At Amply, my co-founder Eric Fitz has onboarded hundreds of contractors onto our Manual J software. After that many conversations, clear patterns emerge. The same questions surface again and again — not because contractors lack skill, but because Manual J touches building science, sales strategy, and equipment selection all at once, and most contractors never got formal training on any of it.
In this episode, we walked through the ten questions we hear most often. Here's the condensed version.
Three reasons.
A good load calculation benefits the homeowner, the salesperson, and the company all at once.
Manual J is one piece of a larger diagnostic process. It doesn't cover duct capacity, static pressure, blower door testing, or the qualitative comfort survey you should be doing with every homeowner. It doesn't replace documenting electrical panels, equipment placement, or existing system conditions. Manual J is the foundation — but it’s just one piece of the diagnosis and design.
It depends where you're starting from. If you've never done a full load calculation before, expect your in-home time to go up. If you've been using traditional software with physical measurements, it usually drops dramatically — from three or four hours to 20 or 25 minutes with a tool like Amply. Either way, the process becomes more conversational, more educational, and more likely to win the job.
Load calculations are different than equipment selection! Manual J defines what the home needs — independent of any specific equipment. But if you're used to reading the nameplate off the existing unit, that causes anxiety when the numbers don't match.
The key insight: equipment labels are marketing numbers, not design specs. A modern inverter heat pump stamped "4 ton" can deliver close to five tons of heating capacity. An 80,000 BTU furnace at 80 AFUE is actually only putting out about 60,000 BTUs. And for an older piece of equipment, you have no idea whether it was correctly sized in the first place. Once you separate "what does the home need?" from "what equipment will give the home what it needs?" — the whole process gets less confusing and less stressful.
Three reasons.
All three are solvable, but they take reps.
We went through these rapid-fire:
Before the visit, set expectations. Send a short video or call ahead — let the homeowner know the visit will take 60–90 minutes, that you'll be diagnosing their home, and that you'd like them to walk along with you. This alone differentiates you from the contractor who looks at the nameplate and leaves in ten minutes.
During the visit, invite the homeowner along for at least the first few rooms. Ask about their comfort, their renovation history, whether they've had weatherization work done. Studies consistently show close rates go up when the customer talks 40–60% of the time — and a load calculation gives you a natural platform for that kind of conversation.
Before you leave, show the homeowner the results — but don't necessarily send the full report. Your load calculation and system design are your intellectual property. David Richardson from NCI puts it well: craftsmen don't give away their craft for free. The quote is free. The design comes with a commitment — a deposit or a signed contract.
A confidence J-curve. Your confidence will dip before it rises. Your time in the home will go up before it comes down. You're breaking down your swing. The contractors who climb the curve fastest are the ones who practice in their own home, their buddy's house, their brother's house — getting three or four reps in during the first week instead of spreading one a month across a quarter.
Start by reframing. Bigger isn't better with HVAC — you want Goldilocks.
Then ask to see the other contractor's Manual J. In the vast majority of cases, there won't be one. If there is, check a few key assumptions — design conditions, window types, wall insulation. One incorrect assumption is usually enough to show the homeowner why your number is more trustworthy. If they just used square footage or register counts, ask the homeowner whether they'd use the same BTUs-per-square-foot for a 2,000 sq ft 1900 farmhouse and a 2,000 sq ft new build. The answer is obvious.
Right-sized systems. Higher conversion rates. Fewer callbacks. Happier customers. More referrals. And a team that actually understands what they're installing and why, because doing Manual J right forces them to ask better questions about Manual S, Manual D, and everything else downstream.
One of our customers in central Pennsylvania called us nine months in and said he realized he'd been oversizing for a decade — and so had all his competitors. He finally had the confidence to give homeowners the right-sized system. That's the unlock.
For more on integrating Manual J into your sales process, check out Episode 45 with Paul McHugh, who walks through his full end-to-end approach. For a deep dive on ducts and their impact on load calculations, our conversation with Steve Rogers from The Energy Conservatory in Episode 13 is essential listening.
Timestamps:
[00:00] – Episode Teaser
[03:05] – 1. Why does Manual J matter to your business?
[04:20] – 2. What isn't Manual J?
[06:13] – 3. How does Manual J change your sales process?
[10:14] – 4. What's the biggest surprise for contractors switching from a "like-for-like" approach?
[21:36] – 5. Why do contractors second-guess their first load calculations?
[28:13] – 6. What are the most common Manual J input mistakes?
[44:51] – 7. What does a best-in-class sales process look like?
[52:03] – 8. What changes should contractors expect when they start doing load calculations?
[55:03] – 9. How do you convince a homeowner your load calc is right when a competitor quoted bigger?
[58:43] – 10. What are the benefits of making Manual J fundamental to your sales and design process?
Transcript:
00:00:00.000 — 00:00:36.000 · Speaker 1
So manual J defines the 99 and 1% design conditions. Those are the temperatures outside the home that we use for modeling the loads, both for the wintertime and for the summertime. It also sets standards around what the indoor temperatures and conditions are, both in the winter and the summer. This is the foundation of manual J, because all heat transfer is really driven based on a difference in temperature, and it's the difference in temperature between the inside of the home and the outside of the home.
So this is like the foundational assumption in manual J.
00:00:40.320 — 00:01:56.010 · Speaker 2
Hi. Welcome to the Heat Pump podcast. I'm Ed Smith. My co-founder Eric Fitz has onboarded hundreds of contractors to this point onto our manual JS software platform. And what we've realized is that the same questions keep coming up. Not just about how to use the tool, but about how to trust your load calculation, how to handle it when the numbers don't match the old equipment in the home, and how to actually use manual J in your building science knowledge to separate from the competition and win more jobs.
So today on this episode, we're running through the top ten questions we hear from contractors who are new to building load calculations into their sales process. Whether you're brand new to manual J or you've been doing it for years, I think you'll pick up something useful in this episode. All right, before we get into it, two quick announcements first.
Next week is the Building Performance Association's national conference in Columbus, Ohio, from April 13th to the 16th. All right. It's coming right up. But it's not too late to register and go. If you want, you can use discount code NPC, hp for a discount if you're a first time attendee. Second, if you want to see how the best contractors use trust to win jobs, check out our trust checklist.
That link is in the show notes. Let's get into the episode.
00:01:59.700 — 00:02:08.580 · Speaker 2
Hi and welcome to the Heat Pump podcast. I'm Ed Smith and today my guest is my co-founder, Eric Fitz. What's up Eric. Hey Ed, good to have you on.
00:02:08.660 — 00:02:09.460 · Speaker 1
It's nice to be here.
00:02:09.500 — 00:02:53.260 · Speaker 2
All right. Today our goal. Eric, you have done. I don't even know how many customer onboarding is fielding customer questions, looking at people's manual JS. And so we have a much better insight now than we did two years ago into what questions someone has when they're trying to build good load calculations in as like a foundation of their sales process.
So today we basically want to hit those top items that we've heard to kind of share it with folks more broadly. This will be kind of about amply, but much of this applies to any load calculation tool. So I think we will still be quite valuable to our audience.
00:02:53.540 — 00:02:56.740 · Speaker 1
I'm excited to get into this. It's going to be great.
00:02:56.780 — 00:03:12.390 · Speaker 2
All right. Let's get into the questions. I've got ten for you, Eric. And so I'll say them as we go through. So folks listening kind of have a mental marker. But we're going to start at the highest level. Question number one. Why does manual J matter to someone's business?
00:03:12.430 — 00:04:03.320 · Speaker 1
I love starting here. We think there's three core benefits. It's about first and foremost delivering comfort to your customer. Manual J is the foundation of proper design. The second piece is that it's definitely going to benefit you as the person doing the estimate, doing the sales process. It is a way to build trust with the homeowner.
It enhances your ability to have a conversation with them. It ultimately leads to higher sales conversion rates. And the third really big benefit. I think some folks don't think about as as much often is it makes a huge difference for your company. It's going to save the other folks on your team tremendous amounts of time and eliminate headaches kind of down the path as you get towards doing the install, commissioning everything else and serving that customer, hopefully for many, many years down the road.
00:04:03.360 — 00:04:32.120 · Speaker 2
Awesome. All right. All three of those reasons are meaty, and we could dig into them a ton and we will and sort of follow on questions. But that's a good high level place to start. All right. Question number two. Manual J is just one part of a comprehensive diagnostics process. So we're going to talk about manual J.
What are we not going to talk about today. In case someone's listening and yelling into their AirPods. Like why aren't you talking about this. All right. What are we just not going to cover today and we'll do on a future episode?
00:04:32.160 — 00:05:52.370 · Speaker 1
Yeah, it's a great question. So manual J definitely is a foundational part of the process, but it does not get into things like understanding duct capacity, properly measuring total external static pressure, consulting your fan curves, or using a tech flow grid to figure out do I actually have ductwork that can deliver the energy that I need to?
We're not going to get into blower door testing. This is a super important part of the overall process. Manual J offers a pathway where it doesn't require manual J. It certainly is beneficial if to kind of help narrow down the uncertainty around air infiltration. We're not going to get into that. You should be asking qualitative questions, doing some kind of home comfort survey of your customer.
That is a real part of the diagnostic process as well. Understanding kind of the lived experience in that home. We're not going to get into that. And then certainly there's a bunch more miscellaneous information you really need to document and kind of collect as you're going through the home. So this is like pictures of the electrical panel, maybe what certain control settings are.
Maybe it's documenting physical placement of the existing unit or where are you going to put the new equipment. Those are all important parts of sort of information gathering diagnostics that we're not going to get into today.
00:05:52.420 — 00:06:25.260 · Speaker 2
Great. Okay. All important parts. Not going to get into those. We do view manual J as the foundation and a lot of other stuff kind of built on top of it but good to flag. All right. If I am, if I've been in business ten years and I've always kind of wanted to do manual Jay and then I pick up a tool like aptly and suddenly I feel like Manual Jay's within my grasp and I can do it on every sales call.
What impacts is it going to have on someone's sales process? Like what are the brass tacks of? Like, my sales process looked like this before and now it's going to look like this.
00:06:25.300 — 00:08:07.280 · Speaker 1
Yeah. So if you have not ever done a full blown manual jay before, it's for sure is going to be a longer process. If you have been walking into homes and being like, well, this feels like two and a half ton, and that's sort of the extent of your process. Yeah. Doing a manual, Jay is going to take you more time, and it's also at the same time going to take more time because it allows you to have much better conversations with the customer.
You're going to get more questions. If you're doing a leader based manual process in particular, people want to follow along and see what's happening. And it's a way to to build that relationship with that homeowner. And sometimes, especially if you're new to the process altogether, that's going to feel very different.
But ultimately that's a really good thing. So I think that's a good example for someone who they've never really done load calculations. That's what they are going to experience. Now it's on the flip side. Yeah. Good. Yeah. On the flip side, if you're someone who has been diligently doing load calculations using a digital tape measure, maybe measuring with an old school physical tape measure and taking all those measurements of the home, the walls, the windows, the doors.
And you've been using kind of conventional software for many years. A leader based process like amply is going to be massively faster. Typical measurement. and then add it to the software. Type of process is like 3 to 4 hours depending on the size of the home. With a product like amply, we're talking 15, 20, 25 minutes for an average sized home to get all those measurements and have adjusted key assumptions about the home if necessary.
00:08:07.320 — 00:08:24.840 · Speaker 2
Love that. But those folks are the ones who typically don't call us with a whole bunch of like, hey, they're like, oh my God, this is just a gift. So that was question number three. Let's go on question number four and let's focus on some of those no load calc or light load calc approaches.
00:08:24.880 — 00:09:27.930 · Speaker 1
Sorry. Before we go there, I want to emphasize because this is something that folks come up against. Often thinking about time saving is like a very important part of this new process. In addition to creating value and building a relationship with the customer. While it may take longer generally that it's a huge benefit from a sales perspective.
Well, initially it might not feel like that, but you've got to remember the huge time savings it creates for the overall process. So if you are properly documenting these details, you're selecting the right equipment. You're ordering the right equipment. When you show up on install day, you're going to have a good outcome, and you're going to avoid the hours and hours of hassle that it takes to like, pull out the piece of equipment that was completely sized incorrectly and do it over again.
So keep that in mind. It may change that upfront sales part of the process, but net for the overall business, what doesn't matter what kind of if you're coming from the world of having never done it before or you've been doing it for a decade, there's going to be benefits across the whole company, both from time savings and from a sales and design perspective.
00:09:27.970 — 00:10:42.140 · Speaker 2
Yeah. Totally agree. I mean, so there's that. I'll also add that if that 20 minutes with a homeowner lets you have a much better conversation and they like you a heck of a lot better, and they go with you as a result because they just feel like you heard them. You diagnose their home the right way. Then you could have wasted an hour in the home by losing the job, Or you could have spent an hour or 20 in the home and won it.
What would you rather do? Yeah, I think that's a great point. All right. I want to talk because we hear a lot about surprises where people were. They were doing some other process and then they start using our software. They start doing manual JS on every home and they're surprised by something. So I've got our three most common alternatives.
This is not someone who's using right soft and spending four hours on it. These are folks who are sort of doing a quicker approach. So my question for each of these is what is the biggest surprise folks. See. All right. Question four. First option like for like if in the past I've been going in and just doing a like for like box swap and then I start doing manual JS deeply.
What's my biggest surprise.
00:10:42.180 — 00:12:43.610 · Speaker 1
Actually what we run into the most, this is going to be a little bit of a tangent is actually actual a little bit of confusion between load calculations and equipment selection. A lot of people think that manual J is kind of that's it. That's the end of the sizing process. Manual J is about defining the problem.
It's what the home needs. It is independent from the equipment selection process. And this is part of the issue when if you are used to doing kind of like for like replacements, if you look outside at the outdoor unit and it's a four ton, but it's a 15 year old piece of equipment from maybe a brand you're less familiar with, and you've gone through the load calculation process and you're thinking in your head, oh, load calques are the same thing as equipment selection.
You might get particularly anxious because it might turn out that a 14 unit that is labeled as such. Sitting out there in the field today, its actual capacity, its ability to deliver if it's a heat pump, a heating capacity in the wintertime, or cooling in the summertime, maybe quite a bit limited relative to that nameplate or marketing label that's on there.
And the only way you can kind of figure that out is if you dig into the equipment, performance details of that existing equipment. So you have that context about, okay, at design conditions. At operating conditions, take into account line set lengths. What does this unit actually outputting regardless of what its like marketing label is or what its nominal rating is.
And then once you figure that out, then you can also then make sense of, okay, now I do a load calculation and I can compare that to equipment that I might be proposing that it's a modern like inverter based piece of equipment. It's got totally different characteristics in terms of its output in the summertime, in the wintertime.
And you can kind of navigate that more easily.
00:12:43.650 — 00:13:26.690 · Speaker 2
Awesome. Very helpful. This, I think, is the number one thing we hear, right? Which is, hey, I did amply in the South. They've got a four ton and amply says it needs 28,000 BTUs of cooling. Or in the north they've got an 80,000 BTU furnace. And Hadley says they need 50,000 BTUs of heating. This is way too small.
Like I think that is watching the notes that come into us or the calls we get that feels like the most common thing we hear. So that four ton stamp and that 80,000 BTU stamp. Like, why is that a marketing label and why does it mess with the contractor's ability to trust a load calculation?
00:13:26.730 — 00:13:41.090 · Speaker 1
Yeah. So a couple of other things. So for conventional air conditioning equipment, it's been around for 100 plus years now. We had a standard around that marketing label really corresponds to cooling capacity at least at some level. If you're talking about a heat pump like
00:13:42.100 — 00:15:38.710 · Speaker 1
A four ton marketing label inverter. Variable capacity heat pump could actually do close to five tons of heating capacity, even though it says four ton on that marketing label. And that's just, again, the convention is that that marketing label is kind of more corresponds to the cooling capacity rather than the heating.
So that's one aspect of where a lot of confusion can happen. And also just there's a lot of different things that manufacturers are doing with the equipment, depending on how they're trying to achieve 100% heating capacity at really cold temperatures or not. Again, it depends on the market. They're trying to sell their product.
The other part is like if you're you're coming from a furnace or a boiler, just often particularly that's going to be older equipment. It's even that much more likely that no one ever did a load calculation. And it's hard to find in many markets a furnace that's smaller than 80,000 BTUs. And so just often they're just massively oversize in general, and then confusingly, particularly for furnaces and boilers.
A nominally rated 80,000 BTU furnace, that is, an 80 afew unit actually only has about 60,000 BTUs of actual output. Because of that efficiency loss and versus a modern condensing boiler, it's going to have an AFU rating of like 98. It's actually it's an 80,000 BTU boiler. It's going to have pretty close that same output.
So whether it's a conventional piece of equipment fossil or condenser, outdoor unit, air conditioner, heat pump. The bottom line is that that label doesn't really tell you a whole lot, especially on the heating side. You've got to dig into the equipment details to understand and get context around that existing equipment that's in the home.
Full stop.
00:15:38.750 — 00:16:10.600 · Speaker 2
Yeah. then is like a bit terrifying given how prevalent. Like for like changes are. And that's how so many decisions are being made. And you just named like six layers of places that can be wrong. So it's so interesting to hear folks who call up just terrified of the load calculation, like, oh God, just let me go back to the like for like when really the like for like switch has like six layers of ways that could absolutely not be the right answer for the home.
00:16:10.640 — 00:17:31.900 · Speaker 1
Yeah. And it's, it's even trickier. And we said we weren't going to talk about duct capacity issues. But there are various reasons that someone may have selected a different type of furnace, because even though it's like the same hey, if you rating, there are some brands, some decisions that are made for certain products where they have a higher output temperature, and if you were running at a higher temperature and the same flow rate means you can deliver more BTUs relative to a lower delta T, lower supply temperature in the same flow rate.
So if you happen to be in a home you don't know this. You haven't done the duct capacity measurements. Maybe the person that installed the previous set of equipment was like, oh my gosh, I don't have enough duct capacity. I need to put in this furnace, this particular piece of equipment that has a higher delta t to overcome that flow rate issue.
And so the bottom line is, is that from my perspective, looking at the existing equipment, it's like it's an important piece of information, but it's like weighted very low. And you have to have a whole bunch more context before you can even begin to use that existing piece of equipment as like something to guide you or something that you should be like anchoring on how you were thinking about sizing equipment, whether it should be larger or smaller than that existing piece of equipment.
00:17:31.940 — 00:17:34.220 · Speaker 2
All right. That was for a.
00:17:34.940 — 00:17:36.420 · Speaker 3
Let's go to four b.
00:17:36.510 — 00:17:37.550 · Speaker 2
Question for B.
00:17:38.590 — 00:18:00.990 · Speaker 2
There are some pieces of software out there where you enter an address and voila, you get a load calculation back. And a bunch of people said like that works for them. They'll get callbacks for folks who that was their process, and then they start something much more detailed like amply was their biggest surprise.
What should they know? Yeah.
00:18:01.270 — 00:19:06.440 · Speaker 1
So I love software. Software can feel like magic. Some of the things we do with amplify, they feel like magic. But I want to emphasize when it comes to understanding how a home is physically built, what are the materials in that home? There is no software that can figure that out, at least not today. And any software that claims they can magically figure that out and require no verification.
I would be very skeptical and afraid of that software. There is no way that software can know. The homeowner replaced all of their windows from their original 1930s single pane windows to modern, low windows, and they did that six months ago. There's no predictive model that can tell you that. And so just like it's going to be a different process, you can't just punch in an address and do no additional work and expect good results.
00:19:06.480 — 00:19:36.810 · Speaker 2
Yeah. And there's no assessor's database that has that level of detail on a home accurately. Yeah. No way. So all right. Beware. Address equals load calc. Yes. Great. Last. Okay. Foresee if someone was just doing a rule of thumb. BTUs per square foot. Whatever. There's many rules of thumb. What's their biggest surprise?
What do they need to know about the switch to a more robust form of load calculation than a rule of thumb.
00:19:36.850 — 00:21:10.260 · Speaker 1
Yeah, this is the trickiest one because rules of thumb are actually they can be really helpful. And we actually encourage folks to still use rules of thumb as like a gut check. And the challenge with rules of thumb is that from lived experience, a lot of folks are like, well, these actually work. And probably for maybe 40, 50, 60% of homes out there, they actually they might be reasonable.
The challenge is when you're in different kind of homes, they just don't account for any of the nuance. Right? And if you think about it, on the extreme ends, it's very clear why rule of thumb is super dangerous. So I think about a home that was built in 1900, that's 2000ft² versus a brand new state of the art home, also 2000ft².
even if they have the same amount of glass area, the same orientation, just the building practices, the materials, everything about how that home is constructed is going to be totally different, and there's just no way that they're going to have the exact same load kind of profile. And so it turns out that every home is unique.
Every home has a unique orientation. Every home has unique window exposure, different kinds of windows, insulation, those walls, all those details. And a rule of thumb just kind of waters down all of that and just kind of assumes that that matters. And it's driven based on the square footage of the home.
00:21:10.260 — 00:21:30.460 · Speaker 2
Clear. All right. So no matter what folks previous method was for sizing, they should get ready for a different approach. And good to know the surprises in store for them and how to kind of get up to speed on it. I think that's all super helpful. All right. That was question four.
00:21:31.590 — 00:21:35.349 · Speaker 2
Looks at the halfway mark here. Question five
00:21:36.670 — 00:22:02.430 · Speaker 2
there's a big difference between running a load calculation and having confidence in it. We have a lot of our customers do their first couple and send it to us and be like, can you guys let me know if this is right? Because like they're nervous, right? It's the first time doing it. So what leads to that? Why do folks do a load calculation and then second guess the number.
00:22:02.470 — 00:23:25.800 · Speaker 1
All right. I think it's helpful to think about this sort of like there's like three different kind of influencing factors. One is sort of like a software knowledge gap. They're just new to a piece of software that kind of creates uncertainty there. Two maybe there's like a building science knowledge gap.
They're anxious about how to verify certain details. They haven't done some of these processes before. And the third one, honestly, it's it can be this kind of you're skeptical or anxious because it's sort of countercultural, right? It's a process you may or may not ever have done. Maybe you're if it's a family run business, it's never been done as part of your business in the past.
So you're kind of going against a practice that's been in place. So if we start with the first one, the software knowledge gap, this is something that's been pervasive for decades. A lot of it's driven because the software that's Akka certified, that's been out there for a long time. They're great tools if you know how to use them.
And many of them have required literally a 40 hour training course in order to even begin to kind of know how to use those tools correctly. That is terrifying, right? If you're coming from that world of like, oh my gosh, I need to remember all of these different details in order to just avoid screwing up the software inputs.
You're going to be anxious. So we get that. Anything else you would add there, Ed?
00:23:25.840 — 00:23:39.330 · Speaker 2
No, it's about practice, right? It's about practicing, getting up to speed. And the one thing I'll say is, with a tool like ours, it's much more intuitive, right? We hear that a bunch so you can get up to speed faster, but it's just about reps. Yeah.
00:23:39.450 — 00:24:46.420 · Speaker 1
Yeah, totally. The building science kind of knowledge gap. I think this is a trickier one. I think folks often can get over the kind of software knowledge gap pretty fast, especially using products like ours. Building science takes more time. That is really about being in different kinds of homes. It can be really helpful to have some kind of mentor who can go through through this with you.
If you don't know some of these simple tricks, it can feel terrifying, right? If you're like looking at a window for the first time and you see an A manual J input that says, is this a clear window or is this a low E window? You're like, I have no idea what that what low even means, let alone how do I verify if that's the case or not.
And it's there's a big unlock when people realize actually there's like a ten second trick where you can use the light on your phone or a lighter, just to quickly look at the reflection in the window panes. And you can know that answer really, really easily. So it's you could definitely overcome it. But it's a lot of these, these different little techniques that maybe you need a little specialized tool or you need to just know what you're looking for with your eyeballs.
If you've never done it before, it's a bunch of new stuff.
00:24:46.460 — 00:25:09.060 · Speaker 2
Yep. The one I hear on sales calls all the time is like, how do I know what the insulation levels are in the wall? Like, I can't ampullae aren't you scanning? Aren't you like, infrared scanning it? Luckily, there's a deep, deep world of YouTube videos with many useful tricks, and you give people a bunch of them too.
But for sure, many useful tricks for figuring out our values window. Like what is the window? All that sort of stuff.
00:25:09.100 — 00:25:50.070 · Speaker 1
Yeah, totally. And what's particularly helpful, I think, to know for folks getting into this is that, I mean, there is so much variation in the housing stock in the US and like, you don't need to know every possible scenario, every type of building construction, typically in your area, you're going to have some pretty consistent patterns for the type of construction, whether it's like mostly stick build homes or mostly brick.
And once you learn the kind of nuances that are common in your area, then most of the time you're going to you're going to be fast and you're going to be able to verify these details and do it accurately. And then every once in a while, you're going to come across something new, but you'll be able to build on the knowledge that you already have to kind of help you with those new situations if you come across them.
00:25:50.110 — 00:25:55.470 · Speaker 2
Great. All right. Tell us about the third one, the countercultural one, because this one we come up against quite a bit.
00:25:55.510 — 00:26:26.640 · Speaker 1
Humans were pack animals, right. And it can feel it can feel scary to go against what? You're in a peer group with some other HVAC companies, and none of them are taking the time to do a thoughtful load calculation. Or you were coming up through the trade and the folks that were teaching you were like, rules of thumb are great.
That's what I used all the time, and that I did great with my business. It's hard to kind of take that leap and do something that's different than a lot of other companies are out there and trust that it's going to turn out well.
00:26:26.680 — 00:26:33.240 · Speaker 2
I've also seen folks get super excited about being the one to change the culture and like, because then when they see,
00:26:34.440 — 00:27:17.200 · Speaker 2
like we could be a different kind of sales process, we could be the kind of sales process that stands for incredibly high quality, and it's going to reduce callbacks and it's going to differentiate us. We have customers who had one sales person who was just so excited about doing that, and the company ended up kind of pivoting its competitive differentiation.
And like everything he talks about on some website, it's completely different. Now it's super hard, right? But it's the right way to do it for the homeowner. And I also think it's the right way to to build a long term competitive advantage and stand out from your competition so you can jump in and grab that bull by the horns and be like, we are going to do this thing in a different way.
But I have found you need someone to be the champion of that inside a company.
00:27:17.640 — 00:27:21.800 · Speaker 3
And if it's an owner trying to shove it down on sales, the comfort.
00:27:21.800 — 00:27:39.130 · Speaker 2
Advisors that cannot work. You either need to comfort advisors excited to step up and actually do it, or if the owner is the comfort advisor, which happens a lot in smaller companies, and they've kind of always wanted to make this shift, then they can step into it pretty quickly. But you need someone who's excited about basically repositioning the company.
00:27:39.170 — 00:28:10.370 · Speaker 1
What's interesting, once you also make the mind shift and realize that this knowledge, this technical knowledge is it's very similar to the knowledge. You have to have to do a proper install. Right. You're understanding these technical details of how something works. Instead of it being a piece of equipment.
You're learning about how the home works and about building science and a software tool. And those are all things with just a little bit of time and effort you can figure out, especially if you come from a technical background. Maybe it's more on the equipment side to certainly figure this out.
00:28:10.410 — 00:28:14.730 · Speaker 2
That's great. All right. All right. Question six.
00:28:14.970 — 00:28:15.850 · Speaker 3
There's going to be a rapid.
00:28:15.850 — 00:28:16.090 · Speaker 2
Fire.
00:28:16.130 — 00:28:16.410 · Speaker 3
Mode.
00:28:16.410 — 00:28:18.369 · Speaker 2
I'm going to shoot a
00:28:19.450 — 00:28:38.980 · Speaker 2
input in manual J at you. and you tell us the most common mistakes and misunderstandings which kind of go through that way. All right. First one here. Design conditions. What are the most common mistakes and misunderstandings people flub when they're working with design conditions?
00:28:39.180 — 00:28:40.980 · Speaker 1
Yeah. All right. The first thing.
00:28:41.020 — 00:28:45.260 · Speaker 2
And actually maybe remind us what design conditions are. And then tell us about the mistake.
00:28:45.300 — 00:29:57.510 · Speaker 1
Great. So manual J defines the 99 and 1% design conditions. Those are the temperatures outside the home that we use for modeling the loads, both for the wintertime and for the summertime. It also sets standards around what the indoor temperatures and conditions are, both in the winter and the summer.
This is the foundation of manual J, because all heat transfer is really driven based on a difference in temperature, and it's a difference in temperature between the inside of the home and the outside of the home. So this is like the foundational Assumption in manual, Jay. And so messing with it can lead to all kinds of crazy stuff.
And so the most common thing that comes up, especially if someone is not familiar with manual J, is not familiar with this concept of 99% or 1% conditions. They'll look at the numbers that are potentially defaulted for their location, and they'll be like, let's say let's use an example. The outdoor design condition according to Ashrae 2021, which are the weather stations that we use.
It says 85 degrees in the summertime. And the first thing the person says, well, wait a minute. In my area, it gets sometimes it hits the 90s.
00:29:57.550 — 00:30:03.830 · Speaker 2
That 85 is exactly what my house is. And like we got above 100 a couple of times last summer.
00:30:03.910 — 00:31:09.240 · Speaker 1
That's right. So folks are like, oh, this is wrong. I need to go in. I need to change these numbers. The part that is, if you don't know, it's very important is that we are these design conditions are not intended to be the worst case scenario. In fact, they're very intentionally. We're not designing for the hottest day of the year or the coldest day of the year.
If we did that, we would be massively over sizing the equipment. And so the 1% to 99%, they refer to hours of the year. So on the cooling side, that 85 degree Fahrenheit outdoor temperature, for example, that's saying only 1% of the hours of the year. Is it going to be warmer hotter than 85 degrees. And so in a year there's about 8760 hours.
So that means about 87 to 90 hours a year. It's going to be hotter in that temperature. And so that's true. It is going to be hotter than that temperature for some chunk of the time. But it's going to be pretty rare. And usually those events are measured in hours for a given day, not like weeks continuously.
00:31:09.240 — 00:31:42.450 · Speaker 2
From 1 to 4 p.m.. Yeah. So Eric, that all makes sense. But so many of our customers, they don't want the callback on the hottest day of summer or the coldest day of winter, right? That's when the phone rings. Like the system isn't keeping up, so it's great. OCC is designed for 99 to 1%, but how do you handle homeowners on those couple of hours that happen outside of the window in which Manuel Jay is designing for?
00:31:42.490 — 00:32:25.140 · Speaker 1
Yeah, I'm channeling our good friend Edgar on a whack over an act for this one. His great response to this is, do you want the homeowner to be happy for 1% of the year, or 99% of the year? The other piece that's super important is that Manual Jay has reasonable, sensible factors of safety built in to help protect against this.
So particularly on the heating side, there's a little bit of cushion in there already to help protect you as a contractor in this design process. We don't design for those extreme scenarios because then the homeowner is going to be uncomfortable for the vast majority of the year. And ALJ people have thought about this.
There's protections already in place.
00:32:25.180 — 00:32:29.660 · Speaker 2
And it's more than like a little bit of cushion, right? It's like 10 to 20% cushion.
00:32:29.660 — 00:32:32.460 · Speaker 1
10 to 20% depending on if it's heating versus cooling.
00:32:32.660 — 00:32:55.660 · Speaker 2
Yeah. Which is why you advise folks to be be aggressive on this. Yeah. So it's good to know there's those factors of safety. Because then if you start putting cushion in there yourself like all right cool. It says 18 degrees. We're planning for 18 degrees in the winter. But I know it gets down to five regularly.
If you bump it down to five you're going to have a really oversize system. Good on design conditions. Yeah. Windows. One of the most common misunderstandings and mistakes with windows.
00:32:55.660 — 00:33:51.950 · Speaker 1
So windows are the most complicated part of of manual J from my perspective. There's the most number of options to kind of go through here. And windows have a huge impact on both cooling and heating. And so it's very important to get them right. I think the the lowest hanging fruit here, whether you're in a cold climate or a warm climate, is this thing we talked about earlier about having clear glass versus low glass.
And it's confusing already because like, all glass is clear, right? Like we can see through glass. So what the heck do we mean about clear versus low? And to just go a little bit further on this particular example. Yeah. You actually with your naked eye, you can't tell whether a piece of whether glass has a emissivity coating on it or not, which is what that low E is in reference to, but it's something you can actually verify with a very powerful bright light source.
That could be.
00:33:52.630 — 00:33:54.270 · Speaker 2
What is an emissivity coating.
00:33:54.310 — 00:35:42.290 · Speaker 1
Yeah. So emissivity. It's a measure of how much kind of near-infrared light is being passed through the window. A lot of the solar gain or losses in the wintertime radiative losses are happening kind of as you get into near infrared and some and actually start to get a little bit out of it, but basically it's this very fine window that we, you can tune this coating for to prevent that wavelength of light from passing through the window or passing out of the window, and that reduces solar heat gain in the summertime.
And in the wintertime it reduces radiative losses through that window as well. And so depending on the climate zone you're in, your windows are actually have different emissivity coatings. So like in the South generally speaking you want the lowest emissivity possible pretty much because we really want to reduce that radiative heat transfer from the sun through solar heat gain.
So in the south good low replacement windows. Modern windows have emissivity around 0.05. So 95% of this tuned wavelength of light is going to be blocked. Now in climate zone like the Mid-Atlantic or for other northern climates. We actually shoot for more like a point two emissivity, because we actually we want to allow some solar gain in the wintertime.
And we manufacturers again depending on climate zone, will figure out which pane of glass, which surface of the glass is the best place to put that emissivity coating to kind of manage this radiative losses going out of the window. So from the inside to the outside versus all the way around. So that's slightly different depending on what climate zone you're in.
00:35:42.330 — 00:35:48.490 · Speaker 2
Clear. All right. And I interrupt you asking about emissivity. You were telling us how to figure out if you're low or clear.
00:35:48.530 — 00:36:41.780 · Speaker 1
Yes. So without a very expensive piece of equipment, you can't tell the exact level of emissivity like this 0.05 versus 0.1.2, etc. but you can very quickly and easily figure out do I have a low E coating or not? And you can just hold up your phone light so like a bright flashlight or lighter up to the window and just look at the reflections of that, that light source.
And if any one of the reflections looks like a slightly different tone, slightly different color, it means you've got a low coating. And so if you've done this a few times, it literally takes five 10s and you've answered this most basic question, which has a huge impact on cooling and heating loads. Having a low E window versus a clear single pane window, that's like a 50% reduction in both heating and cooling loads.
So it's very important to get right.
00:36:41.820 — 00:36:46.020 · Speaker 2
We have a good help article on this on like with pictures we'll link to in the show notes. You got.
00:36:46.020 — 00:36:46.300 · Speaker 1
It.
00:36:46.340 — 00:36:54.780 · Speaker 2
Yep. Cool. All right. Windows complicated. Very helpful though on low E walls. One of the things people tend to misunderstand on walls.
00:36:54.820 — 00:37:32.750 · Speaker 1
Before we go to walls, I gotta say one more thing about windows that people overlook all the time. And it's also like super easy, low hanging fruit insect screens. If you have insect screens, particularly on the outside of a window, super common in places, obviously, where there's bugs that will reduce cooling loads by 20% if you have full outdoor insect screens.
People often overlook them because they're like insect screens. Who cares? That's not going to do anything. Well, they actually do better. They're physically blocking 20% of that sunlight from actually coming in through the window. They're actually shading the window from the outside. So if you've got insect screens, include that assumption.
It makes a big difference.
00:37:32.830 — 00:37:34.790 · Speaker 2
Good hot tent. Great. Yeah.
00:37:34.830 — 00:37:36.950 · Speaker 1
Great. All right.
00:37:36.990 — 00:37:38.030 · Speaker 2
Walls walls.
00:37:39.830 — 00:39:09.130 · Speaker 1
This is definitely a trickier one for more common stick built construction. You've got two by four two by six walls. This is relatively straightforward. It gets more complicated if you're into cinder blocks into any kind of masonry. It's a lot trickier. But I'll just got it for walls. Most people, they'll be like, hey, I don't know how to figure this out.
I'm just going to completely guess. And that's a mistake. The thing you're trying to figure out with walls is, do I have something? Is there some kind of cavity insulation or not in those walls? If I have something like going from like zero insulation to, let's say, 11, that is actually a massive difference.
It's a much smaller difference if I'm going from like, let's say you're not sure whether it's R 11 or R 15. There's from a low calculation impact. That's a much, much smaller issue to kind of figure out. So for me, I'm always recommending just you're trying to verify this most basic assumption. And you can do it with simple tricks like taking off an outlet cover, poking in something nonmetallic, and just seeing if you pull out fiberglass hairs.
For example, saying if you pull out some dense pack cellulose, see if you pull out anything that's in that cavity, crucially, with something nonmetallic. So you're not going to shock yourself if you're poking around an outlet. But that really simple test it takes 90s maybe a little bit longer can make a massive difference in your calculations.
00:39:09.170 — 00:39:12.650 · Speaker 2
Good advice. Good sealings.
00:39:12.970 — 00:39:54.610 · Speaker 1
Yeah, I love so both ceilings and ducts. I love these ones because it's really just an eyeball kind of thing. You just got to stick your head up into that attic and you're just you can literally see how much insulation there is. If you got fiberglass bats, you can hopefully see the backing and it's actually got the R value written right on it.
And if it doesn't, you can learn. You can Google this and figure out how to understand whether you've got like loose pack cellulose or blown fiberglass and what's the R-value per inch. And just measure, roughly speaking, how much? How many inches of insulation you've got. So just use your eyeballs. See if you got something.
See if you got nothing. How thick.
00:39:54.610 — 00:40:16.140 · Speaker 2
Is it? This is one where, when I'm on a sales call and someone asks this question, I will just share my screen. And in Google Gemini, like ask the question. I can see six inches of insulation in the attic. What's the R value? And then I'd be like. Is it fiberglass? Is it dense back cellulose. Here's how you can tell the difference.
Like it really does a good job of walking you through that. So yeah that's a good one. And same thing for ducks too.
00:40:16.180 — 00:41:42.030 · Speaker 1
Yeah. So for parts of the the country where you've got the most common scenarios, you've got ductwork and an attic or you've got ductwork in a closed crawlspace or basement. Typically in both of those places, you can stick your head up into an access, you can get into that attic, you can get into that basement, and you can just look at the duct work and you can see if it's insulated or not, and if it's insulated at all kind of a correct way.
You can read the insulation label right off of that flex duct, for example. And it's a super sensitive assumption. So difference between having R4 and R eight insulation on ductwork is a big deal, especially in a place like an attic. So pay attention to that. Verify those assumptions. Similarly for duct leakage against really common in like older homes in the northeast or kind of in heating dominated climates where you've got unsealed ductwork in a basement or crawlspace.
And it's very obvious because you look at the ductwork, there's absolutely no mastic, there's no tape, there's nothing. It looks pretty in some cases. But like, just use your eyeballs and double check that and modify your assumption about duct leakage accordingly. Ideally you should. If you're seeing that it's easy to access, that's an opportunity with your customer to fix that and actually improve and reduce duct leakage, because it's a big deal for air quality.
It's a big deal for low calculations. It's a big deal in general. But again, it's something you can easily see with your eyeballs in just a couple of seconds.
00:41:42.070 — 00:41:58.910 · Speaker 2
Great. And I'll just quickly point people towards our episode with Steve Rogers from the Energy Conservatory. It was basically an hour and 15 minutes on ducts and the impact it has on manual J. So like we just scratched the surface of this one, you can go much deeper. So that was a good episode of Steve.
00:41:58.950 — 00:42:05.960 · Speaker 1
Yeah. Yeah. He's so great. He goes into duct leakage to the outside. This is a very big deal. Check out that episode.
00:42:06.160 — 00:42:10.720 · Speaker 2
Yeah, that's a good one. All right. Last one. Infiltration.
00:42:10.880 — 00:42:12.640 · Speaker 4
This is the hardest one.
00:42:13.480 — 00:44:48.620 · Speaker 1
Infiltration in heating dominated climates is one of the most important assumptions. It can be the most sensitive assumption for some homes. The single change here. This represents 20, 30, 40% of the loads in the home. So in a perfect world, everybody would be doing blower door tests. And we can directly measure what's going on at home.
And you can use that as part of your load calculation. But often we don't have that available. And instead we're kind of relying on what manual J refers to as the tightness method, where we're essentially guessing, but we're using educated guesses to figure out how tight that home is from loose to tight, with average in the middle and semi loose and semi tight between those.
Those steps I recommend folks read. There's a it's actually a couple of pages in manual J that goes into this in a lot more detail, but basically it's a methodology for building a case using visual inspection. And so the really simple examples that I like to use, again, thinking about a home that has a basement or a crawl space, if you go down there and you're in that basement and you're looking up at the sill, which is the interface between the basement walls, the foundation and that first story of the home.
If you can see daylight through that sill, that's my first warning, like alert, like I'm kind of going to be leaning more towards like semi loose or loose in this scenario. You know, this is common for like 150 year old farmhouses. But so you're kind of going through the home and you're looking for signs of either like really good construction type construction, you're looking for signs for the opposite.
That. And so like if you're have a home, maybe it's a single story ranch and you've got a lot of recessed lights. So you're looking up at those can lights. And if you notice you've got these like dirt streaks kind of coming out of the those canned lights, that's another sign that like man, there's a lot of air movement happening between that ceiling and that attic space.
But if you're doing that and you're seeing like things are clean, there's no dirt streaks everywhere. You don't have signs of massive infiltration through those recessed lights. I'm like, oh, maybe I'm going to have more confidence going towards an average or or semi type. So there's a bunch more things like that that I encourage folks to dig into a bit more.
We'll probably put together our own help article and some more details on this in particular, but it's you're building a case, looking at all these visual artifacts in the home to help you figure out and kind of guide you towards a reasonable assumption around infiltration.
00:44:48.660 — 00:44:54.660 · Speaker 2
Quick comment. Do you want to give that tip on the like, turn on the bathroom fans and like have a simple ish manometer?
00:44:54.660 — 00:45:10.510 · Speaker 1
I think it's that's like a pro tip. You have to have a manometer in the first place. You got to understand what a manometer is like. Most of the guys we're talking to don't even have any of that stuff. They've never done total. They've never done total external static pressure measurements. Okay. I want to have a whole article on that though.
00:45:10.990 — 00:45:12.070 · Speaker 2
Okay. Cool.
00:45:12.110 — 00:45:34.030 · Speaker 1
All right. And I've been doing a lot of the talking here. I kind of want to turn the tables a bit and ask you some questions. Just about all the experience you've built, just from talking to contractors who are implementing this process and really think about it with the sort of salespersons perspective.
And so let's start off.
00:45:34.110 — 00:45:34.550 · Speaker 4
What.
00:45:34.550 — 00:45:40.430 · Speaker 1
Does a best in class sales process look like that involves load calculations.
00:45:40.470 — 00:45:58.360 · Speaker 2
Love it okay. And this is question seven for anyone who's keeping track at home best in class sales process. Let's break it up into before, during and after the home visit. Before the home visit, lay the groundwork that you're going to do it. Whether it's the person at the central office who answers the phone, or
00:45:59.560 — 00:49:52.160 · Speaker 2
you send a 92nd video to a homeowner in advance of the home visit, just let them know what to expect. Lay down some groundwork, like it's going to take 60 to 90 minutes. You want one of the decision makers home. You are going to scan the home. You're not taking a video. You're scanning the home to diagnose the home, and you would like the homeowner to walk along with you while you do it.
You got to tell them this stuff in advance. Otherwise the homeowner is going to think you're like everybody else who walked in, looked at the nameplate on the unit that's already there and say, cool, I can get you a quote in five minutes. You're not that kind of company, right? And so you need the homeowner have a different expectation beforehand.
So whatever you end up doing for your in-home sales process, set the expectation before you go to the home so they know what's coming. And then in the home follow through on that and do a bunch of the stuff that I just said. Invite the homeowner along, at least on the first couple of rooms for scanning, and then you can ask them questions about all the stuff Eric just said.
Right. Is this room hot or cold? When was the last time you did the gut renovation? Have you had an insulation or weatherization company come through? You can ask these sorts of questions, and those questions are easy to ask. In states where weatherization work is required to get a heat pump rebate because the homeowner might know, like, oh yeah, I did just have a company come through and do that, but definitely have the homeowner be part of the process while you're in the home.
The last thing is don't leave anything to finalize at the office. The way amply is built. You can do it all on site. And so make sure you do the scan and you enter the inputs for the walls, windows, floor, ceiling, all that stuff such that before you walk out the door, you've got a pretty darn good load calculation and spin it around.
Show the homeowner and educate them on why it matters. Saying stuff like kind of the some of the language we used earlier. I just diagnosed your home. This is what your home needs. Now, my next step is to find the right equipment. That's going to solve your problem based on what I heard. And so playback all that stuff with the homeowner, which I'm realizing I glossed over.
When you're in the home, the first thing you really want to do is sit down at that kitchen table and have that comfort consultation where you listen. There's so many studies on this, but if you're in sales and your customer is talking 40 to 60% of the time, you're more likely to close the job, right? So you want to listen to them in the beginning so they know you care and then educate them as you go through.
And something like a load calculation can really be a platform for educating a homeowner on how the heck you're going to solve the problem. And that's what they buy. Really. They want someone who they know and is certain and they trust is going to solve their problem. Then as you're wrapping up, so you do want to show the homeowner the load calculation before you leave.
One of the things we advise our customers on is quotes you give out for free, right? That's easy. Give quotes out free all day long. A load calculation and detailed design you can do in something like amply is your intellectual property. David Richardson from NCI says this all the time, which is where I got it from.
You're a craftsman. Craftsman. Do not give away their craft for free. The quote isn't really part of your craft. The load calculation and the design absolutely is part of your craft. So show them the load calculation, but don't necessarily send it to them. Right. And then they know that's like that is your intellectual property and you give it to them.
If you do the install you give it to them. If they put down payment down, something like that. But it leaves this splinter in the homeowner's mind that like, you're different, you're not. You didn't just give it all away like you did something that you believe is intellectual property. All right. That's all in the house when you leave.
00:49:52.330 — 00:51:04.260 · Speaker 1
Actually, two things I wanted to emphasize that you just went through on the beginning and in the back end. So at the beginning, I think what I'm hearing from you is that sales, the sales process starts well before you enter that house, setting those expectations, setting them a little video of the process, maybe putting that video on your website helps differentiate you and sets expectations well before you are there.
And yeah, it feels like it's so important to then emphasize it when you're there. And then I love that piece on the back end about not giving away this like free consulting, right? Yeah, there are lots of different tactics around this. Some folks will say, absolutely, I will give you a copy of the manual, J.
I will give you a copy of the detailed design, but you need to put down 500 bucks, 300 bucks, whatever the number is that you feel like makes sense for your business model. And then if they move forward with the install, great. You'll take that off the top, right? It puts some skin in the game. It's a great way to signal that you get a signal from the homeowner that they're serious, right?
If they're willing to do it. And that way, if it doesn't work out, you can at least cover the costs, hopefully of that sales visit.
00:51:04.300 — 00:52:26.550 · Speaker 2
Yeah. That's great. And that's still in line with that. You don't give away your craft for free. Like they essentially just bought the load calculation from you. Which by the way the going rate for a load calculation, if you went and found one of these companies that'll do. It is 250 to 500. So yeah that's great.
The after visits is one where there's a lot of different options here. But we have seen folks, especially when you if you're doing manual J, you can be much more in this sort of educational mode. A zoom call after afterwards to walk someone through your quotes, your design and what competitors came if you weren't the last contractor in the door?
To quote on this job can be super helpful, and you don't have to drive all the way out to the house. You can just do it over zoom. So we've seen that be very helpful and just remind homeowners about what makes you difference. Like you're taking more time with the design and you're educating them and wanting them to get up to speed on this system, which like look, is going to be very expensive, like it's 1% of the value of a house often.
So you want the homeowner to understand what's going in and why. So that's what we've seen for best in class sales process. I'll point out Paul McHugh in episode 45 of our Pod, basically walks through his end to end sales process. Much of what I just said is what Paul does. But if you want to go deeper on the sales process, that's a great episode to check out.
00:52:26.590 — 00:52:38.950 · Speaker 1
Awesome. All right. What changes should someone expect to their process if they're starting with load calculations? It's like a little bit deeper than what we talked about earlier. This is now question eight. Yeah.
00:52:38.990 — 00:54:19.290 · Speaker 2
Yeah. So if you've never done load calculations this is a concept of a J curve goes down first and then it goes up. So at first expect your confidence to go down a little bit. Like you are doing something that you haven't done before. Like you may be a little nervous about it. So expect your confidence to go down at first, but push through it.
The more manual JS you do, the more systems you design based off of your manual. J. The more homes that you see, the more YouTube videos you watch. Your confidence will absolutely go up, but you got to invest a couple of months of doing this to overcome the loss of confidence, of doing something very differently.
I would expect that. I would expect your time in the home to go up, as you said earlier. Eric, like it's going to be a longer process. I think you will see returns on that on the back side for sure. It's one of those go slow to go fast kind of things. You slow down that first home visit, you won't need to do another visit.
We have plenty of customers who they have a comfort advisor go and then later a project manager goes or an install manager goes to like really refine the design. We've had plenty of customers who get rid of that second visit, which is awesome and huge. So there's a few different changes you should expect, but it's like when Tiger Woods was halfway through his career and realized he had to completely redo his swing, and he got worse for like 18 months before he then came out the other side better.
You're going to be breaking down your swing, right? You're going to be breaking down your in home sales process. There's going to be friction at first, but the payoff will be on the other end.
00:54:19.330 — 00:55:23.980 · Speaker 1
Totally. I think this idea of this practice, like getting these reps in, really makes a big difference. And for a lot of folks, it may be a period of months where you finally are kind of coming out the other side. One thing that's really interesting, I find for people that are adopting this for the first time, if they can get out there right away and practice in their own home, go to their buddy's house, go to their brother's house.
Like, just get into like 2 or 3 different homes. Like in the kind of early days, the first week of using a new process, they get up that J curve way faster because having those couple of quick experiences, you build so much confidence so fast, it can be more challenging. If you're a smaller company, you're only getting a few leads a month.
You're really spreading out that learning over a long period of time. It can it can take longer, both calendar time and then like actual process time to get up to speed. So encourage you to like right away. Just find some spaces you can play in and explore and you're going to get get up that curve fast.
00:55:24.300 — 00:55:26.700 · Speaker 2
Yeah. Totally great.
00:55:26.740 — 00:55:42.820 · Speaker 1
What's the the single most persuasive thing that you can say to a homeowner when they inevitably come back to you and they're like, well, how do I trust your load calculation or your proposal versus like what contractor X said to me?
00:55:42.860 — 00:58:08.170 · Speaker 2
Yeah, Okay, so there's a few. I'll just I'll kind of rattle them off. And folks can can choose based on what's appropriate. All right. First off, often the homeowners looking at a quote for a bigger system. And if you're doing a low key action yours is going to be smaller. Right. So the first thing to say is bigger isn't better in this scenario.
You want your HVAC system to be Goldilocks sized, right? And that like Goldilocks size for a lot of people, they're like, oh, we're in a different scenario because a lot of times bigger is better, right? But not always. And so you want to anchor that in the homeowner's mind or not in a bigger is better situation.
Okay. Once you get them around that then the second thing to say is well how did they figure out the sizing. Like did they do a load calculation? Can I see their manual J. Like what did they do in a wildly unlikely scenario? They will present you with someone else's manual. J look at a couple of assumptions that Eric just walked you through.
Look at the design conditions. Look at the windows. Look at the walls. If they haven't changed a darn thing from the baseline assumptions, or if they jacked up the design conditions, just poke one hole in one assumption and just show that yours is right. If you did yours right. The chances that you face someone else's load calculation very, very low.
The chances to use someone's accurately done manual. Jay. Even lower. Right. So I think that's the next place to go. If their load calculation isn't manual J if it was counting register's square footage times BTUs, just say some of the stuff that we've said on this podcast, if it's counting registers like what does that even tell you?
Like how do you translate that into what your home needs? If it is a square footage thing, use what error except before. Like look, would you use the same BTUs per square foot for a 2000 build versus a 1900 build, like. Probably not. Definitely not. So I would just engage with the homeowner on it. As you find out what you're up against and use your building science knowledge to frankly, educate the homeowner to get them to the right spot.
And those are some of the favorite things I've heard some of our customers use, some of our guests say on this podcast, but you basically need to engage with the homeowner on it. You need to ask a couple of questions to know what you're up against, and then use your building science knowledge to educate the homeowner, letting them know that's not the right answer for your home.
00:58:08.210 — 00:58:41.340 · Speaker 1
I love these some of these most basic things like, well, if they did a load calc, what kind of windows did they assume? What did they assume in the attic? Just very simple things. It's a it's a it's a way to again, like you're saying, differentiate yourself, but it immediately creates an opportunity to learn more and engage more with that customer.
Because invariably the homeowners would be like, I don't know, I don't really know how to read this whole huge report. And then they're going to show it to you and you'll have a even more extensive opportunity to educate, differentiate. It's so easy to do.
00:58:41.380 — 00:58:57.540 · Speaker 2
Yeah, but overwhelmingly, when you say, can you show me their manual, Jay. Right. You're gonna get crickets. You know, you're just not gonna. There's gonna be nothing there. It'll be. Trust me. I've got 20 years of experience. Yeah, and you want more than that? Your home deserves more than that.
00:58:57.540 — 00:58:58.860 · Speaker 1
All right. Number ten. Editor.
00:58:59.820 — 00:59:01.060 · Speaker 2
So last one.
00:59:01.220 — 00:59:13.500 · Speaker 1
Yeah. I gave my answer in the beginning, but from what you see in here, what are the benefits of making a low calculation, a fundamental part of your sales and design process?
00:59:13.540 — 01:00:47.320 · Speaker 2
A bunch. We have a customer in central Pennsylvania who, after using us for what, nine months, they called us and they were like, oh my God. I've been over sizing for a decade and all my competitors are over sizing for a decade. I now have the confidence to give the homeowner the right sized system, and that is often smaller.
And that's a great answer, right? Like that's a great benefit. It's a good benefit for the homeowner, for their utility bills, for their comfort, all of that. The second thing is increasing conversion rates. Like we hear this all the time. It is a huge differentiator if you spend the time in the home and if you use it as a conversation piece to educate the homeowner on why you're designing what you're designing, you will win more jobs.
Another line I'd loved from one of our earliest customers was if he hasn't paid for itself in the first month, you're doing it wrong. Like, it just it pays itself back quite quickly in increased conversion rate, but then also reduced callbacks and happier customers and more referrals. The third benefit is increased confidence of your team.
They just to do a manual J right. They're going to have to get up to speed on building science. And that just takes them on this design journey. Once you start doing manual J right, you're going to start asking questions about manual S. And when you start doing that right, you're going to start asking questions about manual D and duct design.
and you're just going to put better stuff into people's homes. And I think that's this is all about solving homeowners problems. So those are some of the big benefits I see. Nice.
01:00:47.360 — 01:00:48.240 · Speaker 1
I love it.
01:00:48.280 — 01:00:58.440 · Speaker 2
We got a bonus question Eric I'm going to give this one to you. If people are this just made them hungry for more and they want to go down the rabbit hole. What resources would be pointing towards?
01:00:58.480 — 01:01:12.880 · Speaker 1
There are so many good ones out there. We'll tutor on a horn here. We've already mentioned a few times episode 45 with Paul McCue. Definitely check that out. I think we mentioned the episode with Steve from tech. You should check that out as well. We'll put that in the show. Notes.
01:01:12.920 — 01:01:16.600 · Speaker 2
Alex Meaney episode. We got some good ones, but let's talk about some other things.
01:01:17.240 — 01:02:24.530 · Speaker 1
And NCI and ACCA incredible resources. Both of them have all kinds of materials that are available in many cases for free. If you become members, you get even more content. There's just there's decades of experience, really helpful Diagrams. There's short videos. There's all kinds of content out there.
Yeah. Alex Meaney. He's been on the podcast a few times. He's also an incredible trainer. He's got me an HVAC. I highly recommend him. He's she's such a smart, funny person and he loves this stuff and he is deep in it. And yeah, check out his content. I highly recommend training that he offers across the whole design series.
Brian Awe and the HVAC school all kinds of excellent content. They tend to be a little bit heavier on the kind of install technician side as opposed to the design side, but man, there's all kinds of good stuff, a lot of fundamentals. Bryn Cooksey and HVAC. Incredible content there. Highly recommend it.
01:02:24.570 — 01:02:27.530 · Speaker 2
The great trainer. The person trainer like Alex.
01:02:27.650 — 01:02:46.140 · Speaker 1
Absolutely. So, Bill Bowen and Eric Kaiser's podcast. Fantastic. I highly recommend that. Checking that out if you haven't. There's maybe a few other podcasts out there that we'll throw in the show notes. There's just all kinds of great content out there we feel this day and age. There's just incredible online materials.
Long form, short form. It's all out there.
01:02:46.180 — 01:02:53.020 · Speaker 2
Yeah. You can go deep. Yeah. Awesome. Well, Eric, thank you so much for being a guest on the Heat Pump podcast.
01:02:53.060 — 01:02:55.500 · Speaker 1
Yeah. Editor. Thank you for being a guest on the Heat Pump podcast.
01:02:57.460 — 01:02:58.300 · Speaker 2
All right. I'll see ya.
01:02:58.420 — 01:02:58.860 · Speaker 5
See ya.
01:03:02.020 — 01:03:10.460 · Speaker 1
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