HIGH-PERFORMANCE HVAC TODAYHVAC TODAY TM If You Don’t Measure, You’re Just Guessing! ™ hvactoday.comJULY 2020 ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: Evaluating and Correcting Evaporator Performance How to Attract, Hire, and Retain Good People Use Newsletters to Generate Leads from Existing Customers The Four Faces of Performance A Spotlight on Tetra Mechanical JULY 2020 3HVACTODAY.COM JULY 2020 VOLUME 4 NUMBER 7 HIGH-PERFORMANCE HVAC TODAYHVAC TODAY TM MANAGEMENT: How To Attract, Hire, and Retain Good People Your only true differentiator in the competitive marketplace are the people who interface with your customers. Here are some tips to help you get the right people and keep them. TECHNICAL: Evaluate and Correct Compressor Performance Why is this so important? NCI Field Coach Justin Bright explains how to do a proper evaluation and why it benefits the customer so much. MARKETING: Use Newsletters to Generate Leads from Existing Customers Kennihan Plumbing and Heating uses a monthly newsletter to stay top-of-mind with customers. Here is how they succeed in generating leads as a result. 14 16 10 DEPARTMENTS Today’s Word .........................................................................................4 High-Performance Products .............................................................5 Contractor Spotlight: Tetra Mechanical, Simi Valley, CA ......6 Photo of the Month .........................................................................19 Member Update ...............................................................................20 HVAC Smart Mart ...............................................................................21 Ad Index ................................................................................................21 One More Thing ................................................................................224 JULY 2020HIGH-PERFORMANCE HVAC TODAY ule you for a trimming service from our forestry department. Someone will call you in one to 10 business days to set up an appointment.” Seeing that he had no choice, that is what our intrepid hero did and hoped the branch wouldn’t rip out that power line for a week. Then he had a thought. He called the utility back and reported the wire was actually down. Within two hours a crew was out and, while it continued to rain and the wind swirled, they tack- led the irksome branch with real professionalism. The workers methodically planned their moves. They climbed into the tree, secured the broken limbs, then chainsawed, cut, and hacked until the danger was no more. They left with a tip of their hats after explaining that because it was rain- ing, their policy was not to remove the material strewn all over the yard. And away they went. One of the workers acci- dentally left behind his safety vest. The Editor tried to call the utility to let them know, but once again the automated system simply didn’t let him leave a message about the vest or the quality of service. Was the Editor pleased? On one hand, yes, for the danger had been alleviated. On the other hand, he felt both the tree service and utility in- dustries left a bad taste in his mouth. So the over- all experience was negative. The moral of this story: Don’t let your pol- icies get in the way of a customer’s experience. Tree service companies and High-Performance HVAC Contracting companies are both in busi- ness to make and keep customers. I am sure sum- mer is equally as busy for the tree services as it is for HVAC contractors. But that shouldn’t be the excuse to not always put your best foot forward. And for goodness sake, don’t rely only on auto- mated systems to help customers. They don’t help. They frustrate. And that is an epic fail. O nce upon a time, there was a certain trade press editor who lived in Subur- bia, U.S.A. He lived in a decent house with a nice little yard that hosted a fair number of very old, very tall, very awesome trees. These trees provided the Editor’s house with fab- ulous shade and made his back yard feel like a forest. The Editor loved those trees. One recent day, a storm flogged the area with powerful winds causing many trees to shudder throughout the land. In some areas, trees were toppled causing all kinds of problems. One tree in the Editor’s back yard suffered a thunderous crack as one of its largest limbs (the size of a small tree itself) split, causing it to par- tially fall. It came to rest on a live power line at- tached to the Editor’s house. This was not good. So the Editor called seven (yes seven) tree ser- vice companies looking for help. Not one compa- ny called him back over a two-day period. Not one! Then the Editor called the local electric utili- ty to report the situation, only to be greeted by an automated system that gave no options for his situation. So he opted for reporting a power line down. Someone answered the phone immediately and listened to his tale of woe. “I am sorry sir,” the person said. “Our policy is that we cannot come out and correct the situa- tion unless the wire is on the ground.” The Editor was flabbergasted. “So you’d rather be reactive and wait until there is a deadly, dan- gerous situation than be proactive and nip the is- sue in the bud?” he asked. “I am sorry sir. That is our policy. If the wire comes down, call back and we will send a team out immediately. In the meantime, we can sched- Company Policies Versus Customer Experience: A Parable Mike Weil is editor-in-chief and director of communications and publications at National Comfort Institute, Inc. Reach out to him at ncilink.com/ ContactMe TODAY’S WORD By Mike WeilJULY 2020 5HVACTODAY.COM HIGH-PERFORMANCE PRODUCT REVIEW Star-Kap® by Field Controls A Star Kap is something that gives spellcheck a problem, but trust me, it is spelled correctly. Have you ever driven around and looked at flues? What is up with those smashed B-vent caps on them? Have you ever watched a bird bend a B-vent cap so it could go in and build a nest? By the way, have you ever seen flues without caps? The normal definition of a flue cap is a rain cap. Yes, it is very important to keep the rain out. Wet flues do not function properly. But what if there was a flue cap that prevents the wind from blowing down the flue? What if a flue cap could with- stand being crushed when the roofer or satellite guy leans on it? How about a flue that birds and squirrels can’t bend and crawl into to build nests? In my opinion, the answer to all these questions is the Field Controls Star Kap . The Star Kap is rated up to 1,000°F temperature which means you can use it with any fuel-burning equipment: gas, oil, wood, coal, etc. It is the only flue cap that we are aware of that is tested by AGA (American Gas Association) Labs and found to prevent downdrafts from the wind. This attribute allows HVAC equipment to operate safely. Although their wind test simulates a constant 10-minute downdraft, that isn’t a normal weather condition, except in hurricanes and tornadoes. During those conditions, downdraft might be the least of your worries. Star Kaps come in sizes from 4” to 14” and can be adapted to fit any flue or chimney. Their cost is slightly more than a B-vent cap, but they are two or three times more functional. If wind is your problem, the Star Kap is definitely the answer! To learn more, visit the Field Controls website at ncilink.com/StarKap. – By Jim Davis, National Comfort Institute Senior Instructor6 JULY 2020HIGH-PERFORMANCE HVAC TODAY T etra Mechanical is an inter- esting name for an HVAC company. When you look up the definition of the word, ‘tetra’, you’ll find that it is a type of South American fish. So, when I spoke with Kent Donnelly about how the company got that name, I learned an interesting story about the company and its owner. You see, Donnelly took over the manage- ment of the company at a young age after his father suffered a severe heart attack. At the time, the family-owned business was called Sentinel Refrigeration – a name that was, according to Donnelly, hard for people to spell and remember. It also didn’t seem to have any cache within their marketing area. He says he sat down and real- ly analyzed the business, its perfor- mance-based service delivery methods, and its mission. He boiled everything down to four attributes, which he calls the Four Faces of Performance. “Everything we do is about fairness,” Donnelly explains. “I’m talking about fairness in our approach to technol- ogy, in our treatment of the team, as well as in our pricing and delivery to customers.” He adds that in geometry, a tetrahe- dron is a triangular pyramid with four equal faces or planes. CONTRACTOR SPOTLIGHT By Mike Weil Kent Donnelly Tetra Mechanical – The Four Faces of Performance “For me, I felt the tetrahedron truly represented our four faces of perfor- mance. One face represents the Earth because we are stewards of the planet. Another represents HVAC equipment which requires us to do everything we can to give it a fair shake to produce comfort. “The third face represents the cus- tomer. We must pro- vide them a fair price for the job we do. And the last face is for our company. We must be as responsible and fair to our employees as we are to our customers.” Donnelly shortened tetrahedron and the company’s new name became Tetra Mechanical. DESTINED FOR HVAC The company was founded by Kent’s father, Mike Donnelly. Donnelly, a World War II veteran, made a good living as a salesperson working for the Coca-Cola company. One of his cus- tomers was a refrigeration contractor who also did work for Coca-Cola. Kent says his father was very intrigued by refrigeration and made good friends with this contractor. In 1962 or 1963, Mike Donnelly had a dispute with Coke regarding a commis- sion they refused to pay him. So he left, and with his friend the refrigeration contractor, started Sentinel. Unfortu- nately, his partner died very shortly af- ter starting the business (not even three months lat- er) leaving Mike with a company that he had very little knowl- edge about from a technical or business standpoint. He had to fig- ure it out on his own. Which he did. According to Kent, his dad rented a commercial refrigera- tor and ice machine and disassembled them to figure out how they worked. He then reassembled them. “Then he went out and did what he did best – selling business,” Kent says. At a very young age, Kent watched as his father brought non-working compressors home to work on. “I just gravitated toward mechan- ical things,” he says. “My dad would bring home motors and let me tear them apart. By the age of seven, I could pretty much rebuild semi-her- metic compressors on my own. Dad would order the parts and I could re- build them. Then Dad would rein- stall them at the job site.” Kent Donnelly, who by his nature prefers to work on his own in the back- ground, says that people thought of him as the Michelangelo of refrigera- tion and air conditioning, destined for greatness. “Where Michelangelo was born with a hammer and chisel in his hands,” Donnelly explains, “people say I was JULY 2020 7HVACTODAY.COM A typical commercial rooftop unit installation from Team Tetra. 1% from new construction. The com- pany has 10 vehicles (though they are down to nine right now because one of their heavy-duty trucks was recent- ly stolen). Of the nine, five vehicles are currently active. Three of the active trucks are dedi- cated to commercial and the others are a blend. “That,” says Donnelly, “is flu- id. We change it around as we need.” STRUGGLING TO BREAK BARRIERS Kent Donnelly describes himself as always having a great love of figuring things out and was keen to measure and test out whatever he was working on. Even as a 17-year-old, who took over the business after his father suf- fered a heart attack, his love was on the tech side of things and he says he had no idea how to run a business. “This is my biggest weakness and I struggle with it to this day,” he says. “I looked at what I did as a craft and absolutely loved it. I often worked for free, doing favors for clients and friends. It was fun! It never dawned on me during the early years that I had skills that very few others did, and those skills had a value.” But taking on the business side of things was, in his words, a baptism by fire forged in the crucible of hard knocks. The day he took over, he was thrown into the mid- dle of a very large commercial refriger- ation project and had to learn on the fly how to price, project-man- age, and keep control of the job site. “One of my biggest struggles today is how to sustain growth. We vacillate between $5 and $8 million in gross revenues annually. Then I stumble. I get knocked down to around $1.5 mil- lion and have to start over. This has caused me to focus, in the last five years, on learning how to be a better business person.” This resulted in the business being on track at the beginning of 2020 to hit $5 million in revenues. Donnelly says he runs a staff of 12 people. Then, like every other business in America today, the COVID Pandem- ic combined with the shelter-in-place directives changed everything. Now he says he hopes to hit $3 million in 2020. “Every year it’s like I get to a point and then hit a barrier or a wall.” To overcome that barrier, he says he knows that both business and technical training are a must and he is committed to making that happen for himself and his co-workers. EDUCATION AND TRAINING While still working for his father, Kent says his Dad encouraged him to born with a set of magnehelic gauges and wrenches in my hands.” He humbly wanted to be the best at fixing everything in refrigeration and air conditioning without any fame. TETRA MECHANICAL TODAY From the beginning, the company has been in the commercial refriger- ation business. As time went by and air conditioning became affordable by homeowners, the company focus evolved to include this relatively ‘new’ part of the industry into its offerings. Today Tetra continues serving both the commercial and residential mar- ketplace, though Kent says most of it is now in air conditioning. “The refrigeration business is very demanding and very hard,” he explains. “It requires dedicating long hours and lots of supervision. Frankly, it was too grueling, and I just couldn’t teach peo- ple how to do refrigeration fast enough. Plus, there are other companies dedi- cated to the refrigeration business that can do a much better job than us. “So, we focus on commercial and residential air conditioning.” Tetra’s revenues are split 50-50 be- tween them. Almost all of that is ser- vice/replacement work with maybe 8 JULY 2020HIGH-PERFORMANCE HVAC TODAY done the NBC training, but all have taken NCI classes and are certified in several of the disciplines. PERFORMANCE-BASED CONTRACTING™ Even though Donnelly and his team have been testing and measuring ven- tilation systems almost from the start of the business, it wasn’t until they be- gan formal training with the NCI or- ganization that they packaged this approach under the concepts of air upgrades and duct system renovations. “This is our focus,” he ex- plains. “But it is not easy. We face a lot of resistance from our res- idential customers. That resistance is based on the cost of this work. “We test and measure every sys- tem,” he continues, “and then share the data that pinpoints where the sys- tem is lacking. The hardest thing is to talk about the dollars because it will cost more than what they are used to. For the consumers, that is a tough pill to swallow. “I believe that in our industry a lot of contractors low-ball their prices to close more sales. To make things worse, consumers just don’t under- stand what they are looking at because contractors have not educated them. “We must educate them. And we do it mathematically. We show them how much they will spend as well as how much it will cost them over time if they don’t invest the money in duct renovations and/or air upgrades.” Donnelly adds, “Then we take all our findings and break them down into bite-sized chunks, with the most important and necessary repair at the top of the list. We then list the other repairs based on the cost of NOT do- ing them over time. Sometimes that means just doing insulation work. Sometimes that means changing out the equipment.” He says the long and short of it is that sometimes renovation work can take a year or two because the con- sumer just doesn’t want to pay for ev- erything all at once. “You have to figure out where you can make the most difference and how to help the customer understand the benefits. And you must price it right,” says Donnelly. From Kent Donnelly’s perspective, he struggled with pricing for years. “One of my biggest problems was not recognizing my value to the customer equation. “It took years of training and talking with people like Rob Falke, John Ga- rofalo, David Holt, and others to help me understand that the skills I bring to the marketplace have a great value and I need to charge people what that is worth,” he says. BRINGING HOME THE VALUE One of the key values Tetra Mechan- ical brings to the table is how they take the data from their testing and mea- suring, then put it into a format that helps consumers understand what is happening with their HVAC system and the solutions Tetra is proposing. They do this using the cloud-based software known as ComfortMaxx™ and AirMaxx™. “We use ComfortMaxx every sin- attend college and study computer/ electrical engineering. Reluctantly he did, but says it didn’t grab him the way mechanical work did. Even though he earned an associate degree and lat- er attended UCLA for mechanical en- gineeering, he says that his best edu- cation was from professionals in the field, from on-the-job experiences. “Back then, field technicians were craftsmen and from them I learned that everything had to be measured, baselines established, and I had to understand the meaning behind those measurements. “This is what Rob Falke and the team at National Comfort Institute (NCI) also teaches,” he says. “To me, this is just the basics, but it is amaz- ing how many HVAC and refrigeration contractors don’t get the importance of this. In fact, when I began seeing some of the promotions for NCI train- ing, I was all on board for that. Rob was talking my language and I hoped to learn new things,” he adds. After that class Kent joined NCI and has been a member since 1994. The NCI training and the subsequent certifications helped Donnelly hone his skills and enabled him to jump into the commercial air conditioning side of the business. He became National Balanc- ing Council (NBC) certified in 2011. None of his other technicians have CONTRACTOR SPOTLIGHTJULY 2020 9HVACTODAY.COM “I feel many contractors today need to come to grips with that. Under- standing the people side of things, business management, leadership, and forecasting is the only way to win. These are the things I must get better at. This is the core of what I call the four faces of performance. “In the end, owners are responsible not only for the company’s success- es but also for every single failure as well. You are the steward of a tradition that’s been around for more than 100 years and that is a big responsibility,” Donnelly concludes. It is for these, and many more rea- sons, that High-Performance HVAC Today magazine has selected Tetra Mechanical of Simi Valley, CA as the July Contractor Spotlight. what he was doing was correct and in the customer’s best interest. Besides, he says being an NCI member enables him to forge bonds with other like-minded contractors, even local competitors, so they can have a healthy competition and still do things right. “NCI has taught me that there are so many opportunities for me to learn and grow. Without that, I doubt very much that I would still be in business today. The performance-based ap- proach has allowed me to grow as a person as well as a contractor. “In the end, the most important lesson for me is finally understand- ing that the business side of con- tracting is equally important to the technical side. gle day. It is fantastic at taking all the data and creating easy-to-understand reports that help us show customers what is going on and why the renova- tion work we propose is necessary. “I love it,” Donnelly says. “It allows me to single-handedly take something that can be quite com- plicated and present it visually and mathematically so they can make the best decisions based on their needs and their budgets.” Another value that Donnelly be- lieves Tetra brings to the table is more confidence based on their member- ship to NCI. He says he used to find it worrisome that his competitors had no clue what static pressure is and why a system operates the way it does. NCI membership confirmed to him that Next >