Welcome to the future, technologies and innovations that sculpt our industry.
This episode brought to you by MeasureQuick, the only commissioning platform powering the
HVAC industry.
Learn more at measurequick.com.
All right, everyone.
Thank you so much for joining us.
We're hanging out with Joe Medosch from MeasureQuick and we're spending time here talking
about our industry and training and evolution.
And there are so many things for us to talk about right now.
Oh, there are.
And we'll try and limit our distractions to just to.
Yeah, well, we'll put that out as a precursor that we're going to try, but there's no guarantee
on that.
There are so many rabbit holes that we can go down in the transitions that we're making
in our industry.
And one very important one that we keep talking about because we have so much push from outside
of our industry and some internal our industry to make a transition into heat pump technologies
across the board, wherever you live, cold climates, warmer climates, moving into an
era of transition.
I always look at it as an era of transition because we're bringing technologies into the
industry that are very, very good technologies.
But like so many things, if misunderstood and not installed and commissioned properly,
then we have entirely other issues now to be concerned with that we may not have addressed
on some of our typical single stage and two stage systems.
So we hear a lot of conversations here at the conference about heat pumps and being
aware of proper commissioning diagnostic tools.
And Measure Quick is right at the heart of that.
You've always been at the heart of system commissioning.
And now heat pumps are just kind of getting thrown into the mix, would you say?
Oh, yeah.
Jim's philosophy since the beginning has always been like, how can we do better?
What can we do with technology to help educate technicians faster, better, quicker?
And I always describe people say, well, what is Measure Quick?
And I explained that we are the calculator for the HVAC contract.
There you go.
So you're out in the field and you're looking for more information about what could be wrong
with this system besides my knowledge base.
And here you are.
You connect your probes.
And then next thing we're giving you a lot of great resources as to what could be the
issues.
All right.
So this is a great time for us to talk about that by my favorite analogy is my favorite
analogy is the transitions that we made in the automotive industry when we went from
points to strikers.
You're taking my thunder.
Go ahead.
No, really?
Are we going there?
I do all the time because what I found was that those automacans lost their what they
thought is their real skill, their personality.
Yeah.
But after a while, they're like, you know what?
I love my job.
They learned that.
And so all they had to do was relook at some of the components of the things that they
already knew.
Right.
That's all we're actually doing.
And so like when we talk about that calculator, it just it sparked in my mind immediately
when we talk about like fuel injection on vehicles, what are we actually doing when
we went from carburation and fuel injection?
All we really did an electronic ignition.
All we did was we took inputs and we ran them through a calculator and we sent them to outputs.
Right.
So the technicians were like, wait, you're taking away my personality.
I used to get my hand on the car.
I can adjust the carburetor and they're like, oh, there's no carburetor.
There's a bunch of computers.
Now I need another computer.
Yeah, absolutely.
So that's really what Major Quick is doing is let's feed some inputs in and then we can
feed some outputs.
What the one thing that I don't think really people will give credit to is that the majority
of the things we're finding are confirmed or denied by visual.
So it's a huge visual assessment.
It's all things are.
If you're not doing a really good visual assessment, then you don't know.
The things we would tell you is maybe your condenser is dirty or maybe there's not condensable.
So the first thing you do is, is it dirty?
Are these things I need to clean it again?
So is the motor, is there something we always start with air flow before charge?
So let's go inside and find out if there's any cat inside the unit or whatever.
What's affecting your flow?
So again, all those are visual based conditions.
There's a filter that hasn't been changed and the house was built.
Those are visual things.
We can't do diagnostics on that from our probes.
So it's all about a visual assessment.
So if you do a great visual and now we connect to all of our technology, we're able to get
a really accurate assessment of what's going on with this system.
Or I've also just installed a great system because I'm using technology to confirm these
conditions.
Yeah, exactly.
And that's really going to be the focus going forward because we're starting to have, you
know, we're having, let's just call them directives, right?
For these higher performing systems, inverter driven systems.
So we're really moving into an era of variable capacity residential applications.
That's really all that we're doing.
Bring some new technology.
Yeah.
Fundamentals have never really changed.
But understanding what those inputs do because some of those inputs are now variable, right?
And understanding the complete analysis.
There was a time where we focused so much on installation and on service as two aspects
of the industry.
Well, we truly are going to need to develop performance technicians and performance contractors
in performance based HVAC programs to do all of this.
And there's other roles that we're realizing that there's not just, as you said, installer
or service technician, that there's other roles that we really have yet to either acknowledge
or just embrace that there's other people who could be doing much better advanced maintenance.
Who's doing your design?
Yeah, Emmanuel, J, S, and D. And those are all things that can be done by somebody who's
also maybe your initial maintenance person.
I did a thing with Dan Wildenhouse out at the symposium, Brian Orr Symposium.
We focused on what can somebody do in like 10 to 20 minutes with just a few tools.
We learned that there's a lot of static pressure diagnostics, a lot of basic stuff with just
a few tools that your younger technicians could learn the industry by doing that instead
of saying, hey, go to the truck and go grab that.
Thank you so much.
Go do that.
And we learned that things that they're now actually get to use their hands if they do
diagnostics.
And technology.
That's right.
And look at what it is.
That's right.
Yeah, that's right.
So we think that there's a whole nother level that we could be using for some of these newer
technicians and then to be young to be a new technician.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
And we also, we think there's going to be a major push between people that are now losing
their job at a desk and actually kind of really like to do that kind of stuff or work on their
car or do something.
Making some professional transitions.
Yeah.
And probably as they were younger, they were doing something like that.
Maybe they were just moving boxes in a factory, but that is kind of your, I like being in
that environment.
It's actually, it's an industrial environment or something.
So we think those people are going to be showing up to look into these as jobs.
And there's a variety of those people also are well skilled for our skills.
Yeah.
They're going to be able to be comfortable talking to homeowners.
Yeah, absolutely.
They're now more mature person.
So I think that our industry is going to shift in a way that we really weren't expecting
that we, I think it's going to happen rather rapidly because we have a lot of support from
the government saying, hey, you know what?
We're throwing a lot of money at you and it's over a long term.
Let's figure out a way to do this right and communicate it correctly.
I think a lot of communication skills are one of the things that we're going to be pushing
also.
No doubt in my mind.
I'm so glad we're having this conversation because we look at a labor shortage, right?
If you have a labor shortage, what are the two things you can do?
Well, you can become more efficient as technicians and you can also upskill from other industries.
Right?
We have both those opportunities in the same package.
So it's a resource that we absolutely have to look at.
And when we talk about these technologies, we have, and I'll even use myself as an example.
Now, I've always utilized technology.
That was what made my career successful is that I embraced technology as a tool.
All right?
So I did a lot of building automations, commercial refrigeration, grocery store.
So I'm spending a lot of time with tablets and with PCs interacting with my networks
and my systems.
When we start talking about our residential applications, very, very small percent of
our technicians were introduced into that environment.
So they don't know how exciting and fun it is to interact with your equipment.
And so we may have a little bit of a struggle to get some of our technicians who haven't
been fully introduced into that customizable component of working with residential HVAC
equipment.
But now we have this new technology coming very quickly and we have opportunities to
do training and introducing this to at least one, if not two generations of new employees
that know technology better than you and I do.
Oh, yeah.
Right.
And we see that in our lives all over the place now.
And AI is just kind of exploding and all kinds of stuff.
It's just where there's some places we're like, but that's still stupid.
But other stuff like, wow, that's actually very helpful for my life.
So I'm excited about all the some of the newer technicians who are able to adopt this stuff
quickly and able to make we Jim is a firm believer that technology has the chance of
making us up skilled and better technicians no matter what age you are.
So my one challenge that I really reach out to the industry is that many people that they
have their career, then they decide to go become an instructor.
And they really are, as we all do, we're really our strength is what we're used to.
So in fact, I submitted a session, you'll definitely get it for next year.
How do I teach my students about, you know, all the amazing technology, all of the great
apps that are out there, all of the smart probes, when I personally struggle with an
iPad?
That's it.
There's the key, right?
So what these these educators aren't familiar with is how to be a great educator, meaning
that, hey, I'm going to assign each of you every week to come up and talk about a part
of the iPad, because by the time you finish that little round of people, it's already
changed.
That's right.
You know, because Apple already went and updated where you find your home screen or whatever
it is.
So let your students help that and no, nobody knows that the teacher doesn't know what the
students know.
Right.
It's kind of an illusion that they think that, oh, because I did that, I don't know that
just tell me.
Oh, great point, Jason.
Thanks for coming up and showing us how to switch apps.
We're live.
Are you doing that?
Those are the things that make you look better as an educator and only provide group education
that everybody now is using that stuff.
So I think they're kind of reluctant to think that, oh, I can't do charging with smart
probes.
And again, whatever we want to do, we can do it.
It's just, well, it's it's a challenge, just like the automobile industry was a challenge
to my personality and what I know.
So we're going to overcome this.
We're trying to figure out how that happens.
Change happens slowly.
But I'm just waiting for some of these younger people to become the trainers.
Yeah, we're like, oh, no, I know how to do these.
And so we're going to see that change a lot.
I believe that is the key to implementation is, you know, who's going to adopt this?
Well, it is going to be the people that already know those platforms that understand how to
integrate it into your life, because so much of the life is already maneuvered, I would
say, by smart technologies.
And so many of us do struggle with adapting to new technologies.
But when we have the resources in our classroom and we're not tapping into those resources,
that actually falls on us.
When we talk about delivering content and acquiring content.
Well, those ways that we may have learned to do that five years ago, 10 years ago, 20
years ago may not work today.
Yeah, it's an it's an exponential curve.
It is.
So there's a lot of equipment out now that can do their own self diagnostics.
But you're assuming that all those have good sensors or they're correct.
And other people like your utility wants to know from a third party is is that accurate?
And there's a lot of challenge that go along with that.
So and you still need to now learn every manufacturer's little tweaks.
The differences to do that.
And by the time we keep doing this, the manufacturers also change our new equipment.
So there are and there's millions of pieces of equipment that are out there right now
that all need third party diagnostic, always get diagnostics.
So yeah, we're excited about that kind of change that's happening.
Yeah, so much opportunity really, when you look at that and you go, OK, where's my piece
in all of this?
Where do I come into play?
How can I help?
And you go up every box.
Let's check that and let's just do that.
Let's bring the industry together.
None of us can do this on our own.
But all of us can do this together.
Oh, yes.
A good one of my mentors years ago said collectively, we're always smarter than any individual in
the room.
100%.
So one of the ones that we promote and measure quick is also conduit.
Conduit is actually 100 tech.
You conduit tech.
Oh, my gosh.
I had him on the show this last week.
Yeah.
I'm so excited about that.
They just got started.
Yeah.
That's pretty good.
So let's make sure everybody knows what conduit tech is.
You have to use a certain type of phone.
Usually it's an Apple 12 or iPad.
It's a pro.
It's got a LiDAR.
Yeah.
And their app is able to go around the room and actually measure everything and give a
manual right there.
You identify windows and what's on the wall.
But what it does do is it lets the salesman be like an amazing guy on the job.
Hey, I want to figure out what's this.
That's right.
And you're blown away by this person walking around the room doing these measurements and
telling them what kind of system they need.
Yeah.
The other one that's also phenomenal, which is a big thing is the TEC has got their two
flow grid.
Oh, man.
What people aren't getting is that that's actually a salesperson.
Oh, my gosh.
Yeah.
If you show up as a salesperson and you scan the house and determine what size system they
really need and you determine if their ducts are going to be large enough and what kind
of airflow they've got, I would be shocked if anybody else comes behind you does anything
like that.
No, you just close the deal and you figured out what size system they needed.
And if their duct system needs to get replaced.
Absolutely.
I mean, what an amazing world it would be if that was a common way that everybody did
sales.
Right.
Well, just think about, you know, we've always been able to do this.
And that's the beauty of, you know, when we look at what technology does, we're not reinventing
the wheel.
We're just giving a better grease.
We're just making a better wheel.
Better wheel ain't great.
That's right.
Yeah, that's right.
Well, if you think back to that, I can remember as a kid, we had to change our brakes frequently.
I've had several cars that went almost 100,000 miles and we never changed the brakes.
People think that I'm crazy.
So I've got a 2016 Ram half ton four wheel drive.
It's just the V6 entry model, but it's still it's a four door half ton truck.
Right.
And I got 138,000 miles out of my front brakes.
And when I pulled them all off, I still had over a quarter of inch of pad left.
I took them off because I was starting to get some warpage on my rotors.
Yeah.
And they were able to still return my original rotors.
And so at 138,000 miles, I was simply pulling pads off, turning rotors and putting fresh
pads on.
Yeah.
Think about that.
You wouldn't have done that 20 years ago.
Back to the, yeah, that's right.
Back to our automobile analogy.
Things are getting better everywhere.
So it is.
Yeah.
So the, I do have a challenge that I'm reaching out to the entire industry.
That's right.
Let's hear.
So if I, I'll go to the backwards analogy.
So we're back to the automobile.
So if I sold tires and I never had a tire gauge to tell you if your pressure was correct,
wouldn't that sound crazy?
That's not even imaginable.
I meant, but so for some reason we're installing ducks and we're not testing them.
All right.
So we, we as a measure of quicker work with NCI is one of our new partners, a lot of great
information and ACCA.
So we helped ACCA develop some of their QI five standards into an app and yes, confirm
testing.
So one of the challenges the industry was not willing to admit was that duct testing
is not a common.
What?
So it's always a half inch.
Yeah.
So we can measure static.
We can even do airflow now a lot easier, but actually finding duck leakage is just something
that industry is not really willing to accept.
Now if you're doing codes, you should, and there's no enforcement.
No, none.
But if you're doing a replacement and those ducks are 20 years old, they're probably way
too small and you just don't want to talk to your client about that's a big investment.
So again, trying to test the ducks is something that QI has been asking for and wants people
to do.
And I am just shocked to the few, I mean, literally few, not even a percentage of contractors
that know what a duck test is and a way to do it.
So I'm, I'm, I'm working with the industry to say, you know what?
It's time to break a standard.
That's right.
It is something that's to be done and done well.
So yeah.
I see too much of it in even like our new construction.
I, I, I really struggle with some of the practices that we're considering acceptable and I really
encourage everyone that's listening to just evaluate yourself, take a minute and just,
just look at your practices and look at what you can do to be better.
Like as educators, I didn't, I was a good technician.
People enjoyed my work, so I felt like I was good at what I did.
It wasn't until I actually started teaching and took some HVAC excellence certifications
to see how good I was and realize how bad I actually was.
I didn't know.
And that was the core of it.
So you have to be willing to evaluate ourselves and be willing to accept that we have to make
some changes because the resources are here.
It's not right.
You have to start from ground zero.
The resources are beating on the door going, we want you to do better and here's how you
can do it.
Let's go back to our car analogy.
Do you remember as a kid when like your father had a problem or you went and bought that
manual at the auto store?
So why?
Yeah.
And then you look through it and try to figure it out now.
In fact, my daughter gave me the perfect example.
So I thought I'd try it.
She's my daughter.
Hey, I need to fix the plumbing trap in our bathroom.
Right?
You know, Annie, come over here.
Let me show you how this does.
And she's like, dad, I'll just watch it on YouTube if I have to fix it.
He just crushed me and all fathers in general.
You're like, wow, I can't tell me that.
I can't pass this stuff down anymore.
So point is that there is so much, you know, Brian Orr just came by and made fake news
at us.
What an amazing resource for our industry and others like him that would be like, you
know what?
Look, collectively, we know better than any one individual.
Let's all help each other.
So there's so much great information out there to make yourself a better technician or to
remind you to reflect or what I can do better.
So I'm really blown away by how this industry is trying to support each other, giving you
great information.
If it isn't on YouTube, it's on one of the other platforms that's out there.
So it's there if you want to step up and do better.
And that's what Jim's philosophy is.
Jim really believes that collectively we can move our industry to a whole other level and
end up with systems that are, you know, don't have the issues that are there because of
poor installation or lack of evacuation or not commissioning in the beginning or just
poor design.
But it's really not that tough to overcome what we're really after.
You know, it just do the job right.
I think, you know, the one thing we talked about a couple of sessions is, you know, five
out one in, right?
Five people are leaving the industry for one person to come in.
Isn't that a crazy number to think about?
That is.
So we need to overcome that because the problem won't be with people.
Would this be smarter and better technology?
That's exactly right.
If we don't we don't address it ourselves as an industry, it'll be addressed.
I mean, it's a demand that is going to continue to grow.
And so we have the opportunity to upskill and educate ourselves and elevate our industry.
And it's going to be required of us.
And all change has some growing pains.
It's inevitable.
It's just the facts of life.
And so there may be some struggles in there, but we want you to understand we are here
for you.
We are the community, the family of HVAC and refrigeration and building science professionals.
And you have the resources.
Joe, I like being a technician.
Do you like being a technician?
I like training technicians.
I like trying to make them better because they want to be there for that.
And so we're at a point where we're just giving back.
We're giving everything that we have learned back into the industry, like Jim, so many
of our industry professionals.
We're trying to elevate our industry.
And we want nothing more than for you to pick up the tools and go, you know what?
I'm going to be more successful tomorrow than I am today.
And then a week later, I will be sevenfold.
A month later, I'll be 30 fold.
A year later, I could be 365 fold.
So embrace the resources, step out of your comfort zone.
Let's do this.
Let's do it.
Ram, sounds great.
I love it.
Thank you.
I enjoyed this conversation.
And I didn't do that because I was assuming that we were escrow right here.
So yeah, you're looking for great training.
It's right here.
And where can we find Measure Quick?
MeasureQuick.com and we're also improving our training in our modules.
In fact, we have built in training in the app and we're actually now improving how you
can learn MeasureQuick in the app.
So look for those kind of updates.
We are also trying to come up with our advanced technology and training actually out of Colorado
and Denver where it's where I live.
We're actually trying to come up with our company ironically is looking for a new name
called Upskill.
And it's our goal is trying to figure out how can we take existing people and upskill
them with better technology to make them learn quicker like Conduit, MeasureQuick and a variety
of that stuff.
So I'm excited to be a part of this new generation.
No matter how old you are, it's the new generation.
It is.
Well, thanks for your time and I look forward to continued conversations on this.
Will do.
Take care.