During the Great Recession (2007-2009), our HVAC company faced a harsh reality: the new construction market we relied on was collapsing. Builders were going bankrupt, leaving us with hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid invoices. We had to pivot — and fast. That’s when we shifted our focus from wholesale-new construction to retail add-on-replacement service.

This wasn’t just a business decision; it was a philosophical shift. In new construction, the builder is your customer. In add-on-replacement, it’s the homeowner. That change gave us the opportunity to interact directly with the end user — to solve problems, build trust, and deliver comfort. And with that came accountability.

Builders care about cost. Homeowners care about performance. That difference allowed us to move from margins under 8% to over 30%. We were doing fewer systems but making more profit — and more impact. We weren’t just installing equipment; we were designing solutions.

Taking Responsibility for Customer Comfort

But retail also meant responsibility. If the system didn’t perform, we’d hear about it. That pushed us to raise our standards and embrace testing as a core part of our process.

We already were on that road because in 2000, we invested in Wrightsoft to ensure every job had a proper Manual J load calculation and Manual D duct design. No more rules of thumb.

We also purchased Honeywell’s Enalysis Machine — a $20,000 investment that let us test installed systems against design specs using flow hoods, pressure transducers, thermocouples, and psychrometrics. It was cutting-edge at the time, and it taught us a critical lesson: if you don’t test, you’re just guessing.

Today, we’ve transitioned to newer tools and software that deliver even more robust diagnostics at a fraction of the cost. Every technician now has access to the tools they need to do the job right. One standout application is measureQuick®, which provides a complete system analysis that surpasses what the Enalysis machine could deliver 25 years ago.

This approach, which today is known as high-performance testing, has elevated our entire team’s ability to verify, diagnose, and optimize systems in real time.

Tools like measureQuick and the Digital TrueFlow® Grid allow us to achieve laboratory-grade accuracy in the field. With these technologies, we verify system sizing, assess real-time performance, and calculate true operating efficiency — whether we’re servicing, testing, or replacing a system. This level of precision gives us confidence that our designs are being executed properly and that our customers are receiving the comfort and savings they were promised.

Our Approach Today

Every job starts with a test-in:

• Room-by-room load calculation
• Duct leakage and airflow testing
• TrueFlow Grid or flow hood measurements
• Blower door test
• FLIR camera inspection
• Fenestration and envelope
• evaluation
• Psychrometric capacity test
• Watt draw and EER calculation (when conditions allow).

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