Laminar Spring 2025 Campaign
Clarity in a dynamic, uncertain year.
Hey team. Welcome to Laminar Collective’s Spring 2025 preview.
We’ve come a long way since a year ago. 150+ installations under our belt. 600+ people on our research newsletter. Multiple market reports & research articles. We’ve been to towns from Ipswich to Worcester, and talked to more contractors than we can count.
And we’ve met so many of you - the consumers, the homeowners, the residents. You’re Berkeley jazz professors, and former architects turned photographers, young couples who just bought their first house, and sustainability managers delivering for your communities. I’ve had lunches with you, coffees with you, seen your house, met your babies, and in some cases vented a bit too much about my frustrations with the Massachusetts bureaucracy. (Thank you for listening to me.)
I went to college here and didn’t really leave Cambridge or Boston for those 4 years. But it’s been a real pleasure learning from the skilled technicians who are masters of their craft, and seeing people make a home for themselves all over the Greater Boston Metro Area.
So as we dive into 2025, I want you to know how cool it’s been to grow this project from inception to where we are now. We’re going to roll out some new things that we’re really excited about, and we hope you’ll be excited about them, too.
Sincerely,
Kit
What You Can Expect
Pricing: We will most likely maintain our prices on ductless mini-splits. We will also have a standardized price for SFH colonial installations. The menu remains.
Geography: Malden & North Shore, it’s been too long. This Spring 2025 bulk deal will cover the entirety of the MetroWest, Cambridge/Somerville/Boston, and the North Shore regions.
Focus: We are doubling down on Cambridge & Somerville, where our team lives.
Timing: We will be benchmarking anytime from February through March, and making a public announcement at the end of March. Those who are on the Laminar Collective newsletter will have early access, which includes early planning & walkthroughs prior to that.
Brand/Equipment: The team will be going down to AHR Expo, the biggest HVAC industry trade show, to do a full equipment analysis for this deal.
Research: We will release a full guide on our approach to triple decker & SFH colonial design & equipment selection, so you can trust what we say.
Duration: Installations from April, likely though mid-June. We will then recommend everyone to wait for the Fall bulk deal (to avoid peak summer pricing), but will continue to help emergency installations during the summer likely at a 10%+ price increase.
New Changes
New Complexity Adders: We will modify complexity adders to account for duplex & Cape-styled edge cases.
Ducted Installations: We will include a pre-estimate ductwork analysis to any home with pre-existing ducting, because we want to guarantee that you get a comfortable installation. We would rather quote you for necessary ductwork changes, than offer a sub-optimal installation for a lower price.
Ducting Modifications: A simple ducted swap will be affordable. However, if we need to repair complex ductwork, pricing can be entirely variable.
We’ve observed in the field that it’s about 50/50 whether you need to replace pre-existing ductwork or not. Some contractors guess it. We’ve been lucky enough to work with known HVAC team leads who are stringent about making the right call, but that may not always be true. So we’re going to implement this new analysis to ensure you know what the tradeoffs are.
Preliminary Pricing Targets
Very much subject to change. We are going to do everything we can to retain (& even improve, in some cases) on the pricing that we’ve had in prior deals.
Note, again, that we will highly encourage a pre-estimate ductwork analysis as a pre-requisite for the swap rates you see here.
These prices are pre-rebate. In many cases, you’ll get anywhere from $7,500 to $10,000 off, plus the federal tax credit (which as of writing, has not yet been repealed!).
P.S.
Those on the Laminar Collective newsletter will get first dibs at our research reports. You can sign up here.
See you in March!