His background, however, wasn’t originally in HVAC. He was a college-educated finance/economics person whose skills lay in analytics.

“I was wooed into the HVAC business by a recruiter, so I changed careers and began working in the contracting business,” he explains. “During these years, I began hearing about the idea of high-performance contracting and the company teaching it, National Comfort Institute (NCI).

“At that point, we hadn’t sent any of our technicians to an NCI class but were told by several different distributors to consider taking training by these guys. Those distributors told me that NCI was one of the best training entities in this country and in the world. As it turns out, they were right.

“But it took me changing careers to discover it. “

Making More Moves

Nelson says that toward the end of his tenure in contracting, several different manufacturers tried to recruit him.

One reason for the partnership between NCI and
Sauermann is the fact that Sauermann listened to
what High-Performance HVAC™ Contractors
needed and built an instrument that provided it.
Pictured here is the co-branded
NCI Si-CA 030 Combustion Analyzer.

“At first, I didn’t pay much attention to it, but working six, sometimes seven days a week became arduous over time, and I came to a point where it was time to make a switch. It was time to listen to these offers, and that’s when the Sauermann name came up.”
The rest, as they say, is history.

While learning the ropes and Sauermann’s product line, Nelson says he became very interested in how NCI training might help his customers. It wasn’t until Sauermann launched its new analyzer product line after ending its relationship with the third-party manufacturer that he says he reached out to NCI.

“I met Dominick Guarino at the HARDI conference in December of 2021. Dom talked about how NCI used tools in their training and was interested in testing our analyzer. At that time, they used instruments produced by two different manufacturers, and I thought it would be amazing if they tried Sauermann products as well.”

Unfortunately, COVID-19 swept the planet, and things were put on hold. Eventually, Nelson says he met with NCI’s vice president of training, David Richardson, to review the analyzer’s features and discuss its benefits. Then, they shipped him a few to test.

Apparently, Nelson says that after receiving the instruments, the NCI team really “kicked the daylights” out of the analyzer, then had one of their High-Performance HVAC contractors test them.

NCI-Sauermann Partnership

Several months later, Dominick and David got back to him and said they were interested in the analyzer but had one or two suggestions for making the instrument fit better with NCI protocols.

“The major ask was for a separate draft probe that could test draft and combustion simultaneously,” Nelson says. “The thing is, we already had such probes. We just never thought to share them. So it all worked out fabulously.

“We then shipped them seven analyzers and probes. We created a customized kit with the NCI logo for sale through TruTech Tools.”

The two kits are the residential NCI Si-CA 030 and the commercial NCI Si-CA 130 combustion analyzers, including an O2, CO, Flue gas, and draft probe for High-Performance HVAC contractors. The CO monitor that comes with these kits includes a wireless connection to Sauermann’s smartphone app and can generate service reports and certificates based on the measurements.

“We have a saying at Sauermann, an ethos if you will, that our products are designed by technicians for technicians. These two kits are an example of just that,” Nelson continues.

“We elicit feedback from the industry as we develop different products. Sauermann has some products similar to those of other manufacturers, but we also have instruments with features and benefits that stand alone and are in a class by themselves.

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