copyrighted to NEST Labs

Nest is the “smart” HVAC thermostat that was rolled out with much fanfare earlier this year (or was it late last year). I’ve been watching form a distance but there’s some new updates that are really intriguing. The latest is from TechCrunch, a website for early stage technology discussions and new tech editorial. You can see it here

but also see the 2.0 updates directly from the source here.

I love this stuff. Not only is it bringing our industry some new fresh ideas but also it is letting the manufacturers begins to wee what the advantage of “over the air” technology can provide to keeping consumers up to date with the products they buy.  Here’s a quick overview of what’s new

• Enhanced Energy History that’s available on the Web and Mobile apps.
• Airwave™, an exclusive energy-saving feature available just in time for cooling season.
• Additional info and control of Nest features via the Web and iPhone and Android apps.
• Updated Menu and Settings within the Nest Learning Thermostat.

• Polyurethanes
• Epoxies
• Fluoropolymers
• Silane

Some of these coatings are manufacturer applied, others done in the field. The objective of the coating is to protect the coils from moisture and contaminants that could cause corrosion and pitting and therefore resulting in pinhole leaks. Generally coils are coated when they are in environments where moisture can contain acidic materials. None of these are what you want.

The easy answer is not to clean coils with acidic or highly caustic agents. This is easier said than done because many coil cleaners on the market fit these two categories spot on.

For most coatings however, alkaline coil cleaners like our SpeedFoam will do a great job and not adversely impact the coating.

The trickiness of this answer is that while an alkaline coil cleaner can generally be less harmful to coils because it contains no acids, it can have an impact on the coatings. This will then impact the life of the coatings and therefore expose the specific coils to the environment from which the coating is protecting them.

In particular cases where you are concerned about cleaning coated coils with alkaline coil cleaner, I recommend BBJ Power Coil Clean. This is a powerful coil cleaning agent that is pH neutral yet offers fantastic cleaning power and – it’s completely biodegradable.

This product can be applied using our CoilJet portable coil cleaning system, which makes cleaning coils on the go fast and easy.

When: March 5-8, 2012

SpeedClean will be showcasing a few of our top products at this years ACCA show in Las Vegas, NV.  This show caps a bit of a run for us and squares us away for a good start to the HVAC cleaning season. Come by the booth to see Mike and Tim and get the run down on our HVAC and plumbing maintenance products including:

CoilJet Portable Coil Cleaning System
Condenser Needle Condenser Coil Cleaning Tool
BucketDescaler Portable Descaling System for Tanked and Tankless water heaters.

Come loaded with questions and leave with all the answers you need.

Well just like last year, and the year before that, SpeedClean will be there. I will be joined this year, like last by Mike Hardy, our National account manager and Jessica Sturm, our sales and marketing assistant. We will be armed with new products, good solid information and of course, a wonderful give-away. But more on the give-away later.

First up, what will we be showing this year.

CoilJet Portable Coil Cleaning System

CoilJet is our flagship product. Simply pout, it give you the power of portable coil cleaning in a easy-to-use handheld, rechargeable package. Yep, this little puppy puts out a powerful 100psi of water/coil cleaner by way of a portable 5 gallon water tank and 1/2 gallon coil cleaner tank.  Plenty of power to clean the dirtiest coils. If you have coils in hard-to-reach places, then you need to check out CoilJet. Attics, cell towers, rooftops, trucks, refrigerators, ptac units. It does them all. More info here.

Condenser Needle Condenser Cleaning Tool

We know, that you know, that we know the right way to clean a condenser unit is not with a hose shot straight at the coils. This bends the coils. Runs the airflow and makes the system have to work harder. The BEST way to clean condenser coils is from the back, out – opposite the airflow. So, we’ve develop a tool to do just that. Condenser Needle is a low profile aluminum wand that attaches to any standard garden hose and delivers a patented spray directly to the coil. It’s designed to fit behind the coils, through the top grate of most Condenser units. This saves time by not having to remove the top grate. It also features an integrated coil cleaner siphon hose that you can use with your favorite environmentally friendly coil cleaner – SpeedyFoam – to add more cleaning power. More info here.

SpeedyFoam Alkaline Foaming Coil Cleaner

OK, we know there’s a ton of coil cleaners on the market. Some are foaming. Some are concentrated and some are Alkaline. How about all three? Yep, SpeedyFoam is a super concentrated foaming coil cleaner that is acid-free, won’t burn you or HVAC tools and is environmentally friendly. We recommend it for use in all our coil cleaning products because a gallon can go a long, long way. More info here.

Bucket Descaler Portable Descaling System

Stop the presses if you haven’t seen this thing. It rocks. It’s specifically designed to remove scale buildup from heater elements in tankless units, water heaters, small heat exchangers and more. It attaches to any standard 5 gallon bucket and is designed with the highest quality, acid proof pumps and fittings. Pair it with SpeedyBright, our UL tested potable water descaler and you are minutes away from clean heat exchangers. This isn’t your old pump n bucket solution. No way. It keeps the user safe by enclosing all the cleaning chemicals. It offers and easy and safe way to recirculate and get rid of waste water. And can be capped for safe disposal. Very cool huh. We’ve got a video of this thing at work, plus you can get more info here.

SpeedyBright Water Descaler

Limescale literally disappears before your eyes with our powerful, yet safe UL tested water descaler. SpeedyBright is designed for use with our Bucket Descaler product or other pumping system. It is pre-measured in half gallon “shots” to eliminate the guess work of cleaning tankless water heaters. Simply mix with water and circulate for 20-30 minutes. Scale, rust and other buildup is quickly removed from the system returning efficiency. Learn more.

BucketVac Industrial Wet/Dry Vacuum

Saving one of our best for last is the BucketVac. This is like TNT. Small, but packs a wollop! It delivers industrial grade vacuum performance, 100CFM with 60″ of vertical lift and a wet pickup rate of 30gpm. It’s one of the funnest demo’s we do.  But I think the greatest feature of all is that it fits on any standard 5 gallon bucket. This makes it extremely versatile. Need to switch from wet to dry. Just switch buckets. No need to dump, stop, wipe etc with conventional wet/dry vacs. Need to pick up 30 gallons of water. No problem. Just switch buckets. It’s truly awesome. See more here.

OK, so I’ve made you read through all my good stuff here to get to the give-away. Drum roll please. We will be giving away a brand new iPad 2 at the show!! To get your chance to win it is simple. Come by and talk to us. We’ll get you entered. There’s no need to buy anything and no need to be present to win. But, you will have to come by and say hi.  Booth #5331.

The Navy Yard, a mixed-use campus featuring historic buildings, corporate headquarters, parks, residential areas, and a Naval research center, will act as a proving ground. Within 10 years, the GPIC aims to deploy technologies, tools and methods for increasing the energy efficiency of commercial buildings by 50 percent.

The GPIC is focusing on supporting retrofits to office buildings, hospitals and apartments in the surrounding 10-county area of southeastern Pennsylvania and southern New Jersey. To get the biggest bang per buck, they are concentrating on building-retrofit methods with a return on investment of less than three years.

The GPIC encourages those in the retrofit business to look at buildings as entire systems. It recognizes that an important step toward energy efficiency is to integrate the various systems that use energy, such as lighting, electrical, plumbing and HVAC.

Rather than just developing energy-efficient building technologies, the GPIC understands the urgency of getting the technologies into the marketplace quickly. “There’s probably no national solution to getting more commercial building retrofits under way,” says one GPIC leader, Mark Alan Hughes. “You really have to go to a particular place, a particular climate … and try to get traction there.”

The economic benefit of a commercial building retrofit wave across the area could be huge, creating thousands of jobs in this region alone over the next decade. Additionally, energy savings would increase profits and reduce expenses for landlords and tenants, keeping more money in the area.

Do you see a wave of retrofits coming in your area? Is your HVAC company involved in commercial building retrofits? with the economy still teetering, do you see retrofits becoming a larger part of your business? We’d love to hear from you.

Some fuel-burning heater can reach efficiencies around 95%, but a geothermal heat pump can move up to 4 units of heat for every unit of electricity needed to power the system, resulting in a practical efficiency of over 400%. One of the ways this is accomplished is through higher heat exchange efficiency becauese the water being used is at a constant temperature.  In addition, GHP system lifespan can reach 25 years for the inside components and up to 50 years for the ground loop.

Much of this is still relatively new to the general market, so we will see if there numbers hold up. I’m sure there are a lot of variables involved.

A GHP (more accurately known as a ground source heat pump) uses the nearly constant temperatures found just beneath the earth’s surface as a thermal source to provide heating and cooling. If you’ve ever been in a cave, you know that the below-the- ground temperature is warmer than the air above it during the winter and cooler than the air above it in the summer.

GHPs are reliable in even the coldest climates. During seasonal extremes, temperatures below the ground’s surface rarely fall below 45 degrees or rise above 75. In fact, those temperatures generally hover around 55 degrees. In contrast, air source heat pumps have to work harder to deal with wildly fluctuating air temperatures.

The GHP’s heat exchanger is a loop of high density polyethylene pipe. The most common setup is the horizontal closed loop system, with piping buried in trenches 4-6 feet deep. A vertical closed loop system generally feeds piping through 4-inch diameter holes drilled about 20 feet apart and 100–400 feet deep.

The piping is filled with a solution that absorbs, or rejects, heat. In the winter, the fluid in the pipes extracts heat from the earth and carries it into the building. In the summer, the system reverses and takes heat from the building, using the ground as a heat sink. The warmed or cooled air is distributed through ductwork or hydronic, radiant floor tubing.

GHPs equipped with a device called a “desuperheater” can also heat household water. In summer, heat taken from the house heats the water for free. In the winter, water heating costs are reduced by about half. This co-generation option is very interesting.

Geoexchange.org is the website and directory for the Geothermal Heat Pump Consortium and has excellent information on heat pumps.

I’d be interested to know your experiences with geothermal heat pump systems. Are they becoming a significant part of your HVAC business? Do your customers like them? Do you?

“How do you communicate with your customers? Email has some benefits over phone calls and postcards. Emails are written at your office staff’s convenience, and read at your customers’ convenience. And they’re inexpensive to send.”

But emails can end up in spam folders; they are of no use if your customer never sees them.  And how many of your own emails do you actually read? I bet it’s only a fraction of them. Many systems use a grading system to check emails and decide where to put them. Here’s how you can keep your HVAC email out of a customer’s spam box, and make sure it gets read.

Watch out for Trigger Words: Words like “FREE” and “Prize” can get flagged by spam filters. very often. Be careful when using these words and make sure to add context to them.

Keep it as short as possible. Keeping an email short, clear and error-free gets you more points than being flashy. No one has time for a rambling email on any subject, and sorry to say it, but HVAC matters just won’t keep the average person’s interest for long. Phrase the main message of your email in a couple of sentences up front. Add explanation as necessary, and then be done.

Choose realistic subject line. A cheesy looking, unbelievable subject line, like “Get your furnace maintained for FREE!” is more likely to end up in a spam folder.  Instead, the subject line can describe a real benefit to the customer. “Protect your investment | Maintain your furnace” or “Keep your family safe with a furnace checkup” are more likely to prompt a recipient to open the email.

Capitalize just the first word of the subject line, and avoid excessive spacing or capitalization. Don’t use strings of characters. It’s even best to avoid exclamation marks. Look at your own spam inbox for the types of subject lines to avoid.

Don’t include attachments. Put all of the information in the body of the email, and use links if you need to send readers elsewhere.

Use excellent grammar and punctuation. Poorly written emails smack of spam. You may be the best HVAC gig in town, but glaring grammar and spelling gaffes will put your credibility in question with some customers. If grammar and proofreading are not your forte, don’t be shy to ask someone to proofread. You could probably get a good edit job inexpensively from a college English major.

Ask to be added to a verified senders list: In every email make sure you ask your customer or prospect to add your email address to a verified senders list. This means that their system will always let you through.

If you find that emails work well for you, you’ll want to streamline and automate them. Next month we’ll talk about using an email service provider.

Oh and always, always, always…did I stress always get permission to email people and have a way for people to unsubscribe. Always.

The DOE released a winter weather and heating cost forecast in October.

The good news is that the average American will enjoy a slightly warmer winter, which means we’ll buy less fuel than last winter.

And the bad news? Prices for natural gas, and particularly heating oil, have risen, so heating our homes will cost us more this year.

Of course, the forecast isn’t uniform across the country. The DOE projects a 1% decrease in the consumption of fuel here in the Northeast. But fuel prices rose dramatically. The whopping 10% increase in the price of heating oil means users will pay an average of $198 more this heating season. Only 6% of U.S. households depend on heating oil, but 80% of these users live in the Northeast. It might be a great time to upgrade your heating system if you’re still using heating oil. Or you could move.

Oh, and sorry about the forecast for the West. The DOE says you’re on track to have a 3% colder winter season. Even though your price for natural gas is likely to be lower this year, your expenditures will be steady, or slightly up.

It’s a mixed bag for the South. You’re expected to have a 5% warmer winter (how is that fair?), but your heating costs will depend largely on your fuel. Natural gas prices are up 10% in the South, leading to a 6% increase in your probable costs this winter, but electric users can expect to pay nearly 2% less than last year.

Lucky Midwesterners get off easy this year, with a warmer winter and only slight price increases – they may see no increase in heating costs.

It amazes me that the DOE can provide winter weather predictions so early in the season. Now, if they could just help out with my fantasy football.

At a minimum, you should send short semi-annual emails right before the spring and fall seasons. Your objective is to encourage current customers to schedule seasonal service. Even if your office makes phone calls to schedule service, an email can help get your customers in the HVAC mood.

An early email reminder gives your regular customers the opportunity to be first in line, rather than having to wait weeks for an opening in your schedule (or find someone who can respond more quickly). Include a phone number or a link to sign up on your website for an appointment.

Add value to this reminder email by including a second piece of information – something that could save your customers money, help them choose new equipment or answer a maintenance question. Keep the content short and specific. If you don’t want to write content, it’s fine to point customers to something you think is handy – give a link to an article or video on another site you trust. Or, for example, my electric utility has great 5-minute videos on topics such as weather stripping a door and sealing leaky electrical outlets. Including a link to a public utility site like this is easy and free. Alternately, grab your camera and make your won. “Man on the street” videos are a great way to communicate new things, build recognition and show customers who you really are.

Here are a few ideas for additional content:

• Help them save money – explain your HVAC specials, alert them to rebates from manufacturers, or spell out state and federal tax credits.
• Help them control energy costs – discuss what they can do to ensure their equipment lives a full life and performs at peak levels.
• Explain a seasonal maintenance task – for example, coil cleaning, water heater maintenance, sealing leaky ductwork – or give them a link to a good YouTube video on the subject.
• Lay out their options for a new heating or cooling system. It’s something consumers rarely consider before their existing system wears out. Even if they’re not yet interested, they’ll know who to call when they’re ready.
• Discuss a new trend or technology in HVAC – or even easier, post a link to an article.
• Offer a coupon or discount for posting a review on your site or encourage your customers to review your service on Angie’s List.

A simple, well timed email campaign serves your customers by making it easy for them to maintain their heating and cooling equipment. It also educates them and ensures that you’re the one they think of first when they need service. Next month we’ll discuss how to make sure your emails get read.