HIGH-PERFORMANCE HVAC TODAYHVAC TODAY TM If You Don’t Measure, You’re Just Guessing! ™ hvactoday.comAPRIL 2021 Get Ready Get Ready for Summer!for Summer! ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: Refrigerant Charging: It's NOT Just About Superheat and Subcooling Use High-Performance HVAC Testing to Build Leads Contractor Spotlight: Absolute Comfort Air Conditioning, Houston, TXAPRIL 2021 VOLUME 5 NUMBER 4 HIGH-PERFORMANCE HVAC TODAYHVAC TODAY TM MANAGEMENT: Is Your Company Ready for Summer? The summer busy season will soon be upon us. Are you ready? Editor-in-Chief Mike Weil speaks to three contractors who share how they prepare. TECHNICAL: Refrigerant Charging: It’s Not Only About Superheat and Subcooling Superheat and subcooling are only two pieces of the refrigerant charging puzzle. NCI’s Justin Bright highlights the other “pieces.” MARKETING: Use High-Performance HVAC Testing to Generate Leads Will Horner shares how he uses static pressure testing to build sales leads for his contracting firm, Canco ClimateCare. DEPARTMENTS APRIL 2021 3HVACTODAY.COM Today’s Word .........................................................................................4 High-Performance Products .............................................................5 Contractor Spotlight: Absolute Comfort, Houston, TX .........6 Member Update ...............................................................................20 HVAC Smart Mart ...............................................................................21 Ad Index ................................................................................................21 One More Thing ................................................................................22 14 10 17HIGH-PERFORMANCE HVAC TODAY4 APRIL 2021 ■ Enhance Your Reputation ■ Build An Audience of potential customers ■ Increase Lead Generation ■ Establish Trust in your marketplace. When writing articles, you have two target au- diences: your customers and your peers. The subject matter can cover the industry landscape. When the target is your customers, write from their viewpoint. Your high-performance approach to contracting demonstrates how your company is on top of the latest trends and issues affecting their comfort, safety, and wallet. When writing to your peers, focus on the les- sons you learned in operating your business, obstacles you overcame, and successes you experienced. These are all things that oth- er contractors traveling along the High-Per- formance Path want to learn, especially from someone just like them. Any article should focus on customer issues or industry problems and their solutions. There is virtually no expense involved (oth- er than your time and energy). This is especial- ly true if you work with an editor who can help you and make suggestions so that your article sounds professional. Think about this: anything you author is reuse- able in your marketing, as part of your blog, or in reprints that you can use for many things: home shows, mailers, leave-behinds, and so on. Writing articles for trade magazines (especially this one) is a win for you, a win for your company, and a win for your customers. So don’t shy away when a trade press editor calls upon you for an article. Embrace the oppor- tunity. Meet your deadlines. And keep the goal in mind. You’ll be glad you did. If interested in writing for THIS magazine, just drop me a note at ncilink.com/ContactMe. I’d love to hear from you. D id you know that being a High-Per- formance HVAC contractor isn’t the only thing that sets you apart in your marketplace? Being a published author who promotes the benefits of a perfor- mance approach to service works wonders too! For business owners who want to improve their credibility, one way to start is by writing articles for publications in your industry or trade. After all, as a businessperson serving this industry, you ARE the expert, whether you think so or not. “Wait a minute,” you must be thinking. “I’m no writer. I don’t have time to write. Even if I did, what would I write about? Why would anyone care what I have to say?” To quote National Comfort Institute’s David Holt, “It’s all about changing your mindset.” Instead of feeling overwhelmed by the idea of doing something so different from what you do every day, think about the power of third-par- ty endorsements. What could that mean to your business and to your customers? Having an article with your name on it that helps your customers and/or your peers solve problems that no one else has solved would cer- tainly add to building a solid reputation. Once published, you can use that article in your own marketing and advertising so people can see you are THE expert. Won’t that help you to attract and close more customers and build the business? And what about the pride your teammates will have when customers and peers talk about your article. When you publish content on behalf of your company, you: ■ Build Your Brand by providing informa- tion your customers need and want ■ Drive Website Traffic where customers can go for more information Stand Out by Writing Articles for the Trade Press and Consumer Media TODAY’S WORD By Mike Weil Mike Weil is editor- in-chief and director of communications and publications at National Comfort Institute, Inc. Contact him at ncilink.com/ContactMe.HVACTODAY.COMAPRIL 2021 5 But you can make it a lot easier because all you need with AirMaxx Lite is a couple of data points. The app will do the heavy lifting for you. It performs all the calcula- tions to figure out Total External Static Pressure and, with its built-in fan tables, plots out the equipment fan airflow. It’s almost magical. The app makes the results easy to explain to customers using colorful visual diag- nostic gauges. These gauges help you see where any problems exist. By showing these graphics to the customer, they’ll understand what is going on. Nine times out of 10, your customers will want to make corrections, at which point you get to go Cha-Ching! Learn more about AirMaxx Lite at both the Apple ( ncilink. com/AML1A) and Google (ncil- ink.com/AML1D ) app stores. — By Casey Contreras, National Comfort Institute AirMaxx™ Lite: Done in 30 Seconds Do you remember the movie Gone in 60 Seconds ( ncilink.com/Gone60 )? The star was a 1967 Ford Mustang GT500 that was named Eleanor. She had an 800+ horse- power engine with 700-pound weight reduction, a true unicorn among cars. You may be wondering what a car has to do with the HVAC industry. It’s simply a reference to show you something fast- er and easier to use when testing and measuring systems that can also provide revenue possibilities. It is called AirMaxx™ Lite . This is an app that works on Apple and Android devices. Usually, when you measure total external static pressure, you must add two num- bers together and then use a fan table to plot out fan airflow. That takes time. HIGH-PERFORMANCE PRODUCT6 APRIL 2021 CONTRACTOR SPOTLIGHT By Mike Weil Learning to Know What You Don’t Know HIGH-PERFORMANCE HVAC TODAY L et’s take a step back in time. In the 1970s-era United States, the HVAC Industry was under- going what some would call a “dynamic” period. In a nutshell, government regulation swooped in aggressively to become a permanent part of the business landscape. The decade of the ‘70s was fraught with challenges. A new deadly ill- ness known as Legionnaires Disease would impact the HVAC Industry, especially when it became linked to cooling systems. The ‘70s were still a time for signif- icant growth in residential new con- struction. However, toward the end of that decade, the writing was already on the wall. Energy and regulations would begin to change the landscape where renovation and retrofit would become king. GETTING STARTED In 1976, a young man named Mark Shelton began his HVAC Industry ca- reer in Austin, TX. The year was the country’s bicentennial year. It was the year that Jimmy Carter was elected president and when the Israeli mili- tary pulled off one of the most daring rescues of kidnapped travelers who were hijacked and held in Uganda. Shelton worked at a local HVAC company learning the ropes. By 1979, he decided it was time to hang out his own shingle. He headed to Hous- ton where he could earn three-times the money he made in Aus- tin and set up shop. Absolute Comfort Air Conditioning was born. WE DIDN’T KNOW WHAT WE DIDN’T KNOW “I had no true idea what I was getting myself into,” Shelton says. “It took me a few times to get my state license, and the company didn’t start to grow until 1986. That is when I feel we became a real business.” Shelton says that he discovered very quickly that he had a lot to learn during those early days. “The learning never ends,” he says. “In the begin- ning I had it in my head that my job was to fix everything. One of my first hard lessons was understanding that even if I could fix it, it wasn’t enough. I needed new customers to keep mon- ey coming in, and that meant I need- ed to figure out how to market and ad- vertise.” For five years Shelton says he worked both in his company and on his com- pany and enjoyed a certain success lev- el. In 2001 he became aware of two technical training organizations that he felt he should check out. One was Na- tional Comfort Institute (NCI). He at- tended classes and says he discovered that he didn’t know much of anything! “Airflow was such a mystery. The NCI classes focused more on doing air balancing and duct design, and I knew this would set me apart in my market. In fact, my first big learning moment was when I understood that 80% of a customer’s problems in- volved how their duct system was de- signed,” Shelton says. “I started learning and trying to teach my people to do air balancing. Absolute Comfort is mostly (99%) a residential retrofit shop that services air conditioning units. We added air balancing to the business and found it gave us a competitive advantage in our marketing area.” That advantage still holds true. Shelton says most of their HVAC com- petitors today do not understand or do static pressure testing, ductwork, air- flow system design, or much of any- thing else related to the High-Perfor- mance approach to contracting. “For the most part, they’re just changing boxes,” he says. THE COMPANY TODAY The good news is that Absolute Comfort often followed behind com- petitors and fixed problems they left on customers’ tables. The fact is, ac- cording to Shelton, in the Houston market area, 80% of residential return air systems are too small. APRIL 2021 7 He explains, “Our job is to give cus- tomers more return air. And we do that by testing, measuring, and prop- erly designing their duct systems. Then we make sure to balance their system. I believe that 30% of our work is in renovating ductwork.” Shelton adds that they win many jobs because people are aware that Absolute Comfort’s team knows what they are doing. Shelton proudly says that is because of the training and cer- tifications they have from NCI. Today the company has around $4 million in gross revenues with nine on-staff technicians. Absolute Com- fort fields one installation crew of two people. And in a somewhat unique ap- proach to the market, the company works with six independent sub-con- tractors who help with Absolute’s in- stallations when things get busy. The subs also take on overflow calls. Shelton says he has several part-time employees who work the phones sever- al times per year to make customer ap- pointments and follow-up calls. The outside subcontractors, accord- ing to Shelton, “are people who have their HVAC license and insurance.” Many of these subcontractors have some training from NCI, but not all of them. Shelton says it’s an ongoing pro- cess to try and get everybody trained. SYSTEM RENOVATIONS AND UPGRADES Shelton says that the High-Perfor- mance Contracting approach is the basis on which Absolute Comfort op- erates. He adds, “My customers love it because after we finish our work, they don’t hear the unit running, and they’re more comfortable in each room of their homes than ever before. They don’t have any hot or cold spots. “For us, duct system renovations and upgrades give us so much more to sell,” he continues. “When some- body wants to buy new equipment, we can sometimes show them that buy- ing new equipment isn’t the answer. What they do need is for us to fix their ductwork, and then their entire sys- tem will work fine.” He adds that by focusing on airflow, duct renovations, and upgrades based on testing and measuring, he sees nice increases in Absolute’s profit margin. Plus, this approach also helps them get more customers. “Because of our performance ap- proach, our reputation has even led several of our supply house vendors to call us in when they encounter duct is- sues on a particular job. That is a strong indication of how High-Performance Contracting has helped to build our marketplace reputation,” Shelton says. IT’S ALL ABOUT AIRFLOW MEASUREMENT Static pressure gets us in the door,” Shelton says. “Based on our measure- ments, we can explain and show cus- tomers any issues their system has and what we can do to fix them. Then we go from there and close the sale. “As I said earlier, in Houston, one of the biggest issues is that most homes don’t have enough return air. So, we do what we can to resolve that, from replacing wrong-sized ductwork to enlarging plenums. The idea is to get proper airflow throughout the house. “Our trademark is that we replace standard three-foot plenums with big- ger ones that range from 5-1/2 to six- foot sizes. Bigger plenums enable us to design ductwork easier and drop stat- ic pressures to where they should be.” “It’s safe to say that duct system re- pairs and renovations make up a big chunk of our business,” he continues. “They help us to close more sales on equipment installations.” OVERCOMING OBSTACLES Early on the Path to Performance, Shelton says he faced two obstacles: getting his technicians consistently performing static pressure tests and overcoming competitors undercutting him in the marketplace. He says that getting the right peo- ple into the right jobs was probably his biggest challenge. Absolute employed many “old school technicians” and the change to High-Performance Contract- ing was tough for them in the early days. Some accepted it. Others did not. Training came to the rescue here too. Shelton says one of his outside consul- tant groups helped with their hiring HVACTODAY.COMHIGH-PERFORMANCE HVAC TODAY8 APRIL 2021 CONTRACTOR SPOTLIGHT and firing practices training, “without which,” he says, “this would have been a much bigger problem for us.” That training included testing po- tential new employees. He says these personality tests help determine what motivates candidates as well as how trainable they are. Shelton says this process took a long time. “We finally achieved the balance of the right people in the right posi- tions just this year,” he says. “Today, 100% of our technicians do static pressure testing as a routine part of our service and maintenance calls.” HIGH-PERFORMANCE WINNERS “For us,” Shelton says, “The perfor- mance-based approach has dramati- cally improved our profits. If it wasn’t for the ongoing training we get through NCI and other partners, we would not be successful today. “I think it’s safe to say the program we now have in place helps set us apart in the market, in- creases our profits, and, hopefully, fuels our future growth. “I think the real secret to success in the HVAC industry is the amount of training you get. I like to think that if a tech works for my company, they get the right ongoing training that makes them valuable employees here at Ab- solute Comfort or anywhere else they may choose to go.” “I am proud that Absolute Comfort has trained a lot of people, some of whom went on to open their own busi- nesses. This is good for my company, for the tech, for our customers, and ul- timately for the entire industry.” For these and many more reasons, High-Performance HVAC Today magazine has chosen to focus our spot- light on Absolute Comfort Air Condi- tioning of Houston, TX. Congratula- tions to Mark Shelton and his entire team. Next >