Welcome back to Teaching the Unteachables, where we dive into methods for teaching and learning for professionals like you.
This episode recorded live at the National HVACR Education Conference. Check out richieengineering at yellowjacket.com.
Alright, thank you all for joining us at the 2023 National HVACR Education Conference.
We are hanging out with Greg Gusey from Yellowjacket. Thanks for having me, Cliff. How are you, my friend?
Very good. Before I came into the HVAC industry, other than doing the automotive stuff when I was in school, I actually did a lot with diesel engines.
All of the EPA emissions on diesel engines starting back in 1999, where, oh my gosh, we've got to go to a Tier 2? What are you talking about?
How are we going to treat this? And how are we going to be able to hit those emissions numbers?
And they basically tweaked the engines and they were able to hit Tier 2 and they went, wow. What's next? That was easy.
And all of a sudden it became Tier 3, Tier 4. Now, I mean, these engines are putting out from, if you put it in basically a monster box,
you'd be sitting there with a shoe box down in the corner now for the emission output on diesel engines.
Is that crazy? Same internal combustion engines.
Same engines. We're still pulling the same power. It's not like we've actually, some of them are pulling more power.
I've noticed that.
I saw Ford had a commercial or whatever, they came out with a new engine now that the 5752 is pulling 700 horsepower out of that engine.
Well, we'd consider a small block V8. Yeah, right, a small block V8. I'm like 700 horsepower. That's crazy.
But we're in the same boat with the HVAC industry. We're starting with that big monster cube that, oh my gosh,
how are we ever going to get down to a refrigerant that's in the little itty bitty shoe box in the corner?
There's no way we can get there. We will get there. I guarantee you it's going to be coming. It's going to be painful.
The diesel industry with the diesel engines, it was painful.
Look at the changes that happened to get to where they are. Exactly. But every one of them was a step in technology.
And we're going to be going the same way. So you need to either jump on board or sell the business, get up quick and do something else.
That's where my head is on this. We need to make sure we're supporting ourselves, our industry, and we're doing the right thing.
I mean, if they were able to do it in diesel engines that nobody thought they could ever get down to that shoe box level, we can do it.
We just need to keep the scientists that are working on our blends right now. How do we get the right product?
How do we then implement the right products? How do we push the right products into our industry?
And then educate, educate, educate. It's what it's going to take. We have to get there.
Right now, you know, it's scary. We're in that transition, right? We've had that R22 for 90 years.
This is our comfort zone. 410A we had now for, you know, basically 13, 14 years of actual use, right?
So how are we going to switch when we haven't hit that 90 year mark yet?
You know, I mean, theoretically, the guys that are my age, a little older are going, we made the switch.
We don't have to do it again. What are you telling me? We have to change again.
And it's like, yes, we're our industry is changing faster and faster and faster. And we have to keep up.
I mean, that's one of the things my my whole division, my my group of engineers, I talk to them every day about innovation.
We have to be leading the way because we have to come up with new solutions.
And we don't even know what the problem is. That's the biggest part of the problem.
We don't even know what the problem is and we have to come up with the solution next. So we prepare for what might be coming.
We have to figure out what could they run into with that process.
R32 now going to left hand threads. Maybe, maybe not.
Yeah. Well, I've seen some jugs go out left. Yeah.
The problem is, is nobody has a standard. What's the standard left is. Right. Oh, yeah. I mean, true.
I mean, there's nothing said in stone. What is that? Yeah. Is there a standard?
You know, and maybe that's part of what we need to look at as an industry, too, is how do we bring things into a standard so that people can they grab a jug of two ninety.
Right. That is the same jug of two ninety as the same jug of two ninety, no matter whose brand it is.
It's all the same from the standpoint of I can put it into my tools and make it work. Yeah.
I mean, we offer that right now. And I know I was talking with some of the competitors here and there is a company.
I won't mention any names that is making a tank right now that is not threading the tank properly all the way out to the end of their rolled thread.
And I've worked with them. I've got these other manufacturers talking to them because all of our two ninety kits don't go on their tanks easily.
Everybody else is you can just screw the thread right on. And it's fantastic.
As a technician, they're in and out. They upload the two ninety into their system and it's done.
I spent 45 minutes getting any of my competitors or mine onto that tank.
Oh, my gosh. These are the things that we have to talk about.
Because the starting of that thread is not rolled properly all the way out to the end.
And it's like all you guys got to do is fix your tank because your other option is as manufacturers.
We're just going to send them somebody else. Yeah, absolutely. We're not going to support that particular product.
You know, and that's never where you want to be in that in that field.
You want to be able to provide the product that all of the manufacturers are supporting.
And right now we're working with them to try to fix this issue.
But it's things like that we find because, you know, our customers are giving us feedback across the board.
Oh, I don't want to be on that tech support call. Why? Why can't we use this tank anymore?
What do you mean? And then when I go through and I figure out, oh, yeah, I actually can use it.
But it takes sitting there, tweaking it back and forth to get that thread on. And it takes 45 minutes to if you've ever seen the size of a two ninety tank.
They're 14 inches tall by four inches around or whatever it is. I mean, they're ridiculously small.
And if you're taking 45 minutes to get that coupler to start on there properly to then screw it on the whole way.
Yeah, that's that's going to be one of those where they're not happy as the technician.
And by the way, it's not just going to be me telling you not to buy that one because it doesn't work.
You're never going to buy it again anyway.
That's one mistake you don't make too many times.
That's one of those where you're not happy. You're not going to be buying it again.
So I think, you know, they kind of set themselves up for failure.
And that's why we try to work with them. We try to work with all these guys because we want our tools to work with their stuff.
When everybody universal. Right.
And we want, you know, we want things more universal.
And that's that's something that, you know, as an industry, we maybe need to look at to how do we make things more universal?
How do we make it so that across the board, you know, if you look at the cars going back to my automotive background, we came out with an OBD connector on the car that actually tells you what's going on in the car.
It speaks on a universal language between all manufacturers.
That was that was crazy.
Right. Because now you can plug in and you can read it.
And it's like and everyone's using the same coding so that we're talking on a universal data platform and we're sharing our information.
And that's yeah, that's that's where it's like, I understand.
It's nice to have some things that are proprietary.
There's absolutely things that need to be patented.
I've got patents in my name.
It's happening.
You know, there's things that you have to hold that technology because you did the development.
But there's no reason not to be able to share things to make our industry safer, to make our tools better across the board, to make our user experience.
To me, everything, our tools that we manufacture is all about looking at the technician's job.
Right. And how do I make it easier for them?
Because it's not about what tool is it.
It's is that the right tool for the job?
Oh, my gosh.
If we just all looked at the same perspective, it would be a different, different environment.
Because if I'm a technician and I can use six different manufacturers tools, but only one of them is looking at what I'm actually using it for and saying, OK, is that the easiest way to do it?
Oh, no, let's look at doing it slightly different.
Right. Why wouldn't I go with that slightly different one that's going to make my job easier?
And by the way, now, if I'm more efficient as a technician and I'm doing two, three jobs compared to the other guys because I got that better product.
I mean, at the end of the day, who's going to get the pay bonus?
That's exactly right.
Who's going to get that call out to be able to go work on these units when times get tough and they start cutting some of the technicians?
Because you really can't afford to have all these people on.
Well, you're not the guy that's going to get cut when you can go do the job.
And so if we can get all of the technicians up to that level.
Right. And by the way, right now, there's a shortage of technicians.
I don't know if anybody's noticed that in the marketplace.
But if we can make their job easier, that shortage isn't so hard felt.
Right. We're able to get the technicians out there.
We're able to get the products up and going.
And it helps continue to grow our industry rather than somebody trying to figure out a solution to work around it, because that's always your other options.
Right. How do I work around it?
You know, if I can somehow keep my vegetables cold without keeping a chiller on them, I might go down that path because the chiller might cost too much money.
And so it opens up that avenue of people competing against us in our industry.
And we really want to keep that as closed as possible because, yeah, now we can still keep control of things.
Right. So if we're doing the right thing with our refrigerations across the world, we're going to have the best products for that stuff across the world.
So true.
So, man, you've really spent some time here.
I didn't realize how much we speak the same language as this is.
Oh, man, this is very, very enjoyable and very enlightening.
I mean, some perspectives that I hadn't even really thought about my own self.
Yeah. To me, it's, you know, I always got things going through my head.
Right. So as an engineer, I'm always engineering.
You go to bed at night, you wake up in the morning and go, OK, I got these six more ideas.
Where's that notepad? I know I wrote something down.
Was I dreaming or was I actually writing that down?
But it's all about, you know, I listen to the customer feedback as much as I can.
I have anything that's defective, whatever, sent back and I analyze it to figure out what's going on.
Why is it a problem? What is it?
Because, you know, you can build the best tools in the world and somewhere along the line, you're going to get that technician that just decided to be a gorilla.
Yeah. And, you know, we don't make that.
What is that one where the gorilla is jumping the glue or whatever in the gorilla glue?
We don't make gorilla glue.
So we're not building it for the gorilla to break it.
Handles are not designed for 100 pounds of torque.
Exactly. Exactly. That's why some of our handles, not the one that's on the picture of the manifold, but some of our other manifolds, they're plastic.
For a reason, because if you're talking of that hard that you're breaking the plastic, you're not doing something.
Let me show you what you're doing wrong here.
That tool is not meant for that.
So, yeah, I mean, that's where I really think, you know, as a manufacturer, as an industry, we have to help each other out.
We have to make sure that we're doing the right things.
We have to work with the suppliers of the tanks to make sure that the fittings are a standard fitting.
Whatever that means, we need to make sure that, you know, it's fantastic to have a specialty fitting.
Right. I mean, we do a lot of stuff in our side with the automotive world as well.
Yeah, absolutely. To keep things specific.
So we have a fitting for 1, 2, 3, 4 YF in the automobile industry.
Absolutely.
That is a completely different fitting than the R134A fitting.
As it should. Difference between HFC and HFO in automobiles.
Exactly. And so to do different fittings, I am 100% on board with that in the industry.
As long as we figure out what that is and not that, you know, this company makes an R32 fitting that does this,
and this company makes an R32 fitting that does that, and we got 700 different fittings out there.
And now, I mean, from my standpoint, hey, great, I'll make every one of those tools, right?
I'll make 700 tools and sell you all 700.
But the technician is not going to want to be going through his toolbox and be like, no, it isn't quite that one.
Does this one fit this brand or does it fit?
I may have to start labeling my tool to know which manufacturer this actually is.
And they got a, you know, 700 piece kit that they got to have color coded in multi different colors to be able to be like, okay, this one is that tank.
Not going to happen, is it?
No, no. So, you know, standardization, huge.
Making it so that we can help our technicians, help our, you know, overall customers to get the best experience possible.
It's going to keep driving our industries, going to keep leading us forward.
So to wrap this a little bit up of where I came from, where I started on this, you know, we started with the construction industry.
The hammer is much different now.
There's automated hammers.
There's this finished hammers that you're using, that little itty bitty hammer with the nails to drive in those little itty bitty nails, you know.
We had an R12 gauge set, manifold set.
We had the R22 manifold set.
They lasted a long time.
It's fantastic.
You know, there's still people that are using them even with the R410A.
They won't even go there.
Just to use it as the gauge set because they know what the numbers are supposed to be.
And that's fantastic.
That's where you want to go.
But going forward, we need to make sure that we're using the right tools.
And the right tool to me that you can hand down from one generation to next as far as from a technician standpoint, handing it down to your family.
If you're an educator, handing it down to the people that your students that you're actually teaching, even as a manufacturer or as a supplier, it's get the right tools out to these people.
And the right tool is the education.
That's the biggest part of it.
Keeping their hands around that and make it so they can understand what's going on, make it so that they are educated.
And that's really the right tool for the job.
It's all about understanding, knowing the dangers, knowing the benefits, knowing how to handle things, knowing what pressures you're dealing with, how you can get hurt from it, and staying trained.
That's why you guys are doing this whole thing here.
Here we are.
It's trying to get people educated, but that's really what we need to go after in this industry is get the people the information they need.
That's the entire purpose of having this conference is to bring people like yourself in that firsthand knowledge to help educate.
You're right.
That's all it takes is the education in our industry.
So that's pretty much what I had for you.
That's some good stuff that is that is well worth listening to and repeat listening to.
And I hope that sinks in a little bit about the analogies of our industry and how things have changed.
You spoke so many things.
I'm going to have to add the diesel one to my own.
So I'm a vehicle fanatic myself.
And I keep using that analogy of the internal combustion engine.
You know, when we started increasing efficiencies on internal combustion engines in the gasoline industry, particularly, you know, we didn't redesign completely.
I mean, we didn't come up with a completely new concept for the internal combustion engine.
We took out, you know, timing, mechanical timing chain systems, and we developed automated timing or belt time, less friction, things that made it more efficient.
We took out mechanical carburation and we added electronic fuel injection.
We took out, you know, points, ignitions.
We went to electronic ignitions, all to be able to adapt the controls to be able to make the internal combustion engine more efficient.
You forgot one main component, the air.
Oh, my gosh.
Absolutely. We control the air better than we ever controlled the air on an engine before.
Absolutely. And measuring the air along the way.
So we're taking all of the inputs.
Oh, my. Here we go.
So we're taking all the inputs of that internal combustion engine and we're putting better inputs so that we have a better output.
Right. Let's take a look at our refrigeration system.
I use this reference all the time when I'm doing those, too.
Well, now let's talk about the internal compression engine.
Our vapor, vapor compression, right? That's our internal compression engine.
What are we doing to make that internal compression engine more efficient?
We are putting better inputs so we can get better outputs.
Exactly.
This is so much fun. This is why we do what we do.
You can't be in one place and get this kind of variety of perspectives.
You know, there's so many different backgrounds all gathered in one place and everyone with one initiative.
Well, and that's where it is beneficial to be able to have that interaction with all the people here at the show and to be able to understand where they're coming from, to listen to what they're saying and then to also be able to give them that input back.
Because, you know, there was there's one guy that I was talking with here that's like, well, A3s aren't going to be that big a deal.
We can easily recover A3s and we can put them in a tank.
That's no big deal.
And it's like, yeah, 100 percent agree.
We can do it. Sure.
But can we do it safely?
Yeah, when we start having incidents on the news, because this this thing blew up here and this thing blew up there.
It's not going to go back to the HVAC technician blew something up.
It's going to be that refrigerant is a hazard and we must get rid of it.
And we and it's going to be the scare factor.
Right. So let's keep our head around that as we move forward.
And how do we make it so that never happens?
How do we educate? How do we make it so that these people know don't be pumping air into that tank?
You know, you should either shut it off at atmospheric in some way, shape or form.
Right. Even if that means that you're just monitoring the system.
Hey, that's fantastic.
If that's that's the way we go as an industry, then let's monitor the sure that the system doing though.
Exactly. Exactly.
But, you know, if that's not the solution, then maybe we have to have an oxygen sensor that goes in there and it reads oxygen level in that refrigerant.
And if there's oxygen coming in, that means it's coming from outside air.
Stop the system. Yeah, exactly.
So such a whole different perspective.
Yeah. Yeah. All right.
My brain's rattling.
Well, I really appreciate you bringing me in here and allowing me to talk and to be able to share some of this with the industry.
It's awesome to be able to do that, to be able to let people understand that we're looking out for them.
No matter what we're doing here, we're trying to help each other out.
And at the end of the day, I think that's where it makes the difference.
So, you know, you're going to continue to see new products from not just Yellow Jacket Richie Engineering, but from all of the competitors, because we're going to keep working to make the things that you guys need to make your jobs better.
Love it. Love it. Love it. Love it.
Greg, I'm so grateful to have you here. Yeah, thanks for having me. It was awesome.
So what about some follow up? Anyone wants to learn more about Greg Guzzi, Yellow Jacket Richie?
So I am on LinkedIn.
But yeah, if you want to go to www.yellowjacket.com is our website.
We have all of our products out there.
We do have information on our A2Ls out there as well.
Where we cover that, you can actually click on our, we have a little A2L symbol on our website.
You can click on that and see all the different tools that we have that are A2L.
We have tech bulletins for like the 290 because there is differences in how all the tanks actually work.
So we actually have like multiple O-rings that we put in the different fittings to give us the different press height that we need to be able to press the different tanks.
So we have tech bulletins that are readily available like that online.
But yeah, I mean, anything that you need, if you can't find it online, we have a customer service address that's right on our website.
You can send it to them. If they can't get you an answer, they send it to our tech services.
If it's more of a technical type question, otherwise it comes up to engineering.
And one of the engineers there that worked for me will answer the questions and get you whatever response that is.
And if it's a tool that we don't have, it opens our eyes to, hey, we need to look at something else in the industry.
Let's expand a little bit.
So it's always good to get that feedback, even if it's not a tool that we can make tomorrow because, you know, there's not a standard fitting for R32 yet.
Right. So how do you make the new R32 fitting when you don't know what it is?
So, you know, but we're all about that.
So whatever we can do to help out, you know, go to our website, we'll be able to answer your questions and to help educate as well.
Wonderful. All right. Well, thank you all for joining us and have a great rest of your day.
Thanks.