< Previous10 MAY 2018HIGH PERFORMANCE HVAC TODAYpliance and HVAC company there. That was in December 1980.As his sons graduated college, they too eventually joined their parents in Palm Desert and began helping in the business.Mike Hyde is one of three siblings. He says he moved to the desert in 1984. They sold the Orange County company and focused on building the air condi-tioning business in Indio, CA .Sometime around 1999, the company first crossed the million-dollar mark. “We hired our first sales person at that point,” Mike Hyde says. “We became a lot more focused on the heating and air condi-tioning side of the business and spent less time on the appliances.”The reason, the appliance business wasn’t growing, and air conditioning was bursting at the seams. He says appli-ance repair was a very small part of the business but generated cross referrals for air conditioning work. EYE-OPENING CHANGEThen, everything changed. “The very next year I attended my very first HVAC Comfortech event in Atlanta, GA. I was eager to learn more about the industry and the business, and wasn’t worried about trying new things,” he says. “I was an avid reader of the trade mag-azines. When I read about Comfortech, it looked to be different and more inviting than many of the other trade events in this industry. So I went, and that is where I met Rob Falke and Dominick Guarino of the National Comfort Institute.“It was so eye opening for me. I was in awe. It was like I was in a live version of the trade magazine. All the writers and editors were there. They were willing to spend time with someone like me. It had a huge impact on me.” he adds. “I signed up for a class with Rob Falke, and our company has been an NCI mem-ber and a believer in Performance-Based Contracting™ ever since.”Interestingly, Mike Hyde says that as great as that first Comfortech experience was, he realized he and his team really didn’t know anything. He says he came to understand that they most likely de-signed and installed systems wrong. Talk about eye-opening! So he and his brothers committed to correcting Question: How does one go from aerospace engineering to own-ing and operating an HVAC company? Answer: Very carefully. At least that is the story of Brian Hyde, an immigrant from England to Canada in 1955. Four years later, Brian Hyde and his wife emigrated again, this time to Chula Vis-ta, CA. For years he worked in the aerospace industry, rais-ing his family. But in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the aerospace industry suf-fered from economic woes that lead to many layoffs. Brian Hyde became very disenchanted and got into the appli-ance repair business. He opened a shop in Orange County, CA. Besides appli-ance work, the company dabbled in HVAC repairs. Hyde’s sons originally had no desire to work in the family business, but did work their way through high school and college with the intent of starting their own careers. While they worked with him, Brian Hyde instilled in them the power of treat-ing customers right, of doing good work, and standing behind it. He taught them how those things created loyal custom-ers. That modus operendi is still behind Hydes Air Conditioning today.Eventually Brian left the business and moved to the desert to try his hand in the real estate business, which didn’t work out. So he opened an ap-CONTRACTOR SPOTLIGHTBy Mike WeilPerformance is The Turning Point for SuccessThe Hyde clan from left: Mark Hyde, Barry Hyde, Brian Hyde, Mike Hyde. Founder Brian Hyde passed away in 2011.MAY 2018 11HVACTODAY.COMothers. He invests in the training and ed-ucation of his entire team.They also participate in manufacturer and distributor technical training as well as in soft skills training. He says soft skills are equally important to technical skills because that is how customer-facing peo-ple learn to better help the customers.IT’S ALL ABOUT PERFORMANCEMike Hyde says, “We are a perfor-mance-based contractor. Meaning not only do we follow the tenets of perfor-mance, we believe in them. And not just in the field. We train for performance in every facet of the business, including of-fice work and management. We set goals, provide incentives, and pay well. As a re-sult, we have very little staff turnover.”To do this, he says, requires having checks and balances, so team members continue to do what is prescribed and how it is prescribed. Mike Hyde adds that this is one of the hardest aspects of Performance-Based Contracting™. Once you implement it, if you don’t have a sys-tem in place, your performance endeav-ors will fall by the wayside. Mike adds that in the early days for his company, implementation was too much. The reason: he was trying to do everything himself. He was the only one make sure our technicians have good tools,” Hyde explains. Technicians are given a tool allowance. Hyde says he just upgraded and bought many tools for his team.Besides providing his people training and certification, the Hyde team also buys state-of-the-art tools to help the team stay on the cutting edge to provide true system performance. Hydes Air Conditioning is a member of several national groups in addition to NCI. The reason: peer contacts. “I like the peo-ple involved with these organizations,” Mike says. “We learn so much from other contractors that it is worth the invest-ment in the organizations. It doesn’t mat-ter if we are on opposite ends of the coun-try, we can have similar problems.” Hydes has memberships in ACCA, EGIA, the Service Nation Alliance, and their ways and focus on providing the very best comfort to their customers.Today Hydes Air Conditioning remains family owned. Mike and his two broth-ers are in the business together, as well as some of their children. The company employs 35 people and operates 20 ser-vice and installation vehicles. Last year its gross sales were over $8 million. They focus on the residential retrofit and re-placement marketplace in their area. EDUCATION IS VITALAs he said earlier, Mike Hyde has never been afraid to try new things. His intro-duction to the concepts of performance not only changed their overall approach to system design and service, but also put the company on path of continuous training and certification. In fact, Mike says one of the things his team is very proud of is the NATE certification of all their technicians.“We spend a lot of time and effort con-sistently training,” he says. “We are real-ly honed into training on system renova-tions and air upgrades. That started from the very beginning. The light bulb went off at that first Comfortech when I real-ized we couldn’t just change out equip-ment. We needed to measure the system before and after we work on it.”He says he bought his first flow hood after attending Rob Falke’s class in 2000 or 2001. Since then they’ve added nearly a dozen more of them. “One of the things I learned is to have technicians do their own testing. That means they have to have their own tools and instruments. “So currently, each installation team has their own flow hood, duct blaster, and basic tools like vacuum pumps, digital gauges, and even hot wire anemometers. “I like good tools, and we really help Founded in 1972 in Indio, CA, Hydes Air Conditioning employs 35 people (not all shown here) and grossed $8 million in 2017.Hyde’s employees receive on-site training on static pressure testing from NCI.12 MAY 2018HIGH PERFORMANCE HVAC TODAYCONTRACTOR SPOTLIGHTapproval and buy in from the customer before we do our full test-ins. When we are done with the job, the installation crew does the test-outs. So our install crews do more than install. I find that if they measure their own jobs, they see the consequence of making mistakes or cutting corners.”Furthermore, Mike requires his crews to take pictures of every job – before and after shots. He says they use the pictures to check each crew’s work. He calls it a final check, making his crews accountable.“We had one job very recently where the technician sent me a picture of a fin-ished job. We didn’t like what we saw and had him go back and change the plenum. With pictures you can do so much more.”THE PERFORMANCE IMPACT ON THE BUSINESSMike Hyde says that becoming a Perfor-mance-Based Contracting company has totally changed their business. Though he didn’t use the word culture, he did de-stop doing what makes you money.’ In other words, don’t jump into home per-formance exclusively. If you make money selling boxes, that is fine. Just add duct renovation and air upgrade services on as menu items. I think that is very critical.”That is exactly what Mike’s team is trained to do. He says it is an education process for the customer. “We developed our own system, based on NCI teachings, but customized for our company. We tell customers exactly what we are going to do, and then if they buy in, we write up a proposal. Our pro-posals always focus on the reason for the original call, and then include what we are going to do with some other things and air side stuff.“Then we come out on a separate visit, run a load calculation, measure the air-flow, and get a baseline. We also test out after our work is done to assure the cus-tomer we delivered what we promised.” “For our business, we usually like to get being trained in it. The solution was to involve more people. To work to get more people involved.One way to do this is to take advantage of programs to live-train your field force. “My nephew had just bought a house with an HVAC system that had never been tested. There were two condensing units that were delivering around 40%. After testing, we removed both units – three tons each -- and replaced them with one four-ton unit. We added zon-ing, new duct work, cut ins, and more.”He explains that this case is fairly typ-ical for Hydes Air Conditioning. In addi-tion, we usually find the transitions are terrible and need to be repaired. But not every customer is onboard with the amount of work required and the expense. DON’T FORGET TO MAKE MONEY“I remember something Rob Falke said in one of our classes. He said, ‘You can’t Mike Hyde receives one of National Comfort Institute’s Contractor of the Year Awards in March 2018.In 2017 Hydes Air Conditioning cele-brated 45 years “of Family Service.”MAY 2018 13HVACTODAY.COM NPrice your services properly so you can stay in business.“Pricing properly was the turning point for our company. My college degree is in accounting, so it’s not like I don’t under-stand business. But it’s too easy to get caught up with thinking about why we can’t price things high, because no one will buy them. Once I realized I was killing the business by NOT charging enough, I raised our prices. The other side of that is if you raise prices, you absolutely better deliver. That is the key.”Pricing properly enables Hydes Air conditioning to be profitable, to pay employees well, to train them well, and grow. Mike says that he doesn’t want the company to grow too fast, however.“We try to keep it small and hands on. My brothers and I are active in all aspects scribe it as a different mindset and ap-proach to not only the technology part, but also the business systems in the of-fice. Training is key. Practice is vital. And learning is the cornerstone to success.“We are focused on delivering comfort to our customers. It is not about just sell-ing equipment, even though we do that as well,” he says. “We’ve been operating as a Performance company for so long that I believe it is just ingrained in every-thing we do.”The company has enjoyed a long pe-riod of growth and Mike attributes that to the processes built in by the perfor-mance-based approach. He says his Per-formance-Based success is also based on these three practices: NReally listen to customers NDeliver the best customer serviceof the business. So we look to keep our growth to around 10% per year so we can keep track of where we’re going, who we’re hiring, and how we’re doing.”When hiring new people, he says they start them at the bottom level and “train them up.” By doing this, he says they have very low turnover and really great employees.Mike Hyde says he loves the HVAC in-dustry. He says contractors in general need to be involved in it, not just by run-ning their companies.“Get active in the trade associations and other affiliate groups. They keep us all on the cutting edge. They impact our businesses and our lives. They help us have a positive impact on our customers’ lives. And for me, that is what we are in business to do.” 14 MAY 2018the average contractor, and with so many other “channels” available, it is difficult to determine which is the ‘right’ one that fits their target/de-sired demographic.For example, directory advertising is ex-pensive and not particularly effective.Print is rapidly going out of style. Sever-al years ago, Canco went from spending more than $30,000 per year in our local market, to spending zero, with little difference. Flyers generally have a short shelf life and unless you can accurately predict weather patterns, flyers arrive either too early or too late.Direct mail can be effective -- although the cost of printing and postage adds up, especially if you want blanket coverage.Another of today’s realities is that attaining a new customer can cost more than $500 depend-ing on your geographical location. Therefore, it is Today’s contractor is faced with challeng-es not even considered ten or even five years ago. This is particularly evident when one looks at advertising and mar-keting. Perhaps one of the biggest challenges is getting proper marketing messages to customers and potential customers.Customers are generally more sophisticated to-day than they were in the past. With the internet revolution, they can now be “educated” with the push of a few buttons. No one needs to be ‘tied’ to a computer to gain this information, it is avail-able on mobile phones and tablets. Unfortunately, not all the information found on the Internet is factual and can lead a custom-er into making poor decisions. So how can con-sumers find a trustworthy source of information? More importantly, how can YOU become that trustworthy source?Not too long ago, manufacturers supplied it through traditional print media ads. In many cases, contractors could align themselves with a manufacturer or two using their co-op dol-lars. However today co-op dollars are not as readily available as they once were, nor is man-ufacturer “brand” as essential as it was once thought to be.CONSIDER THESE MARKETING AND ADVERTISING REALITIESPerformance-Based HVAC contractors want to and should advertise their own stories, expertise, and offers. Radio and television ads may be out of reach for How To Become a Trusted Performance-Based MarketerBy Nancy McKeraghanMARKETINGTypical radio and television advertising campaigns may be too expense for the average contractor. Direct mail still has some reach. But the Internet has so much more.MAY 2018 15HVACTODAY.COM NDoes it have testimonials from satisfied customers and from those whom you made satisfied? NIf the answers are yes, you are well on your way to making a positive im-pact and generating good leads. If the answer is no, fix these things imme-diately. Ignoring them only hampers your marketing efforts.Today’s contractors may not have available the ‘tried-and-true’ adver-tising options of the past; but they can define their target market and reach it in inexpensive, effective ways that yesterday’s contractors knew nothing about. Those of us who are members of NCI also have the advantage of a net-work of fellow contractors willing and eager to share their expertise. All you need to do is ask. true that it costs less to keep an existing customer than to acquire a new one.So, what does the wise contractor do? How can they determine where to spend their advertising budget?TIPS FOR MARKETING TODAYFirst, pay attention to how existing and potential customers contact you. Track every phone call and computer inquiry. For Canco, our software pro-gram does this. We have found that our top source is referrals, thanks to our existing customers.Whether you use software or not, be sure to make ‘referral categories’ specific: i.e. not just the internet. In other words, find out if the referrals are coming from your website, your google ads, your manufacturer’s site, etc. Request email addresses at every opportunity. Once this information is available, it is easier to choose a marketing or advertising method that best appeals to your tar-get market.Remember: customers are looking for a trust-worthy source of information. YOU are that source for existing clients and their network. Make sure that your website is user and mobile friendly. Ask yourself the following: NDoes it encourage users to spend time gathering valuable and current information?Nancy McKeraghan is an owner/operator along with her husband, Bob, of Canco ClimateCare, established in 1984 in Newmarket, Ontario, Canada. She has been recognized by the HVAC industry for her leadership and innovation and was the first and only female to be Chair of the National Contractors’ Division of HRAI as well as Chair of the full organization in 2007. She can be reached at nancymckeraghan@rogers.comPAY ATTENTION TO HOW EXISTING AND POTENTIAL CUSTOMERS CONTACT YOU. TRACK EVERY PHONE CALL AND COMPUTER INQUIRY.Five Tips to Becoming a Trusted Resourcen Use your email data base to supply educational information: new trends and offers, seasonal tips, comfort and health solutions. This can be done through emails or ‘posts’ on social media.n Use factual third-party data such as that available through organizations like National Comfort Institute (NCI) or trade associations to boost your credibility. It costs nothing, other than time, to deliver your message through this method of ‘direct mail.’n Encourage your existing customers to share your message with family, friends, and neighbors.n Perhaps consider running a contest of sorts. NCI has great support materials available and possibly a future newsletter.n Canco has the capability, through our software, to ‘attach’ our messages -- including maintenance reminders -- to our email data base. If you have a similar capability, or even if you use a third party email service, make sure that an ‘unsubscribe’ clause is included. In Canada, we also must adhere to our CASL regulation (Canada Anti-Spam Legislation) which prohibits us from sending electronic messages without consent. ‘Implied consent’ is from anyone who has done business with us in the past two years. Check your local regulations to see if there are any similar laws in effect.16 MAY 2018HIGH PERFORMANCE HVAC TODAY(NCI) not only helped us train and certify our field workforce in high performance HVAC sys-tems, it also helped change how we managed our company by showing us how to implement Per-formance-Based Contracting into our culture.It was a slow process. The first step was with our service department. Our goal was to certify all our technicians in residential system perfor-mance and then complete their training on how combustion works. This truly was an enlighten-ing experience.USING HEATMAXX™ AND COOLMAXX™As a team we had to figure out how to explain to customers why our new instal-lation already needed revisions to ensure peak performance. We be-gan using NCI’s HeatMaxx™ and CoolMaxx™ forms (see sidebar on next page), tailoring them for our G-Force Team. Based on hours of testing furnaces in our own shop, we began to redesign our instal-lations. We changed all of our re-turn boots from 1” filter racks to 4” filter racks; we also designed a return air box with a filter drawer to accommodate 4” filters proper-ly sized for the air flow. Eventual-ly we made it mandatory to install a 4” filter on every residential re-placement system installed.By using HeatMaxx and Cool-Maxx forms on all our mainte-nance and demand service calls, we learned how important proper air flow is to ensure comfort, reli-ability, and efficiency. For years we Over the years we’ve learned that just selling a new furnace and air con-ditioner doesn’t mean we provide customers the efficiency the system is designed to deliver. There are many factors and existing design conditions that stand in the way of having a new system perform at its rated capacity. In fact, we find that most new systems end up operating at 50% of rated capacity. That is just not acceptable.For our company, this is the key reason we’ve adopted Performance-Based Contracting™ as the way we want to do business. Our partner-ship with the National Comfort Institute, Inc. Why is Residential System Performance So Important?By Scott GetzschmanCUSTOMER SERVICEA Getzschman technician conducts a static pressure test on a residential furnace, then records the results on a digital HeatMaxx™ form.MAY 2018 17HVACTODAY.COMmum efficiency from both the equip-ment and distribution system. This requires us to design a system with proper air flow and a safe and clean combustion process. It is adjusted to operate at peak efficiency. Both processes are necessary to pro-vide top performance from the heat-ing and cooling system. This requires more than changing equipment. You must be prepared to look at the entire system including equipment calibra-tion, supply, return, filtration, and to-tal distribution.We call our commissioning pro-cess G-VERIFY. We begin by install-ing static pressure ports. This allows us to measure supply and return duct static pressure, filter pressure drop, evaporator coil pressure drop, and total static pressure.After we take our static pres-sure readings, we determine delivered airflow. We then take supply air and return air tem-perature readings, determine the temperature difference, and then calculate actual ca-pacity versus rated capacity. With these calculations we can begin to make final adjust-ments to the installation, ei-ther on the airflow side or the equipment capacity side.A properly calibrated system is not only more efficient, but it’s quieter, will last longer, and have less major component fail-ures. Our G-VERIFY process also gives us an opportunity to answer customer questions and to review the installation one more time to ensure it meets our installation guidelines and safety standards. Since initiat-ing this process our call backs have drastically decreased. Our custom-ers have the peace of mind know-ing their system is operating with proper airflow and at peak efficien-cy. G-VERIFY ENSURES A QUALITY INSTALLATION.STILL NOT PERFECTAs we focused more on providing excellence, we found we were still fall-ing short. We really hadn’t embraced this concept in all our departments. I am very confident with G-VERIFY — our replacements were exceeding cus-tomer expectations. But I knew we weren’t providing that same focus to installations in our new home depart-ment. Providing performance excel-would install a new system, but still have an unhappy customer because all we did was replace their equipment. Once we began measuring per-formance, we could determine real efficiency and fix the defi-ciencies. We also realized how many systems were either over or under charged with refrig-erant — all due to poor air flow caused by ductwork issues. It be-came evident how many compo-nent failures were a direct result of poor airflow.Understanding the impact of combustion performance tru-ly opened our technician’s eyes. We became a better company, one that better understood the combustion process and carbon monoxide safety.Being a performance-based contractor doesn’t happen over-night — it’s a culture change that must be embraced by your ser-vice team. Our service department meets weekly and we still focus on HeatMaxx, CoolMaxx, and combus-tion performance. After our techni-cians began the transformation, we began working with our Residential replacement and installation teams.COMMISSIONINGAt Getzschman, we feel if we sell high efficiency systems, they need to perform as efficiently as possible. However, until we began commission-ing replacements, we really weren’t being honest with our customers. We were like every other contractor — just selling furnaces and air conditioners.Today with commissioning we set up each replacement to deliver opti-HeatMaxx™ and CoolMaxx™ ReportsHeatMaxx™ and CoolMaxx™ are exclusive NCI membership service programs. They allow techni-cians to check approximate BTU output of a heating or cooling system in less than 15 minutes. By mea-suring static pressure and temperature you can add a system performance evaluation to your service calls or start-ups.The HeatMaxx and CoolMaxx test reports pro-vide you with the ability to offer customers an initial evaluation of how their heating and cool-ing systems perform compared to how they were designed to perform. Technicians gather import-ant test data, complete the report, and present the information so customers can understand that better system performance and efficiency is avail-able to them.To see an article on how to do the calculations of a HeatMaxx test, just click here. TMHeatMaxx18 MAY 2018HIGH PERFORMANCE HVAC TODAYCUSTOMER SERVICEmake? Did we deliver system capacity and have proper airflow in each room?GOING FORWARDThe only way to truly determine if our installation performed at peak efficiency was to measure. We had to G-VERIFY and balance our systems. Now this is a common practice. For us it provides the homeowner with the peace of mind that their system is operating as designed. It means pro-viding excellent comfort to each room in their home.Today our focus is on making sure every system we service, replace, or install new, operates as efficiently as possible. We continue to constantly train and reinforce the residential system performance process and combustion process to our entire team. It truly does separate us from our competition. This would have never been possi-ble without the tools and support we receive from our partners at Nation-al Comfort Institute. In our industry I always hear contractors say they are looking for that silver bullet. In my opinion the residential system perfor-mance process is as close to a silver bullet as you will ever get. CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENTSAt Getzschman’s Heating, we began to look at all aspects of the system in-cluding equipment, zoning, controls, the distribution system — including the quality of registers and grilles —to ensure we deliver real comfort to in each room or zone of the home. We took time to investigate ductwork. We studied takeoffs, the different design of boots, and the spacing be-tween takeoffs on the duct system. By reviewing design criteria for the many fittings in a system, as well as the number of outlets serving a sys-tem, it became clear our duct sizing had to change. In fact, in almost all cases, designs called for increases in duct size to ensure proper airflow.On the return side we began using floor grilles for returns. We sized re-turn drops for the proper static pres-sure and we improved our filtration systems as well. Lastly, we began to add turn vanes in our return air boots. As these improvements began to pay off, customers experienced quieter, more comfortable, and more efficient systems. In other words, they were happier.However, the real question is how much improvement did we really lence must be a total focus. You must reinforce it in all departments each day to succeed.For years we used rules of thumb: 35 Btu’s /sq.ft. for heating and 25 Btu’s /sq.ft. for cooling. This usually provid-ed a very safe but usually oversized heating and cooling system that would almost always result in hot and cold spot complaints in the home.Today we use Manual J and perform a load calculation — including heat loss and heat gain — on the entire home. With the information from Manual J, not only do you know the loss and gain of each room, you also know the re-quired airflow. This allows you to begin sizing duct systems accordingly.We were taught the industry stan-dard for duct sizing, which is still used by many contractors today. The stan-dard calls for sizing the duct system at .10 inches of friction per 100’ of duct. It calls for all heat runs to be 6 inches in diameter, and using a wall cavity, to provide 125 cfm of return air using a 14 x 6 grille. However, once you learn and understand airflow principals, it’s easy to see why there are so many un-dersized duct systems. That’s why so many heating and cooling systems fail to meet homeowners’ expectations.Scott Getzschman is co-owner of Getzschman Heating LLC in Fremont, NE. Getzschman currently employs 55 people who are focused on providing cus-tomers with safe heating and cooling systems oper-ating at optimum efficiency and as close to the factory settings as possible. The company was featured in the High-Performance HVAC Today April Spotlight. Getzschman also won the prestigious Medium Contractor of the Year Award from National Comfort Institute. He can be reached at scottg@getzschman.com.Part of the HeatMaxx Report FormNext >