Welcome to the future, technologies and innovations that sculpt our industry.
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We are so blessed to have the opportunity to hang out with our friend Jeff Bledsoe.
Jeff, how are you?
Good day, good to be here.
I'm your contractor development manager.
That's correct.
Alright, for Dyken Comfort Technologies.
Jeff was joining us at the HVAC excellence national HVAC education conference for some amazing training opportunities.
And the thing that I came back with that the most was how many programs are not yet prepared for inverter technologies.
Now, we had the most amazing train the trainer class I've ever seen.
There was over 400 people sitting in on this Dyken Skyair inverter training program.
We had other programs going on in between with inverter technology.
We had Jeff doing all kinds of classes on Dyken City, things that are happening in that front.
And out of that, you know, we had some questions with technicians and contractors coming back going,
you know, I don't know if like one question I had in particular,
I don't know if my students are ready for this technology and it dropped me in my tracks.
I was trying to be as polite as possible as a friend of mine without being disrespectful.
So I simply said, your students are actually ready for that.
So it kind of followed into this conversation that we're going to have today talking about inverter technology
and how long inverter technology has been around and the importance of it going forward.
So let's take a look real quick about some of the history of Dyken.
Jeff, tell us a little bit about your roles and responsibilities and how long you've been with Dyken.
Well, I'm in my 17th year with Dyken now.
I came on board with them in 2006, the first year they incorporated here in the U.S.
And we've seen the market changing so drastically over the last 16 and a half, almost 17 years I've been there.
The thing that amazed me, Clifton, when I came to work for Dyken is the fact that the first time I heard of a mini split in my career was probably about 1992.
And then when I came to work for Dyken, I realized that they built their first multi-port mini split in 1969.
Think about that.
Yeah.
1969.
That's before I was born.
This technology has been around the world market for a long time.
Absolutely.
I mean, think about inverters in general.
Dyken came to the market with inverter technology in 1984.
So when should we have started training inverters in our programs?
1983.
I mean, really, we should have begun that one.
But we really haven't.
Too many programs have not jumped into the inverter market.
So let's talk about this from, let's say, the contractor perspective, because you bring up a really good point about the importance of training these technicians so that as they move into the contractors, they're prepared for the technology that is out there.
Yeah.
The fact is that, you know, the technicians that we're turning out of the schools right now, they need to be well versed on the new technology that's out there.
You know, teaching them, we don't have guys graduating school working on carburetors and 72 VW.
There's no timing lights anymore in the automotive classes.
Everybody has upgraded their equipment, whether it be automotive, the computer skills, the fact that you and they say their kids are ready.
They're all using these cell phones.
You know, those kids are ready for this technology.
We've just got to be able to to give it to them in the fact that when we're trying to push the contractors to embrace this technology, we need to be providing them with students or new technicians that understand it and can help them into the next 21st century with that type of technology as well.
So, yeah, we just think about the tools alone. So, you know, we have witnessed a bit of a struggle trying to get our educators to teach our traditional manifold gauges as well as digital smart diagnostic tools.
Right. So the first the first response that I had from that is why we weren't teaching those as well.
This is what I grew up on, and this is what I'm comfortable with.
And I get it. I came from the field. I went into teaching.
I taught on the things that I was comfortable on.
I had to learn the newer technologies to be able to give them back to my students.
Right.
Absolutely.
The fact is, though, in along those lines of Clifton with the gauges, you need to be proficient for the older equipment.
Yeah. For the new equipment, you're it's like taking your car to the shop.
You're going out there and plugging a computer into this thing and asking you what else it.
Absolutely.
You know, the when you're looking at the inverter technology and the variable refrigerant technology that's out there, it is a precise measurement of refrigerant.
So the more you're putting gauges on and off of that system, the more you're hurting that system.
Absolutely.
Not the way to troubleshoot it. It's not the way to service it.
So one thing that's ironic to me is you hear everybody talk about I hate change.
And if you get back in your honest with yourself, that's the only constant in your life every day.
And you're going to stay in the HVAC industry, which I advocate the kids in schools across the country.
There is no recession in air conditioning.
I know good and well, there's not one in the state of Florida because people miss a house payment to pay their AC bill to get it fixed.
It's just not going to happen.
So it's a recession proof industry to me.
But you still have to stay abreast of that technology.
That being said, we still need them to be educated on the older stuff, too, because when those kids come out of school, they're not going to know what they're going to run into.
They can't just say I'm only going to work on inverter based stuff.
Then, you know, they're going to miss out on a lot of service opportunities throughout the year that could give them an opportunity to sell the inverter based stuff to replace the antiquated stuff that's there.
So there's a whole it's a whole circle of a life cycle here that goes on with this equipment.
It's an evolution of education.
That's what that sounds like.
An interesting theme, doesn't it?
I might have to jot that one down for something.
All right.
If we're talking about brand specific training, let's say we're talking about Dyken, right?
And we're wanting to learn more about the Dyken products so we can bring them into our classrooms.
There are resources out there that you really ought to be taking a look at.
So let's start at one.
Right.
If we are a educator, we have an opportunity to acquire training that is typically utilized for more like dealer specific training.
But we need that in our own departments.
Right.
We've got to learn about this equipment.
So one place I highly recommend hopping into is Dyken City.
Right.
So for the Dyken product line, this is an opportunity to start looking seriously at the dealer style training.
Now, you're probably not going to get directly in there, are we, Jeff?
No.
When you get into Dyken City, that's our portal for everything Dyken.
You can look up your installation, operation manuals, spec sheets, cut sheets and all that stuff on the equipment in Dyken City.
But through Dyken City is our learning portal, our LMS system called Dyken University.
Exactly.
That's where the educators and it's all free for them to sign up for them and their students.
They have free access to it.
So all right, so let's think about that.
So if we're wanting to get more resources on the training side, is this something that a educator specifically, can they reach out to anyone particularly to get connected with that resource?
Me.
OK.
I've got a PDF spreadsheet that shows them exactly how to walk through the process of accessing Dyken City into Dyken University, signing up as an educator.
And the really nice thing about the way we've got it set up when we when they have access to it and their students go in and get access to Dyken University and start taking classes, we can help provide them with reports so they can see which students really are wanting to learn more stuff.
Exactly.
All right, so that's opening up some resources that may that you may not have just been aware of before. And that's the reason that we enjoy having these conversations with Dyken that we enjoy bringing in the entire educational world together in one place.
Now, do we have a lot of those opportunities at the HVACR education conference?
Absolutely.
Dyken is a primary sponsor of this and we're so grateful for them.
And what's going to be next year?
Who knows? There's a lot more things for us to talk about.
Stay tuned for next year.
So let's talk about our inverters.
Let's go back a little bit and talk about introducing inverters into your programs.
If we look at inverters as a technology, you know, HVAC, we talked about this a couple weeks ago, Howard and I were diving into, you know, HVAC and that it is a STEM, right?
If we look at what our industry does, it is a lot larger than many people realize.
We're working with science on a daily basis.
We talk about the transitions.
I mean, if I go back just for a second and talk about R32, right, we spent a lot of time talking about R32.
You know, the first mass production plan of R32 was back in 1997 with Dyken, right?
So we have a lot of transitions in our industry that are refrigerant related and it starts in the science spectrum.
We have technologies, which are exactly why we're talking about moving forward with technologies, a lot to learn there.
We are also in the engineering.
We're in the mathematics.
And so we have the opportunity to be the example of STEM to the world.
We just have to keep our education up to date.
So let's talk about some of this lineage of our inverter compressors.
You know, we're not talking about being used in a small amount of products.
What all product lines have inverters moved into into the Dyken realm?
Oh, man, everything that's branded Dyken right now that is above 16 to 18 sear is an inverter.
OK.
We have now we've put it into the equipment that when we bought Goodman manufacturing in Houston,
we started in infusing inverter technology into the standard unitary systems that they were producing in Houston.
But all of our mini splits, our VRV and things that we've been selling since I came on board in 2006 are all inverter based.
Yeah.
A lot of people don't realize how many inverters are actually out there in the world,
which is why it's so important for us to begin training, at least getting into the fundamentals of what inverters are.
Yeah. And our new product line we've got down there now, the horizontal discharge on our FIT system.
It's all inverter based and we're now manufacturing those condensers in Houston as well.
We're trying to manufacture as much as we can here in the U.S. to support the market that we serve.
So that was my first trainer that was an inverter based system.
A lot of people ask me if I'm teaching inverter technology, what do I recommend?
Well, I can only recommend what I'm the most experienced with.
So in my lab, I had a Dyken FIT, which is the 17 sear.
So I had a Dyken FIT. I had a 97 percent modulating gas furnace.
The nice thing about using that Dyken FIT, it has an electronic expansion valve cased coil that goes along with that dual fuel setup.
If you're doing dual fuel. So you have the EEV and the EEV board right there.
Easy to see. It's a communicating system.
So I had communicating one plus thermostats.
And I also use the EWC UT 3000 zone control board so that I had a complete package that I could teach inverter.
So I could teach modulating heat pump system. I can teach modulating gas.
And I can teach my communicating electrical network because we are going to see more communicating systems along with some of our inverter technology.
Just kind of comes hand in hand.
And we talked to one manufacturer that was talking about the changes due to Sear 2 and they were telling us that a majority of their equipment is going to be going towards communicating.
Do you see that happening in the residential Dyken equipment as well?
We're seeing more communicating equipment.
We're already doing it now with the Dyken 1 thermostats that you can communicate with those via the cloud.
Hook them up with the cloud. The contractors can use them for service and monitor their homeowners equipment.
The new Emirion unit that we've got coming out is going to be cloud based with a Verizon SIM card.
So everything is going to be communicating like that.
So it'll help on the service end as well because the contractors can now monitor the customers equipment for them.
So they get notified before the customer even realizes there's a problem in the building.
Your contractor, your service contractor already knows about it.
So things are moving that way where you can service, you can monitor and actually troubleshoot online.
And that's the way that the world is going.
A lot of people don't know that I came from the commercial side.
So I started in residential and I started in refrigeration.
I got into controls and automations for commercial buildings, especially grocery stores with the refrigeration, the HVAC, the electrical.
It was a part of my daily life to work with communicating variable frequency systems.
So when I seen that that was really starting to happen in the residential industry, man, the lights went off.
And when I want a piece of that right there, because that's going to be a game changer for our industry.
And it is. And so now as a training department, we have the opportunity to prepare our students for these game changing technological advances that are coming faster than anybody I think is really prepared for.
You think about it, if you if you look at the fact that with the communicating systems out there, if I were a contractor, I would be doing I would be doing a tremendous amount of service contracts.
Because with those communicating systems, you can also build in there where you're monitoring this stuff and it gives you analytics.
So you can tell when things are starting to get out of parameter.
That's right. You can go service them before they actually break.
So like in Florida, if you see some things coming into the heat into the cooling season, which is 11 months out of the year, the you can go take care of it before it actually breaks and creates an issue for that homeowner, that building owner and their tenants and things like that.
You can start scheduling that stuff and be proactive about your service work that you couldn't in the past. You always waited on the phone to ring.
Absolutely.
If you're really looking to get these students up to speed on the technology that's out there, I get that you don't want them talking on their cell phones or playing solitaire and all that stuff on the phone.
But if you're going to get into communicating systems and being able to like a lot of the new diagnostic tools.
I mean, my son is a technician here in Orlando and he loves the tools that now Bluetooth enabled because he can set them up on the condenser and go inside and start finishing up duct work and stuff like that while he's monitoring the condenser outside.
He doesn't have to set their weight on it on the vacuum to get all the way down, you know, as an example.
There's a fine line. I get that they don't want to distract you with the cell phones in class.
But the fact is that that has now become part of our society and they just need to figure out how to work within those parameters on it.
They need to make sure they still understand the basics of the equipment.
Because it's no different than using a calculator to do your math homework.
If you know how to do the math, the calculator just assist you.
If you know how to take your traditional tools and get your superheating your sub cooling and all that and look at your pressures and things, then you know how to troubleshoot that unit in case all of this stuff dies.
That's exactly right. Phones and tablets must be allowed in the classrooms, but when they are appropriate.
And so now we have to have admin and instructors, you know, update their policies and lessons to be able to account for that.
Because think about, you know, things like so I had the Dykan stuff, right?
Also had, you know, some of the manna, right? All of the the communicating platform from Comfort Bridge.
It came through where you used a mobile app for commissioning and adjusting everything.
I didn't have to take the door off from a piece of equipment on installation and commissioning. I did it from my phone.
So when do you want to learn that technology on day one of installation?
No, we want to understand that technology before we get into the field.
And that's what we're trying to promote is not being afraid of the technology, getting an understanding and diving into it.
It's like this balance or I would say imbalance in our industry.
We have a significant amount of instructors that are going. We only teach the fundamentals.
We don't teach the technology. And then you have the other side going, well, yeah, we get through the fundamentals so that we can get to the technology.
And that's really where we're here to drive forward that we want this technology in the programs.
It adds the extra flavor that we're looking for. You need it.
And as an educator out there, I would think that you would want to promote that to anybody that would listen because that's going to put you above some of the other programs that are out there and give you something to sell better.
Absolutely. Think about this from the advisory committee.
What if as an instructor, I can now go back to my advisory committee.
Oh, by the way, we're thinking about bringing in some inverter technology and some communicating technology so that we can send you some technicians that are already prepared for that.
What do you think is going to be the response of the contractor on that committee?
Maybe we need to step back and talk to our advisory committee, see what they're truly looking for and reach out to some of the contractors in our area that are promoting these technologies.
So let's talk about that that promoting of technologies real quick.
Jeff, so you've seen the industry change.
Yes.
How has inverter technology changed the way contractors look at equipment? Do we see a significant uptick in inverter technology?
Oh, absolutely. And I'll tell you, even with Dyken, my first year at Dyken, we represented here in North America, 0.003% of Dyken's global number.
This last year, we represented over 32% globally.
Now we're getting somewhere, aren't we? Right.
We talk about those primary product lines. You know, I see that Dyken fit that 17 sear inverter unit as being a primary product here in the United States.
If I'm advising someone to learn on a piece of equipment, man, that's my go to.
Well, the thing that I knew a lot of is called changing the conversation. Excuse me, everybody.
With being out there in Vegas last week for the conference, I came back with a scratchy throat. So excuse me.
But changing the conversation, if you and it's a circle like you mentioned earlier in the evolution.
Yes, we need to sell product, but we need the contractors to understand that product. So when the homeowner or building owner has a problem, they know how to service it and maintain it.
Yep. That's all about the training. So in the nice thing there, if we get them to buy into the technology and we don't teach them how to use it, don't teach them how to service it.
Guess what's going to happen? That homeowners going to get mad. You're going to get a black eye in the marketplace and it goes the other way.
Yep. And the nice thing now, because the technology is so new and most of the contractors out there have been taught on the old equipment, they need these kids to coming out of schools that understand the new equipment.
And that can save them financially on the amount of money they have to use to train these kids coming out of school. Absolutely. It's a win win.
And as far as I'm concerned for everybody and Dyken, we are committed to making this happen across the country to make sure that we put the right things in place.
We have a huge sales team now across the country that are selling and promoting the product. And now we're making a huge commitment into the education industry as well to make sure that the schools that are ready and willing to do this.
We want to help them elevate their students to a new level. And to me, that also gives me more bang for the buck because I can now go out and con and promote the contractors.
You've got a ready made guys out here that you don't have to spend a lot of money training. You just put him in a truck. He's pretty ready to go.
Jeff got anything you'd like to throw in here before we call it a day. Thanks for everybody being here today. And also Howard and you and your group are phenomenal.
I enjoy that's one reason why we've been hanging out together with you guys so long. You're just a pleasure to work with.
And we all pulling that wagon in the same direction to make sure we're trying to make our industry better. And that's what it's all about.