A race to the bottom. Complete garbage. Let the free market work as its intended. Rather than focusing on the lowest price possible, which forces all companies to make cuts that ultimately effects the quality they bring to the table, why not hyper focus on establishing a standard for quality?
Laughable at best. I worked in the solar industry years ago when the boom happened and the market was flooded with “free money.” A bunch of ya-who’s like you came in (energy sage) and thought they were doing everyone a favor by “negotiating” for lower prices but all they ended up doing was poisoning the well. Good contractors were forced out because they didn’t want to compete on price. Sleazy contractors sprung up over night like a rash. Look at the state of the solar industry in the commonwealth right now and that’s all you need to know to understand what I’m talking about. This is a race to the bottom. You wouldn’t understand because you haven’t lifted a wrench in your entire life. Clown.
Friend, I'm glad you care so much about consumers. So do we. In fact, we care so much that we've written about proper equipment sizing and Manual Js, turndown ratios for different cold climate heat pump brands, line run considerations, static pressure & ductwork design, the merits of brazing vs. press fitting, vacuum and pressure testing, and pulling proper permits. You know that we have 608 licenses on the team, right? Want to tell us what else we're missing?
Look, I know you're not writing in good faith, but the fact of the matter is that private equity firms have been buying up HVAC companies and jacking up rates with no measurable improvement in installation quality. This is what we're pushing back against. There's no reason why HVAC conglomerates should be charging 60%+ margins on installations when a smaller, better local contractors can be giving you a much better deal. Guess who hires the sleazy salespeople you're talking about? These HVAC conglomerates that pay them 10% commission and stack the incentives so that they only care about closing deals, and never about the consumer.
The free market is working fine for us, because we find good contractors who know to properly commission a damn system and we make sure they get the jobs, not the ones who are doing unlicensed work on the side with some mini-splits they just bought off Amazon. And as long as highlighting high-quality, local installers works for us, we're going to keep doing it.
Data scientists and engineers. You think you’re acting like an industry white knight but you have that Boston “I know better than anyone else” uppidy righteousness flag so high up in the air that you can’t see straight. The education bits ate important. There’s absolutely no denying that the information you’re providing is sound and factual. I’m not arguing against that in the slightest. The hvac and solar industries are willfully ignorant of that. The problem I have, rather WE ALL DO, is that the era of online marketplaces are completely out of touch with the communities they think they’re serving. These prices are insane. I’ve read through a bunch of your other articles and your opinion is consistent with understanding very little about how things need to work for a company to stay profitable. Yes, I agree. PE is here and they’re ruining everything for the small mom and pop or privately held family run organizations. I just recently left one for that exact same reason. They were out of touch and grossly over priced. I realized after a year who I was actually working for. Not the company who bought us. But a hedge fund out of California that owned them in addition to hundreds of others across the country. That’s EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENS when the state government “incentivizes” energy efficient adoption. The solar industry is a perfect example. Fly by night and PE pops up everywhere. So rather than tell people what you think they should be paying, focus on exposing who’s really calling the shots behind the scenes. Advocate for an industry wide overhaul. Make it so that comfort consultants should be licensed to sell their wares as you have so eloquently have painted. Bring the focus back on to quality, not quantity.
I actually agree with you that a lot of incentive design is poor. You think that if these states are allocating so much money, they'd at least require some sort of reporting on pressure tests to minimize refrigerant leaks. Apparently Mass Save requires Manual Js, but they don't really make an effort to audit. I tried raising this up on my letter, but the utilities are so massive that it's hard to believe they'll do anything about it. If there's a push to enforce Manual J audits and to require photo proof of pressure testing to get Mass Save rebates, I'd support that in a heartbeat.
We like transparency, and I'm open to being corrected on pricing. Can you give us a breakdown of how much your costs & profit margins are for an HVAC contractor of a certain size (# of employees & roles would help) and backtrack that to how much revenue you need from a set number of installations in a year to cover that?
Oh, and one other thing. Maybe you can share a link in all this rambling that shows the cost of operation based on current market utility rates for nat grid, eversource and especially unitil. Show us how the cost per million btu’s (even with a cop of 2 or better) on a ducted heat pump is one of the WORST choices for heating your home when it comes to how much you have to spend in comparison to a high efficiency nat gas boiler or furnace. Ductless isn’t to far off either. The majority of homeowners in MA will spend more to heat their homes with heat pumps than they will a nat gas or even in some cases, an oil system.
For everyone in the Boston/Cambridge/Somerville area, we pretty much straight up tell them that if they're on gas (a lot of them are) they're going to pay more for heat pumps. Turns out a lot of buyers in these areas just want AC and need to replace an old furnace anyways. As long as they know what they're getting into, we're ok with it
A race to the bottom. Complete garbage. Let the free market work as its intended. Rather than focusing on the lowest price possible, which forces all companies to make cuts that ultimately effects the quality they bring to the table, why not hyper focus on establishing a standard for quality?
… did you read this article? You know there’s an entire section called “Quality Standards”, right?
Laughable at best. I worked in the solar industry years ago when the boom happened and the market was flooded with “free money.” A bunch of ya-who’s like you came in (energy sage) and thought they were doing everyone a favor by “negotiating” for lower prices but all they ended up doing was poisoning the well. Good contractors were forced out because they didn’t want to compete on price. Sleazy contractors sprung up over night like a rash. Look at the state of the solar industry in the commonwealth right now and that’s all you need to know to understand what I’m talking about. This is a race to the bottom. You wouldn’t understand because you haven’t lifted a wrench in your entire life. Clown.
Friend, I'm glad you care so much about consumers. So do we. In fact, we care so much that we've written about proper equipment sizing and Manual Js, turndown ratios for different cold climate heat pump brands, line run considerations, static pressure & ductwork design, the merits of brazing vs. press fitting, vacuum and pressure testing, and pulling proper permits. You know that we have 608 licenses on the team, right? Want to tell us what else we're missing?
Look, I know you're not writing in good faith, but the fact of the matter is that private equity firms have been buying up HVAC companies and jacking up rates with no measurable improvement in installation quality. This is what we're pushing back against. There's no reason why HVAC conglomerates should be charging 60%+ margins on installations when a smaller, better local contractors can be giving you a much better deal. Guess who hires the sleazy salespeople you're talking about? These HVAC conglomerates that pay them 10% commission and stack the incentives so that they only care about closing deals, and never about the consumer.
Here's the latest on what's happening in our region: https://www.reuters.com/markets/deals/morgan-stanley-sell-hvac-firm-sila-goldman-sachs-2024-11-11/
The free market is working fine for us, because we find good contractors who know to properly commission a damn system and we make sure they get the jobs, not the ones who are doing unlicensed work on the side with some mini-splits they just bought off Amazon. And as long as highlighting high-quality, local installers works for us, we're going to keep doing it.
Data scientists and engineers. You think you’re acting like an industry white knight but you have that Boston “I know better than anyone else” uppidy righteousness flag so high up in the air that you can’t see straight. The education bits ate important. There’s absolutely no denying that the information you’re providing is sound and factual. I’m not arguing against that in the slightest. The hvac and solar industries are willfully ignorant of that. The problem I have, rather WE ALL DO, is that the era of online marketplaces are completely out of touch with the communities they think they’re serving. These prices are insane. I’ve read through a bunch of your other articles and your opinion is consistent with understanding very little about how things need to work for a company to stay profitable. Yes, I agree. PE is here and they’re ruining everything for the small mom and pop or privately held family run organizations. I just recently left one for that exact same reason. They were out of touch and grossly over priced. I realized after a year who I was actually working for. Not the company who bought us. But a hedge fund out of California that owned them in addition to hundreds of others across the country. That’s EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENS when the state government “incentivizes” energy efficient adoption. The solar industry is a perfect example. Fly by night and PE pops up everywhere. So rather than tell people what you think they should be paying, focus on exposing who’s really calling the shots behind the scenes. Advocate for an industry wide overhaul. Make it so that comfort consultants should be licensed to sell their wares as you have so eloquently have painted. Bring the focus back on to quality, not quantity.
I actually agree with you that a lot of incentive design is poor. You think that if these states are allocating so much money, they'd at least require some sort of reporting on pressure tests to minimize refrigerant leaks. Apparently Mass Save requires Manual Js, but they don't really make an effort to audit. I tried raising this up on my letter, but the utilities are so massive that it's hard to believe they'll do anything about it. If there's a push to enforce Manual J audits and to require photo proof of pressure testing to get Mass Save rebates, I'd support that in a heartbeat.
We like transparency, and I'm open to being corrected on pricing. Can you give us a breakdown of how much your costs & profit margins are for an HVAC contractor of a certain size (# of employees & roles would help) and backtrack that to how much revenue you need from a set number of installations in a year to cover that?
Oh, and one other thing. Maybe you can share a link in all this rambling that shows the cost of operation based on current market utility rates for nat grid, eversource and especially unitil. Show us how the cost per million btu’s (even with a cop of 2 or better) on a ducted heat pump is one of the WORST choices for heating your home when it comes to how much you have to spend in comparison to a high efficiency nat gas boiler or furnace. Ductless isn’t to far off either. The majority of homeowners in MA will spend more to heat their homes with heat pumps than they will a nat gas or even in some cases, an oil system.
I do have that, actually! I wrote about this at the end of last year.
https://laminarcollective.substack.com/p/how-much-does-a-heat-pump-cost-to
For everyone in the Boston/Cambridge/Somerville area, we pretty much straight up tell them that if they're on gas (a lot of them are) they're going to pay more for heat pumps. Turns out a lot of buyers in these areas just want AC and need to replace an old furnace anyways. As long as they know what they're getting into, we're ok with it