to come on and do it again. This is an exceptional training, and you should give this a lot more. That is so valuable. That really is incredible. Paul. Yeah. Thank you again. I am happy to help you guys. Try and spread the word and give as much as I can.
Back to the trade. These are not things that I think you do to do them. I think you do them to move the needle and offer a better product for your customer, and improve your people as well. Paul, thank you so much for joining us on the Heat Pump podcast. This was awesome. Glad to help. It was fantastic. Thank you again.
You're welcome.
01:04:31.340 — 01:04:53.780
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