Welcome to the Windshield Chronicles, a mental sequence of operation.
This episode brought to you by Sauermann.
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Well hello, House.
How are you doing today?
I am not doing very well at all.
Wow, well you know I've had a drive over here to take a look at you because I've told that
you're just not healthy.
And I want to just figure out what's going on with you.
Is there anything you can tell me about yourself?
Or am I going to have to go ask some homeowners what's going on?
Well, a couple of things.
First, I haven't felt the love from those that are supposed to be taking care of me.
I have hot spots.
I have cold spots.
And I also feel like I am lagging in my overall performance in taking care of everybody that's
under my roof.
Tyler Nelson from Sauermann, I just adore you, man.
For those of you joining us, Tyler and I set this up just to help you understand exactly
what this conversation is going to be about.
So we're going to call this one Hello House or Walk the Ship, where we are preparing to
evaluate a structure and we've got to learn what's going on in the structure because it
may not tell us exactly what's going on, but there's something there and it's our job to
do the investigation.
Essentially everyone, when you approach a property and the customer invites you in,
as Clifton had mentioned, either say hello to the house or you can call it walking the
ship one or the other.
What we're trying to establish in doing so is first off, establish trust with the one
that's paying us.
And we are trying to let them know that we care about their input.
And I know sometimes when weather gets very cold and you're running from call to call
or it's a thousand degrees and you're running from call to call, you get very busy.
Sometimes you become a little bit impatient.
But if you just pause for a second, keep that relationship in perspective and ask the appropriate
questions, you might be surprised because though you're sent there to work on one thing,
the customer might say to you, by the way, I'm having this problem, this problem and
this problem.
Or you ask them, you know, in reference to our little role play that we did, are you
having issues with airflow?
Is your master suite always hot and the kids are always cold in the summertime?
Are you having other challenges in there?
Do you, is your system shutting off prematurely?
Do you think it should still be running?
Are you smelling something on?
Exactly.
Are your seams in your hardwood floor separating because conditions are drying out because
no one's taking the time to actually service the humidifier, let alone put it on.
It's, you know, your humidifier is not on there as a nice little ornament that's attached
to your ductwork.
It's actually there for a function.
That's right.
And it's a serviceable item.
And is that being missed?
Exactly.
Is that being missed?
It is.
It is my opinion and obviously it's Clifton's as well that if we take a second and pause,
we ask the customer some additional questions, you get some additional information, it's
going to make very much smoother diagnosis, a quicker service call and build rapport with
the customer.
It's like your doctor, when you go in for your physical, not only is your doctor going
to do your physical, but they're going to say to you, anything bothering you, anything
I need to know.
Right.
Because they're going to.
As much as you can.
You can go after those, those obviously larger suspects first, and then you can attack what
you're also were sent there to do.
And if need be, you make a secondary appointment, but at least everyone gets heard because at
the end of the day, whether we're talking about HVAC or life in general, everybody wants
to be heard and everybody wants to be understood.
Yeah, exactly.
And it's fishing for the right answers.
Sometimes that's the difficult part of fishing for the input that we're looking for because
they might be telling us something and it's an emotional reaction to a physical issue.
Right.
They might be telling us, I just don't feel right.
This house just doesn't feel good.
Well, what does that mean?
Let's learn about this house a little bit.
Tell me how your sinuses are doing.
Are you getting dry, bloody noses?
Is your skin splitting and cracking?
Does have asthma?
Tell me a little bit more details on here.
Are you noticing drafts?
Are you noticing moisture on the windows in the winter?
Tell me some things about your home that you like and some things that you don't like about
the quality of your home.
And let's see if we can come to a resolution to this.
Yeah.
And in your general practitioner status, so to speak, as an HVAC contractor, falling under
your umbrella is IAQ.
That's right.
At Sourman, we make IAQ monitors, but outside of that, IAQ is one of your jobs.
And whether it is a UV product, whether it is a GPS product, whether it is ionization
or whatever the case may be, you are there to not only make sure that the system is using
its fuel burning properties correctly, but also what is being emitted and the conditions
for those in that space are safe.
Whether that is a heating related approach, air conditioning related approach or strictly
an indoor air quality and particulate related approach.
It's a full complement of a life cycle of a piece of equipment and the general living
conditions and lifestyle of those that are actually occupying the space.
So let's talk about this home.
As we are approaching this home, maybe the homeowner doesn't know how to talk.
Maybe they're very introversial and they don't have the ability to give us the information
we are fishing for.
Let's talk about some ways that we can analyze this home as we are approaching it.
One of the things I always used to do when I was in the field is I would zero out as
much as I could my carbon monoxide detector before I approach the home just to start taking
some readings as well as I would turn on my thermometer and start reading temperatures
as I'm walking through and also looking at moisture.
And what my hygrometer is reading, I used to carry my little pocket temperature hygrometer
thermometer just to get an idea of what the environment looks like by taking some measurements.
We talked about this before.
How can we validate the performance of something if we don't have analytics to back it up?
I agree and first off as you said as a foundation of safety not only for yourself but for the
customer is getting the carbon monoxide reading.
Going out your CO monitor or your combustion analyzer outside in fresh air and then going
in and monitoring that space.
You want to make sure that you don't have any CO in that space so you don't have a call
to action right out of the get go.
Immediately.
Right because you can ask a customer how are you, everything okay?
Do you feel fine when you are home and they will finally be like you know what no one
has ever asked me the question but and I hate to say this when I'm at work I feel like a
million bucks.
When I'm home I feel awful and that's again something that should raise an eyebrow saying
do we have a slight underpinning of a carbon monoxide issue or do we have another indoor
air quality challenge.
Now if we just take a step back in something that we can address her to carbon monoxide
issue in our industry they are now doing studies on us technician wise like they're doing in
the NFL for the concussion issues the concussion protocols.
We have in our industry the highest rate of dementia and Alzheimer's that exists of all
the service industries now Clifton.
We have now suppressed oil and gas.
Oil and gas works a lot in open air.
Some confined space entry put a lot in open air which helps dissipate or dilute the carbon
monoxide challenges.
With us we're normally working and dealing with these issues in confined spaces.
They have done studies in the average working life not life but working life expectancy
of a technician in our field is 56 years of age.
Why is that?
It's not because we can't get ourselves in and out of an attic or in out of a crawl space
or in and out of a scuttle hole because we all know that's what the apprentice is for.
Just kidding.
It is because.
Right.
Listen go for it go for this go for that.
It is because as we age we lose cognitive ability not because of the aging process but
because of consistent and constant exposure to carbon monoxide that is wore away our cognitive
abilities that we're not aware of or we're not aware of because those you know egregious
things were not were not they had no smell they had no color and they had no taste and
it's in the form of carbon monoxide and it's deteriorates our cognitive path and we can
no longer troubleshoot.
So we think the technology is beating us.
No I'm letting everybody know and Clifton will back me up on this.
We know you we see you we understand you.
You fix things for a living.
You're doing something that the average person can't do.
You're so humble that you don't brag you're not braggadocious about it but you can fix
things you don't get you don't lose your intelligence overnight.
It doesn't work that way.
The technology is not beating you it's your cognition that enables you to troubleshoot
deduce and use your own analytics analytical mind that is being shortchanged because of
the inroad that the carbon monoxide is making into your cognition.
That's the issue.
So you're not being beaten you're being deteriorated by an invisible force that you're not aware
of.
Once you start either wearing a personal monitor on yourself or using an analyzer as a carbon
monoxide detector you are a personal personal so monitor excuse me.
You are going to be much better off and to fall prey to relying on what the customer
has to protect you from carbon monoxide is a mistake.
Those big box store carbon monoxide detectors go off after 70 to 300 ppm after one to three
hours of exposure.
All you get is nine ppm over 24 hours and 35 ppm over eight in office environment.
Far exceeding when those devices are going to pick up.
So if you're relying on what a customer has you're handing your health over to somebody
who chances are handed their health over to the lowest bidder and when you hand your health
over to the lowest bidder it normally doesn't work out well for you.
So take personal responsibility for yourself your earning capabilities and the care of
your customer and monitor that environment when you first get up there.
Man such an important thing.
You know even with me in my years out in the field that was never something we actually
talked about.
It wasn't something we brought it wasn't until later in my professional career and
started spending time with people like yourself who live these realities every day and understand
the results that have really opened my eyes.
I was hanging out with Bob Dwyer at the National HVACR education conference just talking about
this and you know Bob wears a personal CO monitor everywhere he goes and it's amazing
even in large open areas you know CO levels that are present and CO2 levels which I would
have never imagined.
We were at a large expo earlier this year.
A lot of people weren't feeling the best from most of us that went came back with some kind
of a congestion issue and as we were having a follow-up discussion about this is like
well here's what the actual CO readings and CO2 level readings were and CO2 readings were
like 10,000 parts per million and we're like wait a minute could it be the air that we're
breathing that is causing our physical ailments that us professionals try to preach to people
that were not following ourselves and it just really changed my perspective on personal
monitoring of my environments.
I mean look at last year a year ago almost to the day where those three people died at
the Sandals Resort in the Bahamas.
It's a tropical resort.
My friend they're not putting heat on there.
It's tropical resort.
It's 85 to 90 every day.
These people all died not from alcohol and not from anything else from carbon monoxide
poisoning and now after that every time you turn around there's a carbon monoxide detector
in that facility now and they made that uniformly from what I understand throughout all the
rest of their franchise.
But it was carbon monoxide that did it.
Wasn't the alcohol.
Wasn't too much sun.
Wasn't anything else.
It was carbon monoxide.
Had a conversation actually Chris Halsholtz was on one of our podcast earlier on in our
episodes and she brings to us the reality of that both of her parents succumbed to carbon
monoxide from an improperly installed pool heater at a hotel.
It happens at hotels all the time.
And unfortunately because they're like you said the monitoring systems if a monitoring
system is implemented is not the levels that we would anticipate.
It's long term exposure.
It's not short term exposure.
It gets its hooks into you.
Yeah.
And if you allow it to not you don't give it the chance to release its hooks into you.
Those hooks become tighter and tighter and more and more a part of you.
And that's where it starts the wearing away of your neural capabilities and your cognition.
So, a different perspective to soften our senses a little bit and be more receptive
to the environment that we work on and be aware of our conditions.
You know if we think about some of the stories we always joke about the mechanic who drives
the most ill prepared vehicle.
Well are we working in the most ill prepared environment because we're just assuming scenarios
without actually validating those scenarios.
So very very very very good perspective to have Tyler.
Yep.
Thank you.
And to take it one step further you know when we're going up to a property you know when
we're evaluating for carbon monoxide you might diagnose an issue that you were never sent
there to diagnose.
Yeah exactly.
They could have and just so everybody knows your two most common sources of carbon monoxide
in the space are going to be water heaters and then stoves and ovens.
It's not going to be the furnace or the boiler that is going to be the leaching part of that
especially when it's not running but it's going to be the water heaters that can leach
it and it's going to be the stove or the ovens you know.
And so you could solve a problem and you could save a life and take care of an issue that
you were not even sent there to do.
And that goes back to one of my original comments is having that situational awareness.
You have to look all around because things could be happening in the periphery that are
not normal.
You could have things that are vented incorrectly water heaters and such and you were never
sent there to work on it.
That's supposedly the plumber's responsibility.
We'll say they haven't had the plumber in 10 years because they haven't had a problem
with their toilet.
Right.
And they don't know they're supposed to be calling the plumber for the you know there's
an issue with the water heater because they have hot water.
But yet there could be an issue with the venting.
The venting could be deteriorated.
There could be rusting or corrosion on top of the on top of the water heater.
That would be an indication of a potential problem.
Birds are not worse.
Right exactly.
But you notice it not because you're trying to pad your pockets but because you're trying
to be thorough.
You know we have a re-education that we're trying to do here.
We're not trying to pad our pockets everybody.
We're just being thorough.
And if making additional income comes as a result of you being thorough all the power
to you that's just a natural progression.
That's just a part of it.
That's just air offering another set of your skills for the world to use and for doing
so you need to get paid for.
Tyler Nelson thank you my friend for joining us and we sure appreciate the information.
Thank you very much Clifton.
We really appreciate it.