< PreviousHIGH-PERFORMANCE HVAC TODAY10 APRIL 2021 To properly charge the refrigerant, all three flows need to work as designed. When techni- cians overlook the indoor and outdoor airflows and begin adjusting system superheat and sub- cooling, results can be unpredictable. In California, our utilities require an analysis to verify the results of their incentive programs that focus on maintenance. In one case, testers found lit- tle positive impact to adjusting a refrigerant charge unless the system was severely undercharged. At- tempting to address the three mass fluid flows by refrigerant charge alone has struggled to show even a 5% average improvement in capacity. FIRST STEPS: SETTING UP PROCESSES Before attaching gauges to any refrigerant cir- cuit, be sure you have a clear reason for doing so. Setting up a process within your company will ensure uniformity between technicians. Like your favorite CSI television show (ncilink.com/ CSItv), you begin by gathering facts. National Comfort Institute (NCI) shares two points at the start of most of their Performance- Based testing and diagnostics classes: “If you don’t measure, you’re just guessing™,” and “without facts, you’re just another person with an opinion.” Some of the evidence NCI discusses in their re- frigerant-side performance class include: ● Visual signs a problem may exist ● Proper operating airflows ● Psychometrics and calculations that target suction and liquid line temperatures. So, before connecting gauges, here is a check- list of items to verify: ❑ Is airflow within 10% of design? ❑ Does the static pressure profile meet the pressure budgets? W hen arriving at a job site, you may think you are just out on a service call to get a unit back up and run- ning. The fact is, you are stepping into the newest episode of your favorite investiga- tion television drama. The victim: the refrigerant circuit. The weapon: refrigerant gauges. Gauges can be an effective tool for improving performance, or they can be a deadly weapon aimed against a compressor. Most compressors do not die. They get murdered. Direct expansion (DX) HVAC systems use three mass fluid flows to move heat into or out of a building. These include: 1. Outside air moving across the condenser coil 2. Refrigerant 3. Indoor airflow across the evaporator or indoor coil. Refrigerant Charging: It’s Not Only Superheat and Subcooling By Justin Bright TECHNICAL 80 © 2020 National Comfort Institute, Inc.HVACTODAY.COMAPRIL 2021 11 tion period of 24 months, with period- ic gauge accuracy verification against virgin tanks of refrigerant. Virgin refrigerant should be purged in through the gauges into your hoses before attaching the manifold to your customer’s system. This purge minimizes introducing atmospheric gas and moisture into the customer’s system. Next, attach hoses to the system. Al- low the system to run for 15 minutes before adjusting the refrigerant charge. If the indoor temperature is too low to allow for 15 minutes of run time, turn up the heat and turn on the hot water in a shower to add latent heat. DATA COLLECTION: SUPERHEAT Once your system is stable, begin collecting data and diagnosing the re- frigerant circuit operation. Systems with fixed orifice pistons or capillary tubing will rely primarily on the su- perheat charging method. Superheat is calculated by direct- ly measuring the suction line tempera- ture and subtracting the saturation temperature correlated with the suc- tion line pressure. Superheat is an important indica- ❑ Is the indoor coil clean? ❑ Is the outdoor coil clean and un- obstructed? ❑ Is the filter clean and properly sized? ❑ Are all the registers open? The main goal at this stage is to make sure you won’t alter airflow after adjusting the refrigerant charge. Why do this? Airflow impacts the refriger- ant circuit’s operation. If you answer yes to all these items on the checklist and see external indications that there is a refrigerant charge issue, you can continue to gauge up. PROPER MANIFOLD USE TECHNIQUES To access the refrigerant side of the system, you need a quality refriger- ant manifold and hoses. For best ac- curacy, NCI recommends using digital manifolds that can measure tempera- tures in addition to pressure. Pressure resolution should be 0.1 psi, and tem- perature resolution should be 0.1º F. NCI recommends using hoses with low-loss fittings and/or ball valves to minimize refrigerant loss and contam- ination. Real-time calculations of su- perheat and subcooling remove hu- man error performing the math. NCI also recommends a calibra- R-410A System 43° _________ Saturation Temperature 60° _________ Suction Line Temperature 126 psi Superheat: Suction Line Temp: ______ Minus Sat. Temp: ______ Equals Superheat: ______ 60° 43° 17°HIGH-PERFORMANCE HVAC TODAY12 APRIL 2021 TECHNICAL In one utility program, contractors submitted more than 700 ComfortMaxx Verify™ tests for utility rebates. These were full test-ins of commercial systems where contractors input measured stat- ic pressure, airflow, and temperatures into the ComfortMaxx™ (ncilink. com/CMaxx) online software. The software calculated delivered Btu’s and Cooling System Efficiency Scores (CSES). Looking over a test sam- ple of 178 systems, we found 88% of them had low airflow. the liquid line temperature. While typical subcooling will be be- tween 10 to 15 degrees, you may find specific condensers and heat pumps that have lower values based on varying designs in condenser coils. Low subcooling can indicate a low re- frigerant charge or a metering device that is overfeeding. High subcooling can indicate the system is overcharged, has non-condensable liquid in the system, a liquid-line restriction, TXV bulb failure, or an inefficient compressor. tor for problems within the refrigerant circuit. Low superheat can lead to liq- uid entering the compressor causing valves to fail or the oil to be washed out of the compressor. Low superheat can also show when a system is overcharged or a Thermal Expansion Valve (TXV) is overfeed- ing. See the table to the right for target superheat depending on the metering device in the system. DATA COLLECTION: SUBCOOLING Subcooling is the amount of heat rejected from the refrigerant into the outdoor airflow beyond the refriger- ant’s saturation temperature in the condenser. To calculate subcooling, measure and convert your liquid line saturation temperature, then subtract HVACTODAY.COMAPRIL 2021 13 Justin Bright is a 24-year HVAC veteran who serves as a field coach and instructor for National Comfort Institute (NCI). He left the industry for a time and served as a Sonar technician aboard subma- rines. Today he is based in NCI’s California office and can be reached at ncilink.com/ContactMe . DIAGNOSTICS TIME With such a prevalent issue of low airflow, what do you suppose the im- pact would be on that equipment’s re- frigerant cycle? Could the problem be misdiagnosed on a service call? As airflow decreases, the available heat entering the indoor coil decreas- es as well. Looking at the structure of a Pressure-Temperature chart, you’ll see that pressure and temperature in- crease together. If you have less heat, your evaporator pressure will be lower. As the refrigerant leaves the evap- orator, any heat it has gained beyond the vaporization point is evaporator superheat. Any additional heat gained traveling thru the suction line is to- tal superheat. Total superheat is what most technicians use for diagnosing the system. With lower-than-expected pressures leaving the evaporator due to low airflow, the compressor may not elevate the pressure and tempera- ture high enough to reject heat to the outdoor air effectively. One reason refrigerant charge ad- justment does not achieve meaning- ful energy or efficiency gains is be- cause low airflow is often mistaken for low refrigerant charge. They have of- ten misdiagnosed this as a result of the suction and discharge pressures both seeming low. The technician then adds refrigerant charge. They then find that head pressure and compressor energy consumption increase but do not gain the correct enthalpy change or Energy Efficiency Ratio (EER). If you’re interested in fewer call- backs and discovering more sales op- portunities, take the time to gather all the facts. Don’t assume the first prob- lem you find is the only problem. Re- member, subcooling and superheat are only two pieces of the puzzle. The more clues you can piece together, the greater the likelihood you will get the results you want and that your cus- tomers need. HIGH-PERFORMANCE HVAC TODAY14 APRIL 2021 By Mike Weil MANAGEMENT Is Your HVAC Company Ready for Summer? I t’s Springtime, and everyone is taking a moment to breathe a sigh of relief from our crazy winter and, oh yeah, the pandemic. Well, for HVAC contractors, you should only take a moment because your business needs to be ready as we get closer to summer. Now is the time to prepare. None of your customers want to be caught in the heat of summer without a work- ing air conditioning system. Benjamin Franklin said, “By failing to pre- pare, you are preparing to fail.” So, what do you do to get ready? We asked this question to three High-Performance HVAC contractors to see how they gear up. They shared four common tips: HAVE A PLAN “Plans are of little importance, but planning is essential.” — WINSTON CHURCHILL, FORMER BRITISH PRIME MINISTER For Greg Wallace, president of Progressive Heating and Air Conditioning in Newnan, GA, (ncilink.com/1117CS), having a plan is the key to his company’s success. He explains Progres- sive’s summer preparation plans are as follows: “We divide our service group into a demand team and a maintenance team. Organizing in this way allows us to han- dle more demand calls during the busy summer season without having to reschedule maintenance agreements. We begin contacting customers about maintenance renew- als on March 1st. Then we send reminder emails to existing maintenance customers on March 15th to gear up to get out before the hot weather hits in Georgia. “Our sales team proactively calls anyone waiting to replace their system in March and April. This way we get those jobs done and stay ahead of sum- mer emergency ‘no air conditioning’ installations.” In Houston, Punbar LLC (ncilink.com/Pun- bar) co-owner Ronald Amaya says they begin summer preparations during the slow winter sea- son with a recruiting campaign to staff up for sum- mer if they need to. “In January and February, we conduct formal and informal training classes as well as on-the-job training.” He says this includes focusing on trouble- shooting (training done in the office) and sales strategies. “For example,” Amaya says, “Our 2021 focus is to con- vert service calls into replace- ment opportunities (including ductwork). “Our techs must meet set training criteria for different types of HVAC systems, refrigerant types, equipment conditions, system status based on static pressure measurement, and so on,” he adds. MAKE SURE YOU ARE STOCKED AND STAFFED “In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.” — DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER, PAST U.S. PRESIDENT Greg Wallace says Progressive’s summer prepa- ration includes stocking up on all the necessary parts and equipment. They also make sure they have enough staff to handle the increased work- load of the busy season. “We have a varied truck stock list for our ser- vice technicians in spring and fall,” Wallace says. HVACTODAY.COMAPRIL 2021 15 “It’s not a huge difference, but we do make some minor changes such as re- moving gas valves, ignitors, and other such items. Then we add a few more filter driers, refrigerant tanks, con- denser motors, condensate pumps, and so on to get ready for the spring and summer.” He adds that his installation crews keep the same truck stock every sea- son. “Unless we make changes in our installation procedure. We like to take a truck inventory every three months, which can be difficult, so at a min- imum, we take inventory every six months.” Ken Dean of Dean Heating, (ncil- ink.com/DeanSpotlite) Athens, OH concurs. He says he takes the ad- ditional step of asking his field service and installation technicians if there are other tools or parts they may need. He also stocks up on extra coils and condens- ing units for emergency replacements. At Punbar, Amaya says they make sure that tools and instruments are in good working order and calibrated for accuracy. Besides taking stock and truck in- ventory, it’s also a good idea to re- view your service call records from the previous summer and make a note of any complaints or kudos you received from customers. This way, you can work to improve on weaknesses and promote your strengths. Other things for you to consider: ■ Do you need more staff to handle increased volumes of summer calls? ■ Do you need to retrain so that your technicians can provide excellent cus- tomer experiences? TRAINING NOW PAYS DIVIDENDS LATER “I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it.” —PABLO PICASSO, SPANISH PAINTER To grow your profits, you need a friendly, highly-trained staff that leaves your customers impressed. At Punbar LLC in Houston, TX, training is a cornerstone of their operation. Ac- cording to Ronald Amaya, they take advantage of National Comfort Insti- tute’s online courses. “We have a list of courses our tech- nicians must take,” Amaya explains. “These include live online classes, NCI University, as well as courses from our vendors. For example, we create a list and the order of required Trane online classes for our techs as well. “For experienced technicians,” he continues, “They must finish any pending courses and attend advanced online or specific training by our dis- tributor partners (Trane, Aprilaire, Johnstone, etc.). Plus, our sales team is also required to take training.” Amaya even has requirements for fi- nancing training and refresher cours- es done at the office and online (re- quired re-certifications every year). He says that training early and train- ing often always pays big dividends as the summer season begins. The team at Progressive does most of their training in the spring and fall. Like his peers at Punbar, Greg Wallace says he uses the NCI University video classes. “We do this to go over some of the performance testing procedures for the season we are about to begin. It’s always nice to have some refresher courses on things you haven’t done for a while. We also send our techs to any factory equipment update classes when those are available. That way, we keep up with the new equipment and controls that we sell.” For Ken Dean, training shifts to fo- cus more on refrigeration instead of combustion/heating. “Airflow is al- ways emphasized. We want our tech- nicians trained to recognize and cor- rect any airflow problems with better design,” he adds. START ADVERTISING NOW “Stopping advertising to save money is like stopping your watch to save time.” —HENRY FORD, AMERICAN INDUSTRIALIST Many marketing consultants teach that advertising is NOT a one-and- done deal. It requires a strategy to keep your company name and repu- tation in front of people so that when they think of an HVAC company, your business’s name pops into mind. Their advice often hones in on your company website because this is where people will go first, even before they call your business. Is your website out- dated or uninformative? Does it pres- ent you as capable and professional? At Progressive Air, advertising and marketing cover their website, social me- dia, and print messaging. Greg Wallace says, “We weave television and radio in from time to time as well. We have online advertising promoting spring and early summer checkups as well as specials and sales. These promotions include a front- page advertisement with our local news- papers to our target demographic in spe- cific neighborhoods the paper mails to.” Wallace explains how they generate their marketing plan based on a per- centage of the annual budget. HIGH-PERFORMANCE HVAC TODAY16 APRIL 2021 “Service marketing is from 3.5 to 5% of our budget. Installation market- ing ranges from 2 to 5%,” Wallace ex- plains. “We analyze all marketing by category every year. “We consistently post on social media and have moved a large portion of our advertising dollars to our website search engine optimization as well as Google Local Service Ads,” Wallace says. According to Dean, his company makes minor changes to their web- site to promote Spring maintenance in preparation for summer’s cooling sea- son. From a branding standpoint, he says they recently began sponsoring a local Public Broadcasting network. Ronald Amaya says that Punbar up- dates its website to reflect the change of seasons and promote maintenance. They expanded their market reach by implementing a Spanish language ver- sion of the website to reflect their mar- ket demographic. After that, Amaya says they email ex- isting customers with reminders about service and maintenance, specials on equipment, and the financing plans they offer. He ties social media postings with these emails to punch up his summer advertising and marketing reach. GET READY. GET SET. GO! “Do you want to know who you are? Don’t ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you.” —THOMAS JEFFERSON, U.S. FOUNDING FATHER Whether it’s recruiting new talent, adopting new technologies, or putting together budgets, the winter, and early spring ‘off-season’ can be the best time to get organized. It’s also an excellent time to market your business, try out new revenue streams, and take care of your finances. When you take time to prepare your- self, your team, and your company for the busy summer season, you can set your business up for your most produc- tive and profitable season yet. Mike Weil is the communi- cations director for National Comfort Institute as well as the editor-in-chief of High-Performance HVAC Today magazine. With nearly 40 years in various content roles within the HVAC Industry, he knows a little about planning and taking action. He can be reached at ncilink.com/ContactMe.HVACTODAY.COMAPRIL 2021 17 them to ask a lot of questions. Those questions of- ten lead to a repair sale for us. I guess what I am saying is that the performance approach to contracting fuels curiosity and gener- ates most of our leads. A SERVICE-TO-SALES APPROACH Everything starts with my technicians, who send me the lead directly. If I’m busy or on the phone, they go through our office, and then I’ll get an email. I see every static pressure report. If the numbers are high, the tech red flags it for spe- cial attention. We’ve been doing these pressure reports for I t’s mind-boggling how many articles there are for HVAC contractors on how to build lead generation and grow your business. Most of them involve marketing on the Internet, through direct mail and advertising, postcards, and more. For Canco ClimateCare, (ncilink. com/Canco) our lead generation comes from word-of-mouth based on how different we are in our marketplace. That difference is the direct result of being a Performance-Based Contracting™ company that focuses on HVAC system testing, measuring, and repairing so that the customer receives what we promise them. This is a very different approach to lead generation. But to be clear, it is not the silver bullet to building leads. It’s just part of the picture. For us, it’s a big part. LEADS BEGIN WITH TECHNICIANS And it starts with our technicians. We strive to equip our techs with the training and tools they need to perform static pressure and temperature rise tests on every HVAC sys- tem they encounter. This includes using a Canco customized Com- fortMaxx™ (ncilink.com/CMaxx) paper form from National Comfort Institute (NCI). We incentivize our technicians to do this by giv- ing them a monetary spiff for each form they fill out. This way, they will spend the time to do the test. Our technicians themselves don’t sell. If they find issues, they report that to our salesperson (me), who then follows up with the customer. The customer reports are also turned into the office, becoming the principal tool for future sales leads. None of our competitors do this. Our approach almost always piques customer interest which leads Using High-Performance HVAC Testing to Build Leads By Will Horner MARKETING Installing test ports for static pressure testing is part of how Canco gathers data for lead generation. This is an example of a customer test port sticker that Canco uses. HIGH-PERFORMANCE HVAC TODAY18 APRIL 2021 MARKETING The three pages depicted to the right are a sample from the PDF that Canco sends out to customers to address the results from testing their systems. five years. We break these down into groups – customers with readings that are over .70 get personalized emails to talk about what that means and what next steps we can take to correct it. Lord Kelvin (William Thomson), a well-noted mathematician and phys- icist (ncilink.com/kelvin), wrote “When you can measure what you’re speaking about and express it in num- bers, you know something about it. But if you cannot measure it or you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meager and unsatis- factory kind.” That’s the ideal I strive toward achieving. I’m measuring and doing duct calculations. It makes a differ- ence to our customers who are being delighted by the results we can achieve. We’ve hired a new person in our of- fice who is helping us with digital mar- keting and processing paperwork, inputting data, and handling our spreadsheets. She creates a form letter specifically for those customers. The letters are very personalized and say we’ve been going over the mea- surement reports our tech created and found some things that might warrant having a closer look. The letter goes on to explain how we want to make sure everything is working correctly and safely. We may have to tweak things a bit. I want to make a no-cost appoint- ment to check it out. I then call and set up the appoint- ment. These calls typically end with me selling them additional service or even a system replacement. When things get busy and we fall a little behind, these reports are always helpful in following up with the cus- tomer later and potentially making more sales. Our ComfortMaxx™ re- ports are essential lead-generation tools for us. Furthermore, very few, if any, of our competitors follow up with custom- ers in this way. People talk about that. Word of mouth promotion is also a keen way that we generate leads. CHALLENGES Because our lead generation relies so heavily on our technicians, they must be all on board with properly testing static pressures and measuring temperature rise. At Canco, our installers do this on EVERY job. They understand the im- portance of measuring. They get it. But some of the service guys don’t think it’s important. That’s our chal- lenge. Add in the pandemic, a need for social distancing (and reduction of meetings/training), accountability has fallen off a bit. So, we need more train- ing to get everybody back on board. I know many of my techs face the expira- tion of their airflow performance certifi- cations. I have a valid reason to get ev- eryone back into training. The good news is that training and certification are so invigorating for me AND all my field techs. We all need re- minding of how necessary testing and measuring is for the customer issues we need to solve any potential problems coming down the road. Another issue common to many HVAC contracting companies is the inability of technicians to communicate clearly with customers. In terms of interpreting their measurements into meaningful informa- tion for the customer, our techs are not HVACTODAY.COMAPRIL 2021 19 Will Horner is the sales manager and HVAC system analyst-trainer at Canco ClimateCare in Newmarket, Ontario, Canada. He joined Canco in 2005. He is a firm believer in training. He has taken all the HVAC design courses offered through The Heating, Refrigeration Air-Conditioning Institute of Canada – Skilltech Academy. Horner holds current designations as a Residential Air System Design Technician and Residential Hydronic Design Technician. You can reach him via ncilink.com/ContactMe. quite there yet. That is why I look at all the reports to see how far a system is out of line and then go back to the customer to recheck it and offer solutions. By the way, training also helps build confidence. No tech wants to trip over themselves trying to explain something until they feel confident that they know what they are talking about. Once we help them become more confident, we will see more leads coming in based on their conversations with customers. SELLING AND LEAD GENERATION I often talk with customers about airflow by comparing it to a per- son’s blood pressure. I’m working on building clean visual aids I can share with customers on my iPad or over a virtual conference call. Tools like the NCI Blood Pressure Chart help a lot. The ComfortMaxx report itself is an essential visual aid. It gets customers to ask questions because they can see that things are not right with their sys- tems. Then they ask how we can fix it, and they usually buy the repair. This process alone builds strong lead generation for us. We find our customers getting so excited about being a part of the solution, and they tell their friends, neighbors, and fam- ily what a cool experience they’ve had with Canco. Because I’m a salesman, my job is to offer different opportunities for cus- tomers with varying equipment choic- es. I use an app on my iPad called Air System Upgrades, and I use that to show customers that what I am offer- ing is to “renovate” their system. Note: the above-mentioned app is from a training program Canco went through with Tom Wittman and isn’t available in the Google or Apple app stores. Renovating means something very different from replacing their system, which takes us to a higher sales cycle level. People are typically more open to the suggestion to renovate their sys- tems. But I always make sure to price out the renovation, explain how we will test the system after finishing the work, and then see if there’s anything more we can do. Customers tell us that no one else talks about doing that type of work. I’d guess that around 95% of the people hire us because we helped to educate them. Then they proudly tell their friends, neighbors, and family about it. We also share the appro- priate Home Comfort brochure from NCI. We leave these with customers, and my guess is that they share the documents with others. But today, many people don’t want “paper” products. There is a big move to do everything paperless. So that’s another challenge we have. Leave-be- hinds and third-party endorsements need to be electronic documents, and I am working to make that so within my sales presentation. LEAD TRACKING As the team at NCI preaches, “If you don’t measure, you’re just guessing.” This is true when it comes to the com- pany’s business side, and right now, we are not that great at measuring and tracking our leads. We recently up- graded our service management sys- tems and are in the process of creating such tracking. It involves creating and using forms that will enable the sys- tem to track sales and leads. Once we get this done, we will be able to document sales and lead sta- tistics, then pull reports. This will al- low us to interpret that data and better manage our marketing and our inter- nal and external processes. The plan is to be able to track the number of leads generated from test- ing, the number of sales closed from those leads, and possibly using the data to set lead goals for each technician. In the end, I believe that our ap- proach to creating leads and closing sales is based more on our customer education process and our approach to testing and measuring. In the fu- ture, with a real-time ability to track those leads and sales closings, we will move even further ahead of our com- petitors as High-Performance HVAC contractors. “RENOVATING MEANS SOMETHING VERY DIFFERENT FROM REPLACING THEIR SYSTEM, WHICH TAKES US TO A HIGHER SALES CYCLE LEVEL. PEOPLE ARE TYPICALLY MORE OPEN TO THE SUGGESTION TO RENOVATE THEIR SYSTEMS.”Next >