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Hello everyone.
Thank you for joining Did You Know?
the ESCO HVAC podcast.
So today we're spending some time with Kevin Hart, the Canadian, not the comedian from
Haven IAQ.
How are you doing my friend?
Good, good.
How are you?
I'm doing really well.
We've talked about a variety of topics in our industry that really need to be re-looked
at and one of them is like residential controls and why no one cares about residential controls
and why they really should, especially in today's society where we have controls for
everything.
I mean, I've got controls for appliances.
Don't you think that I'd want to have controls for my comfort besides just a thermostat?
Totally and especially for indoor air quality.
We got smart thermostats a few years ago and they're Wi-Fi connected and we all know that
they're learning and they're smart and sometimes that doesn't always go as planned.
But in particular, the indoor air quality controls for residential have been really
inadequate and that's been our observation and so thought we would talk to you about
it.
I mean, I think you have a background in controls or at least being interested in the controls
world.
Oh yeah, that was my world.
So especially by the time I got into the commercial refrigeration sector and then I was all building
automation controls.
So I mean, I monitored, I had 160 stores that I could monitor, review, I could change inputs
and outputs from my couch with a beer in my hand.
Yeah, and especially being from the commercial world where controls are great and we got
building automation systems which are, they're so advanced, they can respond to changes in
occupancy levels.
But in the residential world, we don't even have enough relays to connect to the equipment
that we need to control.
I mean, if you're thinking about like a dumb humidist that or an ERV controller, these
things are like, do you want to be off or on?
Maybe you can do min or max.
These things are really, really quite antiquated.
They're things you might expect 50, 60 years ago.
And so I guess one of our big questions is, why isn't the IQ residential controls world
catching up?
And how is this holding us back as an industry from really doing proper IQ?
Yeah.
Well, I mean, when we think about this transition in technologies where we're moving from single
stage and two stage, indoor and outdoor systems to all variable modulating systems, that's
the whole principle.
I use inputs and I use a controller to manage outputs and I change that capacity based on
what I need.
Like you're thinking about like a humidifier, right?
Do I want to just like flood a humidifier pad with water or do I want to control how
much moisture I'm actually needing to put into my space?
Filtration, even there's so many things we can look at, dehumidification controls, are
switches dead?
Because I'm thinking maybe they should be.
Well, I think they should at least, there should be something behind it.
There should be some intelligence behind the switch.
I think we're beyond setting 50% RH and walking away.
I think we know that that doesn't work.
Maybe it works in the summer, maybe it doesn't work in the winter, right?
There's some things that are seasonal.
There's some things that would work better if it had knowledge about the indoor air quality,
the actual performance of the home.
And then things like, is there even anybody in the home?
And there's so many variables in a home, like is the shell of the home tight?
Is it a tight building envelope?
Is the duct work leaky?
Is there a cooking event that we want to respond to?
Is there a chemical event that we want to ventilate because of, or maybe the air quality
outside is bad.
Maybe there's a wildfire.
We don't want to bring that air in, right?
So if you were to give me a list of, Kevin, what would you want out of a smart IQ controller?
I will give you back a fairly long list of things that I would want.
And I'm not seeing that in what we have today.
And I think that really sets back the industry because there are people who want to do this
work.
They want to put indoor air quality equipment in.
And by the time they have two or three pieces of equipment to handle the different pillars
of indoor air quality, things are not talking to each other.
Things are not working very well.
And then the opportunity for callbacks goes up significantly because the homeowner is
not comfortable.
And typically these are discerning homeowners who want the best.
Currently we want to bring that bar down.
We want everybody to have good indoor air quality.
But currently the controls aren't delivering on the expectations of the homeowners.
And so we're really, we're putting the people who are doing this work under a lot of liability
that the solutions aren't going to do what they were intended to do because the controls,
which frankly is unfair to the contractors who are putting that effort in.
Well, let's think about those controls, right?
So if we're thinking about the total comfort of a structure, we're not just talking about
a thermostat, right?
We're talking about ventilation controls.
We're talking about humidity controls.
We're talking about filtration.
And we're talking from holistically.
How do we manage this?
And so that we're actually looking at it from an efficiency perspective as well, right?
When do I need to run these things and how much do I actually need to run them?
Right.
And what you just touched on were two different concepts that ended up in what we're calling
the CARE framework.
And so we're saying people don't care about residential controls.
That's right now what we're going out and saying.
We're making a big statement there.
But CARE, it's really an acronym, C-A-R-E.
And you just touched on two of them, which is that we think control should be comprehensive.
What does comprehensive mean?
It means the home is a system, right?
I need five different controls on this wall.
Somebody run some new control wire for me.
Yeah, we need an IAQ controls that's not five different dumb controls, but that's one intelligent
control that's taking in different inputs and outputs.
It's more of a building automation system than a humidistat and a thermostat and a bunch
of things that aren't talking to each other.
So that's the first thing we mean is comprehensive.
That's what we think.
We think every system should be able to control filtration and ventilation and humidity and
circulation and your sensible standard heating and cooling.
That should all be controllable.
And currently, good luck finding an IAQ controller that can do all of those things that have
enough relays and that have the sort of software and intelligence to be able to operate all
those pieces of equipment and then with algorithms that do it in a fairly smart way on top of
that.
So I wonder, are we starting to move into a point where we can start eliminating some
of the physical controls and move into a IOT world where we can actually manage these things
remotely?
We still have to have controls like physical controls, but the actual analytics behind
it.
Yeah.
And actually, that's the framework that we're coming to is that if you look at, I mean,
Jim Bergman told me that the 24 volt wiring that the industry is doing is just not very
sophisticated.
I mean, we're not electricians and some of the wiring gets really complicated.
And just in general, the training out there for technicians, it hasn't been amazing.
And as we're bringing new people in the industry, there's already so much they have to learn.
And so now you're asking people when they want to do fairly sophisticated things and
the homeowners are saying, well, I want this and when this happens, I want this other thing
to happen or I want to interlock so that when this turns on, this thing doesn't turn on
at the same time.
I mean, to go and wire, to go to figure out the wiring schematic for what you want to
do.
It's fairly complicated.
And even some of it, I was an electrician.
I look at some of the stuff Tim Di Stasio does in his own home and he's buying little
transformers and little relays and little switches and contactors and solenoids.
And I'm looking at some of the stuff he's doing and I'm getting overwhelmed trying to
figure out and trying to trace the wiring and figure out what's going on.
But it's pretty hard.
It's one thing to talk about people who are in building science because they really care
and they're taking the time to do it right.
But if you're trying to say, hey, this has to scale to a 200 truck contractor and whoever,
whatever technician just started on Monday is being given this job where they have to
wire up all these things and it includes all these physical interlocks and all the sort
of sophisticated things a homeowner could ask for.
I don't think it's practical to do all the wiring.
So I totally agree with you that it should be a lot of this can be done in software,
a lot of the heavy lifting.
Because at the end of the day, if you actually go to the piece of equipment, that piece of
equipment has very minimal amount of outputs that I can give you.
Right?
Where there's still almost every IEQ piece of equipment is 24 volts.
That means we're dealing with a limited number of terminals.
And so everything else are just trying to make some sort of automation or logic work
and trying to say, well, this piece of equipment can't be on when this piece of equipment is
on stuff like that.
And people are trying to do it through physical wires.
And we believe that a lot of that can be done in software.
And that's going to greatly simplify because you can reconfigure it in software remotely.
You could be back at home.
You could be back at the office after a day of hard work, setting these things up remotely
or at least configuring it in the home.
And then you can change it later over time.
100% agree.
You know, I keep saying that it's time for our industry as a whole to start requiring
our manufacturers to come to a unified communicating platform because right now we all have our
own proprietary thermostats, which really what it comes down to is our proprietary algorithms
for our communicating or PWM communicating that we're doing on these five volt DC communicating
networks.
Did you know that there was actually a time where our industry tried doing this, but it
didn't have enough push because at the time people didn't understand this.
So in the 1990s, we had this thing called the Climate Talk Alliance.
And it was actually, it was an industry group, very much like Better HVAC, that was saying,
you know what, we're getting tired of all these switches.
And we're getting tired of all these proprietary thermostats.
Why don't you all start talking on the same language?
And we had a bunch of manufacturers, including some of our home automation things like hot
water heaters and boilers and appliances.
So some of our different manufacturers like GE and Rheem and a variety of different ones
all joined this alliance.
And they all decided that they were going to talk in the same language so that our home
automation engineers, our home automation technicians could do this.
They could literally, now it wasn't talking, you know, remote connection at the time.
It was a matter of, hey, I'm on site.
Let me get my scanner or my tool, let's connect to the system and I can manage this system
all from one device.
And we're like, yeah, that's great.
And here we are, you know, almost 30 years later and we're going, hey, anybody got that
18.8 control wire?
I got a whole bunch of relays I got to put together.
Yeah, no, like OBD2 ports and automotive, you know, that's a miracle that, and I know
you know more about the background of that, but I think also like one thing is that with
heating and cooling systems, going to inverters and getting more complicated and having heat
pumps, it makes sense to go to communicating because there's so much more we need the system
to do.
It's not just on or off anymore and it's not one or two stages.
It's multi-stage.
And so you want to do sophisticated things there.
I think in indoor air quality, there could be a similar equivalent to communicating controls
in indoor air quality.
You know, I think you might want an ERV, for example, you might want independent control
of the dampers.
You might want to say that I want the ERV to be sometimes negative and then sometimes
positively pressurized, maybe based on the weather.
You may might want to be able to say that I want to change the CFM automatically.
I want it to boost at certain times.
Maybe humidifier has variable output.
Maybe it's not just on or off, you know?
And so I think there are interesting things we could do in a communicating world of IAQ,
but I think that there's a lot of opportunities in what we have in 24 volts that currently
isn't even being exploited for what we have, frankly.
You know, most how many ERVs do you think leverage more than just a single speed?
Like how how many ERVs do you think ever change speeds after the day it was commissioned?
I would say very few.
How many of them are capable of it?
A lot.
But how many are set up for that?
Where really do I ever encounter it?
Yeah.
So, you know, I think I accuse an interesting world where we actually have more capabilities
than we're leveraging.
And so I'd say step one is let's leverage what we have intelligently.
And there's so much we can do pulling out of band data like what's happening outdoors
with the weather or it's happening indoors with a couple additional sensors that we can
add.
You know, there's so much we can do already that, yes, I do think things should go communicating
in the future, but but you know, let's start with what we have and actually leverage that.
Yeah, I like it.
There are a lot of controls companies out there that I'm sure would be very interested
in putting these controls together.
You know, we've got friends over like ICM and we've got friends over at Jackson Systems
that that's all they do is build, you know, controls who do whatever functions that we
have.
And you're right.
We've seen it on the IQ side.
So we covered comprehensive.
What is the A?
Adaptable.
So we believe that controls need to adapt.
And what does that mean?
It means, you know, imagine selling your customers and on on an IQ package, which instead of
improving their indoor air quality, it brought in pollution into the home.
It brought in wildfire smoke, you know, because there's smoke outside because it wasn't set
up.
It didn't adapt to the outdoor conditions.
You know, we talk about demand control, which, yeah, it's been sort of framed as saving energy,
but also can be used to boost things, to have better indoor air quality outcomes.
And so there is a triangle where people say you either get energy efficiency or you get
indoor air quality.
You can't have both.
And we would say that, well, if the controls could adapt and if on demand they could adjust
the settings, you actually sort of do get the best of both worlds.
And that probably the net net is at least neutral, if not positive in that you're saving
energy when you don't need things versus them being on constantly at a low speed.
And then you're optimizing for indoor air quality quickly when you need them the most.
Man, I think about states like Florida with blower door testing.
And then if you get below a certain point, you have to add outside air.
But then it stops right there.
It says you need to add outside air.
Okay.
How much air and what quality of air am I even monitoring the quality of air?
And if I was to monitor it, how can I treat that air?
Because we set up all these controls to maintain our indoor air.
And then all of a sudden we go, oh, and by the way, let's go ahead and open up a six
inch motorized damper and let's draw in some outside air.
And I don't even know what it looks like.
And let's just put it back into our system.
Yeah.
Well, and I would ask a similar question to previous, which is out of how many installs
that happen per year in different climate zones, in different homes, but different homeowners,
how many of those are really being personalized, customized, and commissioned in all the different
homes?
Or is it just copy paste, copy paste, copy paste?
Which is I would probably think that it's the latter.
I would probably think, you know, and frankly, depending on your climate zone and what's
happening outdoors, outside of your home, and then even what's happening inside of your
home, how many pets do you have?
How much do you like cooking in your kitchen?
How much do you like cleaning in your home?
All of these things, you know, how much do you like paintings or, or you, you just bought
brand new hardwood floors or, you know, whatever it is, homes are dynamic and they're different.
And depending on who lives in the home, if that home gets sold and new people move in,
you're going to have a totally different indoor air quality demand.
And so, you know, I would ask the question, are the controls being set up to adapt to
that climate zone, to that home, and to the homeowners?
And for the most part, I would say probably not.
No, no, none that I've seen.
What about R?
Yeah, so R is, and those were the two kind of, I would say those are the two very functionally
interesting ones out of this acronym.
The next, the next two, I would shift the narrative a little bit to, we want to add
more sophistication when we want to add more technology because there's benefits to doing
that, but it also has to be reliable.
These controls have to be reliable because we know that if they're not reliable and you
get callbacks, you're just going to stop doing it.
Right.
And IAQ controls, as they get smarter, they have the opportunity to stop working properly.
We've all seen this, especially, I think a lot of IAQ controls and sensors, IAQ sensors,
require an internet connection.
Right.
And there's one potential issue.
If we talk about reliability, what if your system just stops working because you lost
the internet?
Yeah, absolutely.
Or what about all the homes that don't have internet?
Maybe it's residential new construction.
They don't have the internet when that home is completed, or maybe your power gets knocked
out or maybe the homeowner just doesn't want these devices on their network.
And so how can we still create a reliable, consistent experience, even in this context,
where the internet is a factor that we can't depend on?
So that's a question because I really do see that IAQ controls are going to hit the market
at some point and they're probably going to be dependent on an internet connection.
And so one of the frameworks we have is as we move into an IAQ future with better controls,
how do we make sure these controls are reliable?
That's something we hear over and over again.
Yeah, absolutely.
And when we think about the equipment itself, we really are going to have to be aware of
that E perspective of that.
Efficiency.
Yes.
That is something that we also really care about.
We think that controls obviously are critical to how long that thing is going to be running,
how much energy it's going to be consuming.
Oh, we got another friend on the podcast.
There might be some pet dander in the air that needs to be filtered.
With a premium on the cost of energy and an ever increasing focus on minimizing the time
on service calls, IAQ control should be not only efficient, IAQ control should be efficient
in how they operate, but they also need to be efficient in terms of how we install them.
And so there's a bit of a dual meaning to efficiency here.
We believe that these IAQ controls, as they get more complicated and more sophisticated,
we need some mechanism to make sure that they get set up properly and quickly.
We don't think that if, okay, Clifton, we're going to give you really complicated, really
sophisticated controls, and now it's going to be a full day of commissioning and a huge,
huge bill to get it set up.
We need some really advanced technician who's been through multiple training sessions to
do this.
And maybe they get it wrong.
That kind of speaks to reliability.
But we think it needs to be efficient.
And one of the ways that we propose to do that is through templates.
We think that there could be a templated approach where you say, this is what I'm trying to
achieve.
I'm trying to achieve these, you know, installing a humidifier and a dehumidifier and some filtration
and some ventilation based on these parameters.
There should be a template that kind of pops out and gives you the wiring diagram and gives
you the automation defaults.
That makes sense.
And then if you want to edit them, that's cool.
If you just want to click next, next, next, complete, and you want to get to the end and
have them set up in a smart way, then it should be able to do that.
It should be efficient and it should work even if you're not a total expert spending
your whole day staring at a screen and becoming an expert.
Yeah.
I'm in zone blah.
And here are all my presets that should be relatively optimized for this zone.
Of course, I can customize them if I need to, but pre-packaged set of operational conditions.
Yeah.
And that's a big concern.
We have a big concern that we get to this future of more sophisticated IQ controls.
And it's just, look at the current thermostats that have IQ capabilities.
They're buried deep in the advanced settings.
If you want energy efficiency and you want demand control and you want humidity set points
that dynamically change throughout the year based on the outdoor temperature to prevent
condensation on windows, all these are very advanced settings in most thermostats.
You have to go hunt for these settings to activate them and configure them.
And so you basically need a full education on that piece of control equipment that you're
setting up.
And we believe that that actually needs to change.
We think that you should provide a couple of simple inputs of what you're trying to
achieve.
Maybe you're trying to achieve energy efficiency.
Maybe you're trying to optimize for indoor air quality because you have a homeowner who's
sensitive to certain indoor air quality parameters.
We believe that the system should provide some templated or default presets that deliver
on the promise without making the burden land on the technician.
I love it.
So when are you applying for the patent for this?
Well, you know, with many industry changes that need to happen, we don't think that any
of those ideas should be patented.
We believe that I truly would love to see everyone in the industry move towards this
framework, this care framework.
We think that IAQ controls need to get out of the 80s or wherever they came from and
move towards this future because it's going to be better for human health.
It's going to be better for energy efficiency and it's going to make it much more likely
that contractors offer IAQ and that homeowners are satisfied by the IAQ that they purchased.
And so it's a win-win for the market and for the customers.
Sounds like we're providing better HVAC.
Yes, that's the goal.
That is the goal.
Yeah.
And so, you know, we have a roadmap at Haven to deliver on this care framework.
And to be frank, we're not fully there in all areas.
And I think there's others who probably have aspects of this on the roadmap.
But if you're in the controls world and you're listening to this and you do residential IAQ
controls, we would invite you to think about this framework and think about this roadmap
and how we're going to move the industry to a better place.
Excellent.
And if someone is interested in contacting you to have further conversations about this,
what's the best route?
They can go to haveniaq.com.
We've got an email contact form there or they can go info at haveniaq.com.
There's different mechanisms from our website to contact us.
And if they just want to create an account and try out Haven, it's pro.haveniaq.com.
Excellent.
I think about all of our like brilliant technicians out here that have a passion for IT as well.
And they're sitting here going, you know what?
I think I could actually be the right person for organizing, you know, this layout of data.
I could create some code for this.
And then you got me out here going, I just want to connect the stuff and I want someone
to come up with the quick button for doing this.
That is the tension, right?
Because we have people who are like, oh, that should be open source and I should be able
to create, you know, Python scripts or SQL or, you know, whatever it is.
And then you have other people who are like, you know, how do I get in and out of this
home as quick as possible so I can get back to my family and, you know, whatever.
So it's quite the tension to try to figure out, you know, what, those are two different
user experiences, right?
One is we're open.
You write your interface, you write your scripts, you write your algorithms and it'll work with
our hardware.
That's the open source model.
And then you've got this very closed source model and you get the whole Apple experience.
And I don't really believe that either of those, if you focus solely on them, are a
great solution for the whole industry.
You know, I think either there needs to be two companies who do a really good job of
either or you need to find a balance between those two.
And currently we're trying to find where that balance point is, pun intended.
No, absolutely.
And we're looking for your input.
This is one of these topics that is going to evolve in our industry.
We are going to start putting pressure on our manufacturers to work with a unified communicating
platform.
And so it opens up a lot of opportunities for us as an industry to go, you know what?
We have some updating to do.
We have the ability to take existing control networks that we have and build ways for those
to communicate.
We have the ability to take our current resources and be better at what we're doing.
So we have a lack of quality controls in our residential IAQ industry that needs to change.
We're encouraging you to participate.
We're encouraging you to go, oh yeah, I guess we don't.
Let's join forces and see if we can't come up with something better or encourage some
of our manufacturers to do that as well.
Love it.
Yeah.
Thank you, Kevin Hart.
Thank you so much for joining us.
We appreciate you hanging out with us and I look forward to our next conversation.
Thank you, Clifton.
Have a good one.