Hey everybody, welcome back to the HVAC ADHD podcast. I'm your host Jeremy Begley. Today we're talking with Brad
0:1010 secondsCooper from Arkansas State University BB where he serves as the advanced HVAC instructor. But Brad's not just an
0:1818 secondsinstructor. He's somebody who grew up in the trade, owned and operated an HVAC company, and now spends his time helping the next generation of technicians
0:2727 secondsentering the field. In this episode, we get into the real challenges facing HVAC education today. From the labor shortage
0:3535 secondsand technician retention to air flow, load calculations, commissioning, and how technology like MeasureQuick is changing the way contractors support
0:4444 secondstheir teams in the field. We also talk about the disconnect between code requirements and actual enforcement. Why
0:5151 secondsso many systems are still oversized and what the industry needs to do differently if we want better outcomes for contractors and homeowners alike.
0:5959 secondsThis one turned into a really solid conversation about where the trade has been, where it's headed, and how education has to evolve if we're going
1:081 minute, 8 secondsto keep it up. Let's get into it. Hey everybody, welcome back to the HAC ADHD podcast. I'm your host Jeremy Begley.
1:161 minute, 16 secondsToday we're here with Brad Cooper from the Arkansas City HVAC BB. Brad, go ahead and introduce yourself and tell us
1:241 minute, 24 secondsa little bit about what you do, what your company is, and why you're here today.
1:291 minute, 29 secondsMy name is Brad Cooper. I'm with Arkansas State University in BB. I'm the advanced HVAC instructor here. I teach
1:361 minute, 36 secondsuh build the curriculum and I am also part of HVAC school. I help contribute with some of their videos and editing.
1:451 minute, 45 secondsOkay. Tell us a little bit about your background. Like how did you wind up teaching HVAC? What you what brought you What was your pathway through the trade?
1:531 minute, 53 secondsWhen I was 9 years old, I rode with my dad for the first time in his company truck. He owned his own company in 1986 and went out riding with him, taking
2:022 minutes, 2 secondspictures. By 10, I was insulating duck work. It to say he heating and air runs in my veins. It really does. Both my
2:102 minutes, 10 secondsbrothers work in it. One of my sons work in it. And of course, my father owned a company and taught me and my brothers how to do heating and air. And then
2:182 minutes, 18 secondswhen, long story short, my father passed away. I ran the business for another four or five years. And when they asked me, they asked the Arkansas State
2:262 minutes, 26 secondsUniversity asked if I knew somebody that wanted to teach. And I was like, you know what? I think I'd want to teach.
2:312 minutes, 31 secondsAnd I started teaching 5 years ago and has just fell in love with the teaching aspect of it.
2:362 minutes, 36 secondsDid you So you sold the company to your brothers or you guys were owners or how did all that work out? I ended up passing off the customer base to another
2:442 minutes, 44 secondscompany that I trusted when I went to work here. It was too much. The first year I taught and work and it was just too much. It was not bad.
2:522 minutes, 52 secondsGetting off at 3 or 4:00 in the afternoon and then going work until dark every night was it was a bit much.
2:572 minutes, 57 secondsIt is a bit much. So the the market down there in Arkansas were you seeing is it mostly a heat pump and electric furnace
3:063 minutes, 6 secondsor AC and electric furnace? What do you guys mostly see there in Arkansas?
3:113 minutes, 11 secondsReally, it's a big split. When you hit subdivisions around here, our gas company will come in and they will supply gas to every house and every
3:193 minutes, 19 secondsmeter for free just to get them to put in gas furnaces and gas hot water heaters. And so that's a big builder.
3:263 minutes, 26 secondsIt's hard for them to pass up that because they're getting a lot of free stuff there. So they're usually going to put that in. And so it's a mix. You get half heat pump, half gas furnace.
3:353 minutes, 35 secondsWhat's your guys weather like down there? What's the climate zone?
3:403 minutes, 40 secondsWe are two weeks out of the year we get down to about 20 and two weeks out of the year we get up to about 105 but other than that we are
3:493 minutes, 49 secondsusually above freezing and below 100 most of the time or I can't remember what zone we're in. What are your design temps?
3:583 minutes, 58 secondsIndoor and outdoor. Just outdoor.
4:024 minutes, 2 secondsYeah, that's what I meant. I'm I meant winter and summer. I believe it's 95 in the summer and it's I'd have to look.
4:104 minutes, 10 secondsOkay. Yeah, I think it's similar. Sort of. Oh, closer a little bit close to what Knoxville is here. We're like We're not 95. We're like 91 in the summer and
4:194 minutes, 19 secondslike 20 some 18 degrees I think in the winter or something like that. Like right around there. It's probably close to that. Uh so that's the same we see
4:284 minutes, 28 secondslike there's like a lot of 80% gas furnaces and there's also a lot of package units that shoot underneath the house into the crawl space. So then you
4:364 minutes, 36 secondsgot just a pack whatever it might be a package electric heat and gas or electric AC and gas heat or package. Now there's new the newer package units do
4:444 minutes, 44 secondshave heat pumps available to them that you can get a package a heat pump. I don't know how much people are really selling those and then you just see a ton of split systems and some gas
4:534 minutes, 53 secondsfurnaces. A lot of heat pumps a lot of electric heat electric furnaces still around here in play that could easily be switched out to heat pumps if it's not
5:015 minutes, 1 secondlike some kind of wiring issue with multif family or something like that.
5:055 minutes, 5 secondsYeah. What do you in school? What is the curriculum that you teach in in the HVAC school? Is it and is it a full like just tell me how the course is set up.
5:145 minutes, 14 secondsWhen I got here 5 years ago, there was eight courses or eight classes that made the course for a technical certificate.
5:205 minutes, 20 secondsAnd so I it's a very basic course. It gets the students a lot more than they a lot more than you learn in your first
5:275 minutes, 27 secondscouple years. You get the basic brazing, flowing nitrogen, pulling a vacuum, all the hands-on stuff. they really need.
5:355 minutes, 35 secondsAnd so what I did was I split the class up half hands-on, half learning. And so they learn how to do something and then we turn around and actually do it in
5:425 minutes, 42 secondsclass. And since I've been here, I have added an associates program that's not quite fully intact yet, but the classes are there. And so now I'm teaching like
5:515 minutes, 51 secondsmy air distribution one class is over static pressure, checking CFM, and building duck work. The second air distribution class is psychrometrics.
6:016 minutes, 1 secondIt's like more on the psychrometric chart. I actually use I think it's psychometric. It's one of
6:096 minutes, 9 secondsHVAC excellence books that Eugene Silverstein wrote. Psych psychrometric without tears. So that's my main book for that class.
6:166 minutes, 16 secondsAnd so I start off basic like they need to know how to do duck work. They need to know how to check air flow. They need static pressure. But then the second
6:236 minutes, 23 secondsyear that's when we start really get into more of the technical stuff with the soccer metrics.
6:306 minutes, 30 secondsOkay. So, it's a structured going to be an associate. It's a certificate program at the college right now, but it's going to end up being a an associate degree
6:396 minutes, 39 secondsfor the students as well as an HVAC certificate so they get both out of it when they take the pathway. So what is
6:466 minutes, 46 secondsis there an extra value to having the associates degree or does it just give them a longer time to learn stuff like airflow and the other things that you
6:566 minutes, 56 secondstalked about that maybe not won't you don't go in depth in a pure HVAC certificate course.
7:037 minutes, 3 secondsYeah. The associates degree is two things. It it gives them more hands-on experience because that's one thing I'm big on is the hands-on.
7:127 minutes, 12 secondsIf you go through class, it's going to take you a year to really get familiar with it if you go outside and do your hands-on. And so the second year is
7:197 minutes, 19 secondsreally getting extra hands-on. And it's going to be more geared around your technical people that are going to be doing service work, the people that
7:277 minutes, 27 secondsmight want to do more with air conditioning, want to own a company. But for somebody that's just wanting to run duck work, somebody that's just want to install units, that technical
7:357 minutes, 35 secondscertificate is a good one. And then the associates. Also, one thing that I've noticed, I grew up in heating and air.
7:407 minutes, 40 secondsSo, I never went and got my degree until I started teaching. And I started teaching and I had all my stuff on LinkedIn. I had all my experience. I had all my certifications, all that stuff up
7:497 minutes, 49 secondsthere. And then as soon as I put that I had an associates degree, shoot, I started getting people were calling me, recruiters calling me wanting me to get jobs. It was uh it they the recruiter
7:587 minutes, 58 secondssaid there was something about the associates degree just showed that you could complete something. And so there was a lot of jobs that they want the associates just to see that you can
8:068 minutes, 6 secondscomplete something or a bachelor's. It's not necessarily that they want you to have a degree. They don't think you're smarter. They just think you're actually going to sit and do something. You're
8:148 minutes, 14 secondsgoing to be there for a while. It's you're not somebody that's going to bounce around from job to job.
8:188 minutes, 18 secondsSo are you talking about recruiting inside the trades or for jobs outside the actual what we would call the trades like the pure trade of turning a wrench
8:268 minutes, 26 secondsor out there in the field? I I am talking more about the outside outside edge of our field like some of the I believe some of the data centers they're
8:348 minutes, 34 secondswanting people with degrees the to run those and and I said that I think it gives them a leg up having an Hback degree and that's where it comes it
8:438 minutes, 43 secondsgives them a leg up it shows them that they've went above and beyond and especially for contributing roles and
8:508 minutes, 50 secondsinstructor roles the degrees really matter abs 100% for that right now does it does your degree include
8:588 minutes, 58 secondsanything with design like the front end of the stuff or right now just driven by the trade end of it.
9:049 minutes, 4 secondsDesign as in as in JSD and engineering and stuff like that. Yeah. At least being able to do understand manual JSD like 101 or something like that.
9:159 minutes, 15 secondsYeah, that we do that. We this year we went over it was one of the my mind just went blank. It's one of the softwares
9:219 minutes, 21 secondsthat you use on the iPad. And then we went over manual J, but we didn't the students didn't get to play with Manual J like they did the one on the iPad. But
9:319 minutes, 31 secondsactually, I think you may know Jason Julian, but he came up here and actually did a class for me and went over. Do you
9:389 minutes, 38 secondsknow the different load calculation software?
9:409 minutes, 40 secondsWe got Ampley, we got Conduit Tech, we got Quick Model, Conduit.
9:459 minutes, 45 secondsI think it was conduit he brought up here and he taught a class on that for the students. And so that that's the stuff. They're basic classes. I want them to get out here and understand that
9:549 minutes, 54 secondswindows, doors, bad insulation, holes in the wall, that's your big heat gains.
9:599 minutes, 59 secondsThe second year is when we get into, okay, now how much heat gain is that window costing you? How much heat gain is your ducks gaining in the attic, all that stuff.
10:0810 minutes, 8 secondsOkay, I like it. That's a much more in-depth class. It sounds I some of the most of the peer certificate classes are
10:1510 minutes, 15 secondsmostly to just get you out there understanding the refrigerant cycle, understanding the EPA laws and turning a wrench a little bit. They don't really
10:2410 minutes, 24 secondsgo into too much of the design and a lot of the stuff that really makes this stuff work. If you do it right on the front end, then you're you you stop
10:3110 minutes, 31 secondshaving a lot of the problems that you have on the back end and don't have as many callbacks and things like that. I think it's important to include that.
10:3810 minutes, 38 secondsthat I've been talking to. I haven't talked to him recently, but I was in a conversation with the college down here, the trade college, to try to just get a
10:4510 minutes, 45 secondslittle one-off design class where we just come in one day and we just expose them to the design stuff and say, "Hey, this isn't part of this class, but it
10:5410 minutes, 54 secondsshould be, and here's some stuff that you definitely should take the time to learn once you get your your your certificate and stuff." because it's the way the H track's been the it's a the
11:0211 minutes, 2 secondsway it's taught right now is the old school just get out there and do it way which we still need that but we need to get guys going quicker and we need them to understand the proper procedures a
11:1011 minutes, 10 secondslot quicker too. I don't think that uh I think there's a lot of revamping in the HVAC education space that needs to be done. The way you guys are doing it is
11:1911 minutes, 19 secondsone way to do it which is make it a longer class offer a little bit more of a carrot which is the associate degree to get people to go through it that way.
11:2711 minutes, 27 secondsThe one thing I think that the college I went to did right that a lot of colleges don't have is they had their second year was co-op. You had to part of that one
11:3611 minutes, 36 secondswhole entire semester of that second year was co-op. You had to go out and get a co-op and work in the space or work in the trade and apply what you
11:4511 minutes, 45 secondslearned and show that you could apply it. And they had they did it for everything. It wasn't just for the trades. I was there for environmental engineering. and you had to do uh co-op
11:5311 minutes, 53 secondsin the environmental engineering field your whole entire last portion of your second year there before you got your degree. They had a renewable energy
12:0112 minutes, 1 secondprogram. It was the same way. You had to go out and work with solar panels or work with some kind of renewable wind or something like that before they would
12:0812 minutes, 8 secondslet you graduate. So, I think that like college if you have that hybrid model there, especially with something that's so hands-on like the trades, I think it
12:1612 minutes, 16 secondsbecomes a super super valuable way to learn stuff for these guys. and even probably they most companies if you're already working with them they're just
12:2512 minutes, 25 secondsgoing to hire you on they're not going to tell you to go work somewhere else if they really like what you're doing there and you're a good fit that's what's we actually have a meeting
12:3412 minutes, 34 secondsnext Thursday here with the state they're coming in they're fixing to give a bunch of money to all the contractors to do apprenticeships and so that's we
12:4312 minutes, 43 secondsgot a big meeting Thursday I'm super excited about that because that's the the school the associates degree by itself matters matters a little bit.
12:5212 minutes, 52 secondsYour hands-on to me by itself means a little bit. You put both of them together and especially if you had a good boss and a good teacher, you're
13:0013 minutesgoing to be a great tech. But you got to have the hands-on.
13:0513 minutes, 5 secondsAre you guys going to Is the apprenticeship going to be worked in with the degree program or is it after and separate or how's that going to work?
13:1313 minutes, 13 secondsRight now, I'm not sure. We're going to That's what our meeting Thursday. Okay.
13:1713 minutes, 17 secondsI think they they got it started about 6 months ago and the last 6 months have been weeding out all the exact rules of how everything's going to work and so I
13:2513 minutes, 25 secondsthink that's what they're coming Thursday to tell us. This is exactly how all this is going to lay out. So I'm hoping we're going to be able to add it directly to the class.
13:3213 minutes, 32 secondsWhat do you see the biggest challenge for these kids that come out of your course once they start working and maintaining their theirelves in the trades and for the people that are out
13:4013 minutes, 40 secondsthere hiring these guys? What do you think the biggest challenge in just getting the labor force that we need out there is based on what you from the
13:4713 minutes, 47 secondseducator space as far as what they need to know or what they need to get out there and do?
13:5613 minutes, 56 secondsJust the biggest challenge of retention in general. So like I I guess the context is we have a big labor shortage in the trades right now. Everybody that
14:0414 minutes, 4 secondsI talk to, yeah, we just need people, man. It doesn't matter where they come from. We need to find somebody to hire.
14:0814 minutes, 8 secondsBusy season's coming. we have a fraction of what we need and or we can't keep people. We can't keep competent people.
14:1414 minutes, 14 secondsThese guys out of HVAC school suck. I hear so much stuff about like why people can't keep people why people in the
14:2214 minutes, 22 secondstrade specifically HVAC cannot keep staff and it's a big ongoing issue. And I just was wondering if you had any
14:2914 minutes, 29 secondsthoughts about which is there something that we could do be doing better while we're teaching these kids. Is there a way to get them started faster and
14:3614 minutes, 36 secondslearning quicker where or operating quicker at full speed so that people feel like they want to keep them around?
14:4314 minutes, 43 secondsSome of the stuff I hear, yeah, they just never catch on. They once they come out of school, they think that's the end of it and they're standing around on their phones or they're doing this or
14:5114 minutes, 51 secondsthey're doing that. They just never really get into the flow of work and actually pick up and become a good tech for us or a good installer or whatever
14:5814 minutes, 58 secondstheir role ends up being. That seems to be an ongoing issue for these business owners, the contractors.
15:0415 minutes, 4 secondsAnd that's where when I started teaching five years ago, I come in, asked them what they needed. They told me, I started teaching and then I went back to
15:1215 minutes, 12 secondsthe advisory board again and said, "Okay, what am I missing here?" And first they was like, "They don't know how to talk to us. They're rude. They're pompous. They're there's all attitude
15:2115 minutes, 21 secondsproblems." And I was like, "Okay." So I started teaching attitude in the class, how you should talk to people. I started I was already teaching soft skills, but I was doing it for customers. I wasn't
15:2915 minutes, 29 secondsdoing it for your boss. And so I had to start teaching soft skills for bosses.
15:3315 minutes, 33 secondsThen now my big issue has been they're calling me complaining that these guys aren't ready for addicts and under floors. You need to get a 120°ree room
15:4115 minutes, 41 secondsfor them to go sit in for a few minutes and actually change something or braze something. And so that's my next goal is to start bringing in hot rooms. And they
15:5015 minutes, 50 secondsneed to crawl under our house once or twice. They need to know what they're getting into before they get there. And telling them is one thing, but again, hands-on. You setting up in an attic for 20 minutes while you braze something.
16:0116 minutes, 1 secondThat's a completely different story.
16:0316 minutes, 3 secondsIt's Navy Seals for HVAC tech. We got to put them through it so that they know what they're going through because they get out there, they're not ready for
16:1016 minutes, 10 secondsthese addicts. These guys are soft these days. I don't know. The other side of it is a lot of these a lot of kids today aren't coming up like the kids that were
16:1716 minutes, 17 secondsin the trades earlier. They came up working outside with their fathers up on their cars in attict in the woods.
16:2316 minutes, 23 secondsWhatever that guy was doing, they were doing too. And now kids are really stuck in their rooms playing video games with their moms down in the kitchen instead
16:3016 minutes, 30 secondsof out with their dad. So they never really You make an awesome point. They have never really experienced the hardship. And that may be one of the the
16:3916 minutes, 39 secondsthings that they get in and get right back out. Man, this ain't what I signed up for. I didn't know anything about I didn't think I had five hot days in a row. I want to be I'd rather be playing
16:4716 minutes, 47 secondsvideo games. Do you see technology helping with any of this at all? Is there a way like the what the technology that's coming online whether it be
16:5416 minutes, 54 secondsmeasure quick or conduit tech or anything any of the AI stuff. Do you think that is going to help with employee retention in any way, shape or form?
17:0317 minutes, 3 secondsI think it should, especially with measure quick where you can you can be sitting in your office right now looking at what I'm doing here in Arkansas on
17:1117 minutes, 11 secondswhat a unit I'm working on. And so, yeah, I think that stuff we're going to be able to get some of these students. I had one in particular this year that was
17:1917 minutes, 19 secondsbrilliant guy. He just he and he learned all about air conditioning. He just doesn't really want to go out and work in it. And so, that's understandable,
17:2717 minutes, 27 secondsbut he needs to be engineer. He needs to be a a tech support. He needs tech support makes pretty good money usually for most
17:3617 minutes, 36 secondsof these companies. And it's like tech support. He could be great at tech support if he doesn't want to go out in the field. And that's what I tell the students. You don't have to go under
17:4317 minutes, 43 secondshouses and in atticss, but that's where you're going to start. You're going to have to get the basics out of the way, but then after you get a couple years of that, you can get out of attics and go
17:5117 minutes, 51 secondsdo something else. Or like we talked about the engineering part, we have another school here in Arkansas. We're a two-year school, so we don't offer anything higher, but there's a
17:5917 minutes, 59 secondsbachelor's degree that's heavy in HVAC pretty close to us. And so they can even do engineering for mechanical engineering here in the state pretty close.
18:0918 minutes, 9 secondsSo that's it's an interesting point about the text and being able to sit in the office and use measure quick and you
18:1618 minutes, 16 secondsuse the term called tech support. So that's something that I don't normally hear guys talking about as a position inside a shop. But I think that it is a
18:2518 minutes, 25 secondsposition that's going to exist. Or else the the worst thing that could happen is your front office support, your CSRs,
18:3218 minutes, 32 secondsthey become your default technical support and then they're answering questions and try to fill guys in the field. Service manager is the service
18:4018 minutes, 40 secondsmanager, but it I guess let's talk about it like this. Is service manager now tech support or is tech support a
18:4718 minutes, 47 secondsposition that works under service manager to support the technology that's in the field and the way the guys are working in the field? because I'm it's super interesting. I have not heard this
18:5618 minutes, 56 secondsparticular terminology applied except from behind the counter. The tech support is something I associate with the guys behind the counter at the OEM
19:0419 minutes, 4 secondsshops when you go there and you're asking for help and they're back there trying to figure help you or you call in and are trying to help you. But inner
19:1119 minutes, 11 secondsoffice tech support is a very interesting concept. I I think that's something worth exploring. And what is
19:1819 minutes, 18 secondswhere what was the basis of using is that a real position that you've seen or like how does that work?
19:2319 minutes, 23 secondsIt is it's one that I'd seen not here locally. It was at a bigger company and it was a bigger company that had two or three tech supports that had access to
19:3119 minutes, 31 secondsall their techs and I don't remember which company it was. But the great thing about all this is like you were saying if you've got a company that's
19:4019 minutes, 40 secondsgot five people your tech support is probably going to be the owner or maybe the second in command. And so they're going to have to know, okay, you can
19:4719 minutes, 47 secondsonly sign me up for three service calls today because I'm I'm going to have to help other people.
19:5319 minutes, 53 secondsBut then if you have a company that's got 10 people now, maybe your service manager is also tech support and so he's just going to have to carry his laptop
20:0020 minuteswherever he goes so he can pull stuff up, which I'm assuming even now measure quick, you probably pull it up on your phone and be able to check it out.
20:0720 minutes, 7 secondsYeah. Tablet at a minimum. Yeah, for sure. Yep.
20:1020 minutes, 10 secondsthat. And again, the problem with that is MeasureQuick is so dang detailed, it's hard. You almost
20:1820 minutes, 18 secondsdon't need me tech support with measure quick. But that's where I thought and the more people you get, you could have dedicated one or two people doing tech
20:2620 minutes, 26 secondssupport. And of course, I think they would should have another role in the company. That's what I think it's great about it is you could have somebody that
20:3220 minutes, 32 secondsnow CSRs, it'd be hard to have a CSR be tech support, too. I think Yeah, it is hard. You see it happen a lot. A lot of times these guys, they by
20:4120 minutes, 41 secondsdefault get thrown into the fire and they're the one answering the technical questions that they definitely 100% should not be answering. That is why I'm
20:4920 minutes, 49 secondslike, it can't be that person because that person has to deal with the customers. They got a whole different job to do. Well, I think there is some value in having somebody that's really
20:5620 minutes, 56 secondsgood with MeasureQuick and really good on the technical side and understands everything about they that everything about everything out in the field back
21:0521 minutes, 5 secondsin the office with a tablet and then they can like you said stream the measure quick screen right to that guy and he's Yeah. Yep. I'm putting out this
21:1321 minutes, 13 secondsfire. Okay, hold on. I got another fire to put out. Because if you got a big enough company, you could make a whole day out of doing that. That definitely is something that that somebody's day
21:2121 minutes, 21 secondscould be spent just supporting those guys out in the field. Now, like you said, in smaller companies, it's de facto going to be the service manager
21:2821 minutes, 28 secondsand andor the owner if the owner is a technical owner. Some owners are not technical owner. They're sales owners and they default to other to other owners. So, it just depends. If that's
21:3821 minutes, 38 secondsthe it does it is a good point to be made that the service man because of the technology now the service manager does
21:4621 minutes, 46 secondshave the bandwidth and the ability to not only be the service manager support but also the tech support for the guys
21:5421 minutes, 54 secondsout there running the service calls as well. and he might not have been able to do that duty that way before because he's just too worried about running the
22:0222 minutes, 2 secondswhole the department as a whole and making sure those guys are in places where they need to be doing the things they need to do and stuff like that and handling customer support that sort of
22:1022 minutes, 10 secondsthing. Tech support I think about it two ways. one, yes, supporting the actual techs out in the field, but also supporting the technology that those
22:1922 minutes, 19 secondsguys are using because the more we lean on the technology, the more we need some because we all know that technology is only as good as it works. The minute it don't work, it's not any good anymore.
22:2922 minutes, 29 secondsAnd if you're depending on it, then you need somebody that can get it back working pretty quickly or understand the best use case for it. And I think that
22:3722 minutes, 37 secondshaving a tech support that's also a technology support for the trade tools that we use is probably going to be a big deal moving forward in today's world.
22:4722 minutes, 47 secondsYeah. I have a advisory board member just called me the other day and he's wanting to slow down and so he's wanting to become the CSR of the company and
22:5522 minutes, 55 secondshe's wanting to hire somebody to replace him to run service and so he that would be a perfect opportunity for him to be able to do tech support because he's the
23:0223 minutes, 2 secondsCSR owner everything. So, he'll be able to just sit in the office and do tech support.
23:0623 minutes, 6 secondsYeah. No, it's great. It's a whole new position that's opening up for these guys that are a little bit savvy with what they're doing out there and can get their time in and absorb. That's one of
23:1523 minutes, 15 secondsthe best advice you can give everybody is just be a sponge. Learn the whole entire trade. Don't silo yourself. That way, you're always going to have some
23:2223 minutes, 22 secondskind of opportunity because inside HVAC, there's so much you can do. There's so many different moving parts and pieces to it, whether it's residential or
23:2923 minutes, 29 secondscommercial, that you don't see that from the outside looking in. and all they see is making the hot the heating and air work. But there's so much that goes into
23:3823 minutes, 38 secondsactually doing that the right way that it behooves a guy to all to learn everything in the beginning and then find out where his specialty is versus
23:4623 minutes, 46 secondsjust trying to focus on one thing right away. I think you need to open yourself up to the way everything works together and then go at it from that angle.
23:5523 minutes, 55 secondsYeah. When I got here our it was called air conditioning technology and so that was one of the first things I did. I was like we got to change the name. I said because I got to teach heating, I got to
24:0424 minutes, 4 secondsteach ventilation, and I got to teach refrigeration. And I said, "So, we're missing three things there." And then that was the point was they didn't want those three things taught originally is
24:1224 minutes, 12 secondsbecause the ad the older advisory board members wanted installers. They wanted them to know how to install duck work and that was about it and maybe brace.
24:2124 minutes, 21 secondsAnd I was like, "No, we got to teach them the whole thing." And so I brought refrigeration in and started teaching refrigeration first thing cuz that's the refrigeration cycle is refrigeration.
24:3024 minutes, 30 secondsand we do a tour at a local company here in town next town over and we go over and they've got rack rack refrigeration.
24:3824 minutes, 38 secondsAnd so we go in there, they've got a reversing valve just like we do except for it's huge and it's called a four-way valve instead of a rever reversing valve. They've got receivers, but
24:4724 minutes, 47 secondsinstead of being 8 8 10 in tall, they're 10t long. And so it's all the same stuff. Thing they have is the EPR and
24:5524 minutes, 55 secondsthe oil separator. That's the only two really big things he's got in that shop that we don't have in our shop. And so that's what we teach here is all
25:0325 minutes, 3 secondseverything. I want him to know everything because again, I've got one student moving to Wyoming next this year. He ain't going to deal with any
25:1025 minutes, 10 secondsheat pumps. He's probably dealing with all gas and oil stuff and he needed to know all of it, not just what we're what we do here.
25:1825 minutes, 18 secondsYeah, absolutely. So, you said we were having a conversation about the code officials. You want to tell me what was going on with that?
25:2625 minutes, 26 secondsYeah, we in our code it says that there's a few things actually. You got to pull a permit on every construction job. So, if it's 50% of the duck work or
25:3525 minutes, 35 secondsyou're replacing a unit or installing a new unit, you're supposed to pull a permit. You're supposed to if if you're installing a unit, whether it's a change
25:4325 minutes, 43 secondsout or a new install, it's got to have a load calc. And then there's got to be a return path from every room. And those
25:5225 minutes, 52 secondsare three things that the only time any of those get checked is when there's an actual issue. And so the state, they
26:0026 minutesrequire permits, but nobody ever actually pulls them. And then there's no penalty for nobody pull for somebody not
26:0726 minutes, 7 secondspulling one. And so nobody ever pulls one. And so the state only gets called in when there's problems usually. And so when they come in, they initially ask
26:1526 minutes, 15 secondsfor a load calculation. That's the first thing they ask for as soon as they get there. But most of the cities, they do their own inspections and they go and
26:2326 minutes, 23 secondsinspect and they don't even look at load calculations unless there's a problem and which is I would probably say 70 to
26:3126 minutes, 31 seconds90% of our units in or yeah units in Arkansas are probably oversized.
26:3726 minutes, 37 secondsSo do they collect the load calculation and just file it? That's what a lot of places do and then they don't at least they have it on file but they don't ever look at it. They just put the whatever
26:4526 minutes, 45 secondsthe piece of paper is given them to given to them on file and do it like Hamilton County uh Cincinnati, Ohio, Hamilton County that I'm most familiar
26:5326 minutes, 53 secondswith. They city of Cincinnati is pretty good at collecting a load calculation.
26:5926 minutes, 59 secondsThey'll even may even make some comments on it or something like that if you don't have it all the way filled out to the what they the par that they fill, but they're definitely not like checking
27:0727 minutes, 7 secondsthe calculation or checking the inputs or anything like that. Now, on the commercial side, they do a full design review and a plan review, and if they I
27:1627 minutes, 16 secondshave had them push back on some of my loads before and not say they were too small, but I or too big, but I have had them say some were too small, you're not
27:2427 minutes, 24 secondsgoing to have enough heating or I even had one inspector like we went up and down the tree on it and he made me change even though I was using the AKA design temperature, he made me change it
27:3227 minutes, 32 secondsto something that he felt was more conducive to the area based on whatever anecdotal information he had. and those guys there's nothing you could do like
27:4127 minutes, 41 secondsjurisdiction having authority is it so like boom we had to change it to and you all these loads even backdate all these load to change it to this design
27:4827 minutes, 48 secondstemperature that he all of a sudden won it for some reason but like by and large those guys like as far as I've ever seen like they might say they collect them
27:5627 minutes, 56 secondsbut I don't know of many m municipalities that are doing any kind of good load calculation review on them
28:0328 minutes, 3 secondsnow I have had I forget where it was somewhere some municipality one time asked me to give them a proposal for
28:1028 minutes, 10 secondsputting together a design review class for those guys for the Lakota code inspectors but they didn't whatever the my number was they didn't like it they
28:1828 minutes, 18 secondsnever got back with me they never did the class but that is a big education piece that's missing I think for the guys that are in the code is like understanding loads understanding why we
28:2728 minutes, 27 secondsthey why the code even says you need them because somewhere somehow it got voted in the code somebody on some board saw value in the fact that you do need
28:3428 minutes, 34 secondsthat but that is as far as it ever went they never gave these guys one ounce of education about what the thing is, why
28:4228 minutes, 42 secondsyou need it, how it's used, what to look for, like any of that stuff. Most of these guys have very little to no idea.
28:4928 minutes, 49 secondsNow, I do know like some of them like the city inspector in Cincinnati, a couple of them are exhaust, but even when they were doing HVAC, they weren't really doing load calculations.
28:5828 minutes, 58 secondsSo, they don't really understand the value of it and the use case and why it should be like the thing that sets the standard for what's going in the house
29:0629 minutes, 6 secondsthere. So, I it's just a huge disconnect. You got any thoughts on how to get through to these guys? Because I certainly have tried and have not had much success.
29:1529 minutes, 15 secondsNo, that's where I've hit a wall because the inspectors, they're underpaid and underappreciated and they work with a
29:2129 minutes, 21 secondsbunch of pretty rough characters, HVAC, electrical, plumbing, carpenters, and they have to pick and choose what they
29:2929 minutes, 29 secondscan do. And with our state, if at least one of the inspectors that I dealt with in the past, I gave him my load calculation and he looked at it and it
29:3729 minutes, 37 secondswas just so happened I was so busy I couldn't do it myself. So I sent it off and had it done. And since it was a third party, he didn't even he reviewed it, but he didn't actually take it back
29:4629 minutes, 46 secondsand do it himself. But he was ex HVAC and so whenever he would come to your house and if I did the load calc and gave it to him, he would take it back to
29:5429 minutes, 54 secondshis office and redo the load calc again to make sure it was correct.
29:5729 minutes, 57 secondsWow, that's amazing. But that was one inspector that I don't believe is with us anymore.
30:0330 minutes, 3 secondsBut yeah, he he used to be really good at that. That's great.
30:0630 minutes, 6 secondsInspector inspector now, the lead inspector, I believe him and some other people have got it now to where all inspectors in
30:1430 minutes, 14 secondsArkansas have to take continuing education on HVAC. And so hopefully this is where maybe we can get some of this stuff in where we teach them how to do
30:2330 minutes, 23 secondsload calculations, which most of them may already know. They just don't have the resources. And so maybe we can figure out how to get them the resources and get them checking these loads. Cuz
30:3230 minutes, 32 secondsthe state inspector yesterday flat out asked me, he said, "Why would you install a unit without doing a load calculation?" I said, "I wouldn't." He
30:3930 minutes, 39 secondssaid, "Exactly." He said, "We need load calculations on every single house." And I said, "I agree. I fully agree." And so
30:4630 minutes, 46 secondsthey get it. They just they don't have the time nor the money, nor the manpower to be able to do it.
30:5330 minutes, 53 secondsYeah. And it's a really the biggest one of the bigger problems too is it's a garbage in garbage out process. So even if you do get people doing it like you got to make sure they're doing
31:0131 minutes, 1 secondeverything all the inputs have to be pretty precise to what the house is that's being built down to a blower door test. It's another thing like they don't
31:0931 minutes, 9 secondsyou don't really get you definitely don't have any code anywhere in life saying that you have to do a blower door test on an HVAC change out and you so
31:1831 minutes, 18 secondsyou might get some duck leakage requirements but you're definitely not getting blower door requirements. And so that's one thing there. If you don't know the infiltration in the the blower
31:2731 minutes, 27 secondsdoor driven infiltration number for the load calculation, it's a lot less precise than it could be. So right there is one thing that's almost never getting
31:3431 minutes, 34 secondsdone. Then you got people like how many of these guys are actually getting in the attic and measuring insulation levels. How many of them are actually getting in the crawl spaces and looking
31:4231 minutes, 42 secondsat the insulation and grading it the right way for doing some kind of weighted calculation for the highs and lows of the insulation to get the right R value for that needs to go in there.
31:5131 minutes, 51 secondsAnd then how many of them are actually looking at the windows and seeing how many are double pane, how many are triple pane, how many are single pane, how many are wood, how many are aluminum. Like it just goes on and on.
32:0132 minutes, 1 secondEven with these LAR technologies that we have, these guys that run that own these softwares are encouraging these people that buy them to use the defaults that
32:0932 minutes, 9 secondsthey have. They're calling them AIdriven defaults and saying they're good enough.
32:1332 minutes, 13 secondsAnd really it cheats the customer or it cheats you as the contractor too on getting the value of the data that's
32:2032 minutes, 20 secondsinside that load calculation which is like thermally what that house is actually doing and being able to understand the ins and outs of the
32:2732 minutes, 27 secondscomfort problems and the health problems and the IQ problems that are going on in there. All that stuff is exposed during the course of doing an actual detail
32:3432 minutes, 34 secondsload calculation. So it just it's a soap box for me. I it really irritates me that people now we have the technology to actually do a good load calculation
32:4332 minutes, 43 secondsin a reasonable amount of time and people are still trying to find a way to shorten it. And I get it if it's a change out situation and you got to have something you got right there and you're
32:5132 minutes, 51 secondsagainst five other guys. That's one thing man but like you got customer base that you could go make you pick the time you want to go in their house make an
32:5932 minutes, 59 secondsappointment with them one of their service calls get the right load calculation and have all kinds of information on their house in the
33:0633 minutes, 6 secondsperpetuity. It's so obtainable now and it's just being taught to these guys the wrong way. It's a checkbox for them instead of a valuable piece of information and data.
33:1633 minutes, 16 secondsAnd you're right about the duct test and the air seal test. Both of those are very important. Now again, if you guess
33:2433 minutes, 24 secondsI mean you're going to have a correct load calculation, but you're still guessing. So if you're guessing that it's a tight house or very tight house
33:3133 minutes, 31 secondsor not very tight, you're just guessing unless you're doing a a blow door. And also too, those default like the thing you're talking about tight, semi-tight,
33:4033 minutes, 40 secondsloose, and average, which are the metrics, the default metrics inside the load calculation, like those things are nowhere near clo every single house has
33:4933 minutes, 49 secondsa different level of infiltration. And like even if you use those, there's such a wide range of metrics inside each one of those that the chance of actually
33:5633 minutes, 56 secondsgetting the right size equipment. what you need. Especially like the latent is something that you can never know from that stuff because the air infiltration
34:0434 minutes, 4 secondsmeasurement actually can help you predict what the latent load on the home is. How much as far as like the air that it's bringing and how much that adds to
34:1234 minutes, 12 secondsthe latent load. And then on the heating load and heating dominated climates, it's insane the amount of load that's added by air infiltration or taken away
34:2034 minutes, 20 secondsby air infiltration. So if you don't know that piece of information in your size in a furnace or a heat pump, you're going to be way off. Way off. And that's
34:2834 minutes, 28 secondswhy some of these guys like Manuel Jay is getting a little bit banged up out in public because there's these guys going around doing billing calculations based
34:3534 minutes, 35 secondson billing and weather data and they're getting a more precise heating load calculation. And it's not because the manual J methodology is that bad. It's
34:4334 minutes, 43 secondsbecause of the information going into it is that loose that it's not really giving you a precise calculation that these guys with these billing calculations are coming up with. And if
34:5234 minutes, 52 secondsyou're not having to worry about latent, it is probably a faster way to do a load calculation, too, if you have both pieces of information right there and a software to dump them in.
35:0235 minutes, 2 secondsYeah. And I like that new software, the LAR that it uses, it's very accurate.
35:0735 minutes, 7 secondsAnd to me, the way I did load calculations because my computer originally set at the house,
35:1635 minutes, 16 secondsI didn't have a laptop, so mine was a hard uh regular desktop. And so I would go out, draw the house, write down all my measurements. I would write down all the windows, everything just like that.
35:2535 minutes, 25 secondsI would go back, draw it all out on Rightsoft, get it all done, and then it would do my load calculation. And I would still every time have to go in the
35:3435 minutes, 34 secondsback screen and make sure all my windows, ceilings, everything was exactly correct. And I would do that and make sure it was right and then go on.
35:4135 minutes, 41 secondsNow with the new LAR stuff, you go through and it does all the drawing for you. And then you just go through and pick then you go in the back screens and make sure all the windows and doors and
35:4935 minutes, 49 secondsall that's correct. Make sure your measurements are right. And man, it cuts out a lot of time.
35:5435 minutes, 54 secondsYeah. But guys are even skirting that part. They're just using the defaults, the AI inputs for the back screen stuff and not even filling in the back screen.
36:0236 minutes, 2 secondsAnd it could probably because of the way sizings are because we're half ton increments and then that's not even exactly correct. It can probably get you
36:0936 minutes, 9 secondsclose enough doing that as long as that there's not been a lot of major updates done to the house, but you're not getting the true value of the load
36:1636 minutes, 16 secondscalculation when it comes to the understanding thermally what's going in and on in the house. And it's not really AKA says you need to do a precise load
36:2436 minutes, 24 secondscalculation and that used to mean like you had to be pretty close in variances on what was going in to the house and whatnot. It's just a different there's
36:3236 minutes, 32 secondstwo different ways of doing stuff being taught and they have to come in it together in the middle somewhere so that we can be fast but also be correct and get the value out of what we're doing.
36:4336 minutes, 43 secondsYeah, definitely. The that that's honestly why I started teaching was because there was my dad always complained about having to
36:5236 minutes, 52 secondsgo behind other HVAC contractors and fix stuff and I was like that's just money for us. we get to come back and fix their work. And dad's, "Yeah, but the
36:5936 minutes, 59 secondscustomer's paying twice." And I was like, "Ah, yeah." And so when they called me to teach, that was my first in I had just flipped around. Uh there was
37:0837 minutes, 8 secondsa unit that was 6 years old. The tech that installed it had been out there 12 times. He'd been out there every summer and every winter since he installed it.
37:1737 minutes, 17 secondsHe called me out there. He wanted me to replace it. So I got out there, I was like, "Man, this is only 6 years old.
37:2337 minutes, 23 secondsIt's still under warranty. Why are you replacing it?" And he said, "They can't get it fixed." And so I put my gauges on it and I got 180 suction pressure and 240 head pressure. Like you don't have a
37:3237 minutes, 32 secondspiston in there. And so I go look and sure enough the piston's backwards. So I flip the piston around, turn it on, and take out like three pounds of refrigerant and he was good to go. Okay.
37:4137 minutes, 41 secondsAnd that dude just paid me a few hundred to fix his unit when he probably paid this other guy several probably $1,000
37:4837 minutes, 48 secondsover the last six years coming back and forth to add refrigerant and take it out. and and and if it was working with a backwards piston, that means it was way oversized.
38:0038 minutesSo that right there when they called me to go to ask me if somebody if I knew somebody wanted to teach, that's I think that was the part that I was like, "Yes, I want to teach so this quits happening.
38:1038 minutes, 10 secondsI don't want I customers need the best from us. They don't need what we have right now. They need the best from us."
38:1738 minutes, 17 secondsAnd it's unfortunate, but in my 20 years of experience, I probably swapped out two pistons a year just flipping them backwards because somebody would put them in wrong.
38:2738 minutes, 27 secondsOh yeah. Stuff like that always happens.
38:2938 minutes, 29 secondsI used to do commercial tab for a long time and I would always see fans put in backwards. They'd be spinning backwards.
38:3638 minutes, 36 secondsBe like, "The stuff's not working." Yeah, the fan's spinning backwards. Your guy put it in the wrong way. That's the first thing every anytime you got bad air flow, the first thing we'll do when
38:4538 minutes, 45 secondswe're on the roof is check the way this fan's spinning to make sure it's spinning the wrong way because a lot of times people just put the dang fan in backwards.
38:5238 minutes, 52 secondsThat stuff definitely uh happens when you're out there and it's just a process that that's why teaching commissioning
39:0039 minutesand startup and all that stuff is so important because it's another step that guys just set it and forget it a lot of times. And we see it all the time with residential furnaces and air handlers.
39:0939 minutes, 9 secondsThe air flow is just not set up, man.
39:1139 minutes, 11 secondsThey just set it down and leave up out of there. And then you ask them and they're like, "Yeah, our boss told us to get it done and get out of there. They didn't tell us to set it up, right?" And
39:1839 minutes, 18 secondsI've actually had owners tell me that's the way they run their shop. Yeah, we want them in and out. We got a service department that'll come back and tune it up. Tune it up. What do you mean tune it
39:2639 minutes, 26 secondsup? They should be set it up. We should be setting it up. You shouldn't have to go back out for a service call two weeks after a system got installed. That's
39:3439 minutes, 34 secondsunacceptable. They know that's a call back that's costing them money. it's an unnecessary trip and it irritates the homeowner and it over time erodess
39:4239 minutes, 42 secondstrust. If that has to keep happening, if they have to come back every time they supposedly fix something, then that's not a good look for you and it's going to be harder and harder to compete out
39:5039 minutes, 50 secondshere in this private equity world that we're in.
39:5439 minutes, 54 secondsI heard somebody say the other day, I believe it was the owner of a company, said that every call back cost him four service calls. He said, "For every time
40:0140 minutes, 1 secondI've got to send somebody back out, I've got to have you do four more service calls to make that back up." Wow. Never heard it put that way. That's awesome.
40:1040 minutes, 10 secondsBut that was the that was him cuz he's not getting paid to go back and fix this unit. And then on top of that, he could have been doing another service call or
40:1740 minutes, 17 secondstwo. And so altogether, they lose four service calls because of that one call back. And I was like that I was like, I'd have to see the math, but that sounds right.
40:2540 minutes, 25 secondsIn the financial world, we call that compounding interest.
40:2940 minutes, 29 secondsYes, that's exactly it. Yeah, that's the you suck tax. Yeah.
40:3840 minutes, 38 secondsYeah, that's I've had a couple advisory board members ask me, how do we need to make more money? I was like, less call backs. I was like, how many times are you going back on units? We're going
40:4640 minutes, 46 secondsback on three or four a week. I was like, no, you need to go back on one or two a month. Call backs are going to happen, but it's going to be ridiculous stuff. It not normal. you forgot the
40:5540 minutes, 55 secondsbreaker or you forgot to put the disconnect back in or I think the national average is 7%. Guys that consider themselves great
41:0241 minutes, 2 secondscontractors run around a 2% call back. I had B Cooksky tell me that his company's doing a half percent call back since implementing measure quick throughout
41:1041 minutes, 10 secondsthe company. So that is a game measure is a game changer on on the callbacks.
41:1541 minutes, 15 secondsif you implement it, stick to your guns, and do it right every day, and you're using the stuff the way that it's meant to be used, and the guys are asking
41:2341 minutes, 23 secondsquestions when they need to, that's just one of the things that technology, the one of the ways that we taking advantage of technology can really change the game for these guys out there.
41:3441 minutes, 34 secondsAnd when you first use Measure Quick, it takes a little bit because you got to get used to everything. But once you're used to it, it doesn't take hardly any
41:4241 minutes, 42 secondsextra time. And if you're on that house for the second time and you've already got your porch drilled, you just pull out your plug and stick it in and then
41:5041 minutes, 50 secondspull it back out and put your plug back in. Exactly.
41:5241 minutes, 52 secondsSo, you get to save all the drilling time and it's coming. I I believe I believe something like Measure Quick is going to have to be used eventually.
42:0142 minutes, 1 secondYeah, I think Measure It should be Measure Quick. They're so far down that road. Uh, all right. We're running up on time here. So, before we get off here, I'm going to do two things. One, that's
42:1042 minutes, 10 secondsis something I do with everybody is if the world ended today and somebody asked you to leave advice on the wall for the society that comes after, what would that advice be?
42:2442 minutes, 24 secondsLeave what you're working on better for the next person. So, if you're working on a unit, I I always pretend like it's going to be my unit.
42:3442 minutes, 34 secondsSo, if I'm working on your unit, I'm going to expect I'm coming back. And so when I get done with that job that day, I'm going to make it completely set up
42:4242 minutes, 42 secondsperfectly for the next person to come in there and make it easy on them. Just like here with me teaching, I have went
42:4842 minutes, 48 secondsthrough and built classes for built books for every one of my classes. So just in case I'm not the next
42:5642 minutes, 56 secondsinstructor, my next instructor will be able to come in, pick up these books, open it up, and go, "Oh, day one we do this. All right, great." And he can go
43:0343 minutes, 3 secondsthrough and do it. So important that what you're talking about documenting processes, that's so important. So important. Leave it better than you found it.
43:1243 minutes, 12 seconds100%. And last but not least, do you have any socials or any place you want to shout out where people can get a hold of you or talk to you if they want to or chop it up?
43:2143 minutes, 21 secondsHVAC Educator. I'm on LinkedIn, Facebook, and somehow I guess Facebook's linked in with Instagram. So I guess I'm
43:2943 minutes, 29 secondson Instagram, too. I didn't realize that. Yeah, it's the whole they own it all.
43:3443 minutes, 34 secondsYeah, I started getting followers on Instagram. I'm like, "What in the world?" And I got to looking, I was like, "Oh, I've been posting that from Facebook somehow." Yeah. It's hilarious. That's awesome, though.
43:4243 minutes, 42 secondsAll right, Brad. Good stuff. Thanks for coming out and we'll talk to you next time. Thank you for having me.
