To watch a video version of this podcast, click here:
https://youtu.be/BRRmNh1LHZA
In this episode, Reuben Saltzman and Tessa Murry welcome Chris Hughes from the Energy Conservatory to discuss HVAC innovations, building science, and practical solutions for improving home performance. Learn how emerging technologies like the TrueFlow Grid are reshaping industry standards and enhancing home comfort and energy efficiency.
You can reach Chris at: chughes@energyconservatory.com
Here’s the link to Inspector Empire Builder: https://www.iebcoaching.com/events
Takeaways
Airflow is one of the most common and critical HVAC failures—and it’s often never measured.
HVAC systems should be commissioned, not assumed to work correctly once installed.
Building science bridges the gap between equipment performance and real‑world comfort.
Many comfort and moisture issues stem from missing returns, pressure imbalances, and poor duct design.
Modern diagnostic tools that measure both pressure and airflow provide clearer, actionable insights.
Heat pump technology is evolving rapidly and performing far beyond earlier generations.
Makeup air for large kitchen exhaust systems is frequently overdesigned and misunderstood.
Codes, insurance requirements, and rising costs are reshaping how HVAC work is done.
Long‑term success in HVAC comes from continuous learning, testing, and professional integrity.
Technology can amplify great work—but it can’t replace sound fundamentals.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction and Background
03:03 The HVAC Industry and Building Science
06:00 Chris Hughes’ Journey in HVAC
08:57 Transitioning to Residential HVAC
12:08 The Importance of Education and Mentorship
14:59 Innovations in HVAC Tools and Techniques
18:09 Current Trends in the HVAC Industry
20:56 Challenges and Opportunities in HVAC
23:49 The Role of Technology in HVAC
26:53 Future of HVAC and Building Performance
31:22 The Evolution of HVAC Technology
35:00 Understanding HVAC Commissioning
38:50 The Importance of Accurate Airflow Measurement
40:12 Debunking HVAC Myths
44:33 Unusual HVAC Installations and Their Challenges
52:24 The Power of Positive Thinking
TRANSCRIPTION
The following is an AI-generated transcription from an audio recording. Although the transcription is mostly accurate, it will contain some errors due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.
Reuben Saltzman: Welcome to my house. Welcome to the Structure Talk podcast, a production of Structure Tech Home Inspections. My name is Reuben Saltzman. I’m your host alongside building science geek, Tessa Murry. We help home inspectors up their game through education, and we help homeowners to be better stewards of their houses. We’ve been keeping it real on this podcast since 2019, and we are also the number one home inspection podcast in the world, according to my mom.
Reuben Saltzman (00:00.918)
Welcome back to the show. We finished our last episode. remember and I said, yeah, we got a bunch of shows lined up We’re not going to be taking any breaks here, but I guess I hadn’t looked at the calendar Here we are three weeks later or whatever it’s been but Tessa great to see you. How you been?
Tessa Murry (00:18.066)
Hey, good to see you too Ruben. I’m doing well I’m excited about our guests that we have on today but also I just came from from a from a party from an Insulation company that’s down here in Tampa Bay. That’s doing things a little bit differently Apparently down in Florida people don’t understand air sealing and how that affects efficiency and comfort in your house And so most insulate most people think my AC can’t keep up
With the demand in my house is super hot. I need more insulation. And then they call insulation company and they blow more insulation. That’s what they do to fix this issue. And this company, AdiQueen, shout out to AdiQueen, is bringing building science and air sealing conversations to mainstream. And she’s growing her business down here. And so she just had her five year anniversary party. So I’ve got a belly full of ice cream cake and feeling pretty good about that. But that’s a
Reuben Saltzman (01:14.786)
Nice.
Tessa Murry (01:16.018)
pretty exciting. yeah, how are you doing, Ruben, before we dive in and get into the fun stuff here with our guest?
Reuben Saltzman (01:22.454)
I’m great. I’m great. It’s been a good year. We are as busy as we could possibly be at StructureTech. mean, the calendar fills up immediately every week. So it’s all I could ask for. Yeah, it’s good. I want to give a shout out to our show sponsors, IEB, Inspector Empire Builder. The latest thing that’s going on right now is…
Tessa Murry (01:37.904)
That’s good. Nice.
Reuben Saltzman (01:50.882)
The spring mastermind is coming up. This is coming up on May 15th. It’s a one day virtual event to help home inspection business owners. And some of the topics we’re going to be talking about on this upcoming one is going to be understanding where the home inspection pipeline is breaking down, improving close rates for people trying to schedule home inspections, building referral systems that actually work and creating predictable weekly booking.
momentum. So those are some of the topics we’re going to be talking about on May 15th. Again, it’s a virtual mastermind. It’s all going to be done on Zoom. And I don’t remember how it works if you’re not a member of IEB. I’m pretty sure you’re still welcome to participate. But then there’s a cost. If you’re a member of IEB, it’s included in your membership. But I will include a link to that in the show notes. Enough on that, Tessa. Two things. Number one, you talk about cooling in these hot climates.
Tessa Murry (02:46.705)
Thank you.
Reuben Saltzman (02:50.702)
And I need to bring something up on the show today. Don’t let me forget about sharing my experience staying at a short term rental about a month ago down in Scottsdale, Arizona. I want to talk about their AC system. And this is something I’ve seen. I’ve experienced this at many places I’ve stayed at in warmer climates. I want to talk about it. But I think our guests may have something to say about it, too. So I definitely want to bring.
Tessa Murry (03:03.567)
Okay. Okay.
Tessa Murry (03:13.105)
Mmm.
Tessa Murry (03:17.797)
He probably does.
Reuben Saltzman (03:19.054)
Chris in the conversation. We’ve got a guest on the show today, Chris Hughes. And Tessa, I just met Chris. So why don’t you do the introduction?
Tessa Murry (03:29.029)
Yeah, I’m honored. We’ve got Chris Hughes and he is with the Energy Conservatory based out of Minnesota. But Chris, I met him just recently, kind of as I’m doing work with TEC and he’s a very smart, very smart, intelligent guy who has an outstanding background in HVAC. He grew up in a…
in a family that did that work and he’s from Louisiana. So I think he’s the perfect person to talk to about these heating, cooling issues and hot climates today. But Chris, welcome to the show. Thank you for coming on.
Chris (04:07.428)
Yeah, thanks for having me.
Tessa Murry (04:09.679)
Hey, do you want to tell, should we start the show here by just kind of giving a little background? You know, I mentioned you were an HVAC, but tell us how did you go from HVAC contractor working in the field with the lucrative successful business to sitting behind a desk and working at a nerd factory like the Energy Conservatory with building scientists?
Reuben Saltzman (04:31.342)
A nerd factory. That’s the first time I’ve heard that test.
Chris (04:34.704)
Yeah, it’s it’s it’s a nerd factory for sure. yeah, and I’ve told this story of many, many a times, but I feel like every time I tell it, it has a little bit different flavor. So how do I sum this up? Everybody’s on their own journey, right? And so for me, I’ve always wanted to be just
Tessa Murry (04:36.899)
It is! They’re full of a bunch of amazing, smart scientists and physicists. Yeah, yeah.
Tessa Murry (04:52.667)
We
Chris (05:03.138)
more intelligent every year. I don’t tell this story much, but like I hate my birthday. Every time my birthday comes around, I literally just stop and think, what did I not accomplish in my life so far? And that’s all I think about on my birthday. It’s really depressing. My wife hates it. She hates when my birthday comes around because I go into this like this deep dark side of myself. And no, and so like, that’s just, you know, that’s how I’m geared.
Tessa Murry (05:20.145)
Tessa Murry (05:25.113)
That’s intense, Chris. That’s intense.
Chris (05:33.232)
I’m not a very good self educator. It’s just the truth. Sorry. No, it’s true. Well, I mean, I can learn, right? Like I can learn stuff. I can read a book. can do all the normal things like that. But I’m one of those people, if I read something, I have to read it a couple of times for it to sink in. Right. I’m not one who just comprehends fast, but I learned from other people very well.
Tessa Murry (05:40.633)
I don’t believe that.
Chris (06:01.762)
very fast. I stick and I retain information like that very well when I go watch a good presenter and he speaks on something. just for some reason, when I interpret information that way, it sticks and it sticks well. I’ve learned that about myself as I’ve gotten older. So I’ve had teachers throughout my career. My dad was probably my first biggest teacher. He taught me HVAC. I went to trade school, but truthfully, there’s nothing like working underneath your dad and your dad beats it into you, right? Literally.
So he taught me a lot. I advanced very rapidly into the trade because I had one-on-one instruction for many years. So, you know, I got to do a lot of cool stuff because of that. I got to work on chillers and boilers and very, very large HVAC equipment in my early 20s. I don’t even think I was 20 yet and I was getting to touch 100 ton air cooler chillers at the age of like 19 years old. So I got to do some fun stuff.
At some point down the line of my career, this was about the time me and dad opened a business. We were running a business together. I started to explore more and different things. I got to do more residential work because a lot of the commercial work that we did, the owners of the commercial buildings wanted us to do their houses. And so that’s how we ended up in residential work.
Tessa Murry (07:01.66)
Hmm.
Chris (07:29.52)
because you can’t turn the house down because if you turn the house down, they get kind of mad and then they don’t want you to do their business work anymore. So you end up doing the house by proxy. And I was a little intimidated because I knew a lot about commercial work. I’ve changed lots of pumps, changed lots of chillers, screw compressors that are very large pieces of appliances of a chiller like the screw compressors.
Tessa Murry (07:34.394)
Mm-hmm.
Chris (07:55.472)
let’s just say weighs a thousand pounds and it sits underneath the chiller itself and you have cranes and all that kind of stuff. And use dial indicators to light up pumps and you do a lot of kind of almost like machinist work to a degree. I had a deep background in that. Getting into residential, I had been around engineers a lot from the commercial work. So I knew there was a design process to it and I didn’t know how to do it. And so I tell these rich homeowners, I’m like, look,
Let’s, I’ll do it, but let’s go get a design. Let’s go find an engineer, lay down the design, and then I’ll install the design. And I thought, okay, that would be no big deal. Well, when I would reach out to engineers, and I didn’t know any at that time that did residential design, and the ones I did know didn’t want to touch a home, they’re like, no. You know, like, kind of like, hey, that’s beneath me. And I’m like, why don’t you want to do this? They’re like, I’m going to have to charge you like $5,000 to do that design or more.
And I’m like, wow, that’s a lot of money for residential design. And they were like, yeah, but that’s what it takes. You don’t understand. It’s very involved. okay. At the same time, I’m hearing about contractors around the country who are doing it and they’re doing it And I just didn’t know how at that time. And so I came across an engineer named Leif Wismar, who was doing some of my commercial design work. At this point, we’re doing, we started a relationship. We were doing some…
Tessa Murry (08:59.186)
Hmm.
Chris (09:20.528)
Work where clients were calling, the job was basically kind of like ours, design was part of it. So I partnered with Leaf, not like venture capitalist partner, just like, hey, let’s go do this job together kind of partnership, right? Let’s give them a one ticket price. You do the engineering, I do the mechanical and just show up as a unified force. So we did that and it worked out very well.
And through that relationship, told him, said, man, I have these houses I have to deal with. We design them. And he designed the first couple. And he’s like, hey, why don’t you just do this yourself? I said, OK. I said, I don’t know how. He goes, just start. Learn it. He goes, and just ask me questions, and I’ll help you. And so I did. That’s when I started learning residential design. And when I got confused, I could ask him. I had a resource to depend on that I knew was confident.
So I ended up learning residential design basically by hand, but I had a good coach, you know, I a mentor I could lean on when I needed to. And at that point I had really played a lot of a lot of avenues in HVAC, right? I’ve played heavy commercial, light commercial, a little bit of industrial residential design. Then I got into problematic houses, right? In Louisiana, which run rampant. And I was like, okay, this is fun. Like, because at this point,
life’s good, we’re making plenty of money, and I’m just looking for challenges because I’m just trying to grow as a person, as a technician. And so problematic houses seem to come my way. I got decently at fixing those. I had bought a blower door, I went through some BPI training, I understood what duct leakage was, I was starting to understand the impact, but I wasn’t super knowledgeable about it. I just knew that it’s a problem. I didn’t know how much of it would create a problem, but I knew that you should test it, you should seal it.
Right. And the problems go away. But I wasn’t very keen on exactly how much and why. Somewhere along that world, I noticed that that was just something a lot of people in my circles didn’t So I, out of nowhere, was just searching for more, searching for more. So I created this online podcast to talk about it with people. And that’s where the HVAC Great Vine showed up, which is just a…
Chris (11:40.898)
online platform for HVAC nerds just sit around and talk. And so I turned it into a Facebook group and a podcast as a way just to honestly put a lot of smart people in a room so I could find more teachers. Like there’s more for me to gain there than I gave, right? A of smart people showed up and it was just, I got quick answers as some of the best in the industry. Steve Rogers showed up in that group. I don’t know if it was accident or what, but he arrived, right? And so he’s in there, he’s chatting it up and he just got all the right answers.
I was like, man, this dude’s really smart. And so I met him at the HVAC Symposium, which is Brian Orr’s event down in Florida that happens once a year. And the first year it happened, it was like Woodstock for HVAC. was epic. And all the best, smartest people were there. And I was like, whoa. And through that journey, I met Steve and Bill Graver from the Energy Conservatory. And I seen in them…
Tessa Murry (12:24.732)
Yes.
Chris (12:38.724)
the knowledge around how to fix, like they were on this journey to like fix problematic houses with blower doors and duck leakage. And I was in the middle of this journey and they understood way much more beyond that big building science and all that. And I’m like, as I’m thinking about all the problems that we dealt with in commercial buildings, residential broken houses, I’m looking at them and I’m like, man, they have all the answers I’m looking for. So I’ve learned that
If you want to learn from someone, you have to be around them all the time. So I literally asked, said, Hey, could I come work for y’all? And they literally told me, they’re like, are you crazy? They’re like, you want to leave a very successful mechanical contracting company that you are going around to come work here. Make, you know, and potentially make less money to start. And for, for what exactly? And I was like, because I want to know what you know.
Tessa Murry (13:28.476)
Mm-hmm
Chris (13:38.256)
I was like, because I’m on the journey of knowledge and I just want to absorb.
Reuben Saltzman (13:42.348)
And you moved here to do that?
Tessa Murry (13:42.81)
I want to have one, yeah, he’s like, I want to have one damn birthday where I feel good about myself. Okay.
Chris (13:48.304)
That’s right. Exactly. And so, yeah, I know it’s kind of sick and twisted to think about it. Yeah, so.
Tessa Murry (13:53.649)
He did, you did move here, right? All the way from Louisiana up to, well, Wisconsin, close enough.
Chris (13:58.522)
Yeah.
Chris (14:03.027)
So the last piece of that puzzle I’ll tell you is Steve Rogers, who I think is super smart, he gave me like two hours every Friday of his time as like an obligation to me coming on board to say, I’ll teach you anything you want to know and we’ll block out so much time on every Friday as long as we’re both available, which typically we were. He goes, and we’ll just deep dive on anything you want to deep dive. And so I literally would have an Excel sheet full of topics.
And we take them one at a time and say, how does this happen? Why does this happen? Some, sometimes we would have like a full month, four sessions in a row. We talk about one topic because we just haven’t got it all the way through. And all of that, honestly, just led to good things for TEC for my knowledge and the company. So like we were deep diving, almost like having these just like, you know, think tank sessions personally for to build my knowledge, but good things were coming out of it.
And I’ll give you an example if I have it in front of me. This is a little bitty tool. It’s super simple, but it’s a Rimmelator. Right? And it’s like just this.
Reuben Saltzman (15:14.414)
So for the listeners, you’re basically holding up a credit card and on it, it’s got measurements and it looks like inches at the top and bottom. Is that what I’m looking at? Okay.
Chris (15:18.5)
Yes, it’s a credit card. It’s a credit card, right?
Chris (15:25.456)
That’s right. So here’s where this idea came out of. When I first came on board, I was learning the R products and stuff like that. And how does a bluer door measure flow? Right? How does a duct blaster measure flow? What do you mean there’s a specific ring and a ring has a certain size opening and it’s only good for a specific flow range? As that knowledge is being poured into me, it got me thinking about problematic houses. And it’s like, well,
I have rooms that get pressurized. And I’m like, well, a door could kind of be like a ring, right? If you open it, there’s a certain flow range where this door can provide me a somewhat of a calibrated flow coming from this room to that room. And Steve’s like, yeah, absolutely right, to a degree that’s true. And so as I’m pitching this idea to him, an aha moment goes off. And I’m like, we could measure the crap of the door. And then we could actually size the jumper duct.
or passive return for that room that’s needed so it’s not under pressure, which makes a room potentially more comfortable. Now there’s a lot more to that story than what I’ve just gotten into, but not, and there’s a whole other podcast that lives somewhere else I could go, I could source you to, but at the basis, there’s a blind spot in HVAC design. This is where I’m going with this. In HVAC design, in a lot of the software programs, if you design a supply duct to go into a room,
Tessa Murry (16:37.328)
Thank
Chris (16:52.58)
The software programs do not say, out, time out, time out. There’s no return in that room. What are you going to do about that? No programs say that, right? They don’t catch that. That’s a blind spot. That’s you as a designer have to put that in, even though the software program doesn’t do it for you. And so why do a lot of homes down south end up with problematic bedrooms from pressurized zones? They don’t have any returns. And so I was like, well.
Reuben Saltzman (17:03.63)
Okay.
Chris (17:21.306)
Here’s a little small industry tool, diagnostic tool, that someone can use. If they already have a manometer, now you’ve got a card. I can easily size that jump-reduct and say, okay, well, let’s just go fix these problems by popping these bubbles in these houses and getting all these zones to act like one zone. That was kind of the idea. Okay, was, woo, we went there. So.
Tessa Murry (17:44.211)
Well, you know what I see, I think it’s really cool, Chris. And obviously, you know, you’re a driven person, very ambitious, always learning. But, you know, kind of how I see your role at TEC is you have this, you know, this real world experience working in HVAC. And you’ve got, you know, this company that’s full of very smart, intelligent, kind of building scientists, engineers, physicists, inventors, and
you are the kind of the missing link between the industries that need this stuff and the guys that make it to try and figure out what’s needed and how do we provide the services they need and how do we teach them how to use it and what it all means and make it relevant and and you do a lot of teaching as as well as speaking to at a lot of conferences and you also handle a lot of I think phone calls correct me if I’m wrong people that call that have
questions that want to know how to do this, how to do this, I’ve got this problem, what do I do? And they can talk to you and you can kind of walk them through, you know, in the field, how to use the equipment and why it’s important and answer their really technical questions typically, right?
Chris (18:57.796)
You nailed it. I, know, Jake McAlpine is like the main tech support for TEC. But Jake’s background’s in deep weatherization. Knows a lot about blower testing, a lot about duct leakage testing, all that. He doesn’t stem from the HVAC space. So there’s a, I joke and I tell people, like, there’s a dynamic duo here. It’s like Jake and Chris. Building science super deep, we’re going to go to Jake. Get HVAC deep, I’ll take that one.
Tessa Murry (18:59.234)
Okay, perfect. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (19:22.226)
Thank
Chris (19:27.898)
So we’ll pass calls back and forth and say, like some people will call and say, hey, I’ve got this inverter system and I was using it with a Truflow and all those systems ramped up all the way and Jake would be like, I’m gonna put you in touch with Chris. And then on the flip side, if it gets too deep on building science and I just maybe don’t have the answer, I’ll kick it to Jake. So between us two, it’s pretty good. Real world experience, yeah, yeah.
Tessa Murry (19:28.687)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (19:41.151)
Yeah. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (19:49.637)
Yeah. Yeah. It’s, it’s a good team. Yeah. And would you say, you know, just kind of zooming out for a second, you know, what’s your take on the current kind of status of the HVAC industry and building performance? Like, would you say, you know, when you were talking about, you know, back in the day when you were,
contractor and you were kind of curious about how to fix these problem houses and you took a BPI class and all that. I’m sure there weren’t a lot of people doing that. You were probably one of the first. What would you say, what’s happening now? mean, HVAC industry has a long ways to go. Are they starting to catch up? Are people curious about it? Are they learning? What’s happening?
Chris (20:33.04)
Yeah, it’s funny you say that. I remember having to call, looking back, if I’d have been more selfish, I would paid more and just brought the trainer in for BPI. But I literally had to go, I recruited eight different companies that were HVAC companies. said, hey, I think we should all do this. This would be good for us. I want this training. Do you want this training? If we bring this guy in, do you want to me split the cost?
Tessa Murry (20:44.572)
Thank you.
Tessa Murry (20:55.026)
Yes.
Tessa Murry (20:59.388)
Cool. Yeah.
Chris (20:59.984)
I really had to kind of like grassroots get somebody in because like Louisiana was not one of them areas. like people were even paying attention to it, but it was starting to become code. And I was like, look, code is going to drive this and you’re allowed to self test. I’m like, well, why don’t we just get certified self test? We all wire on our equipment and let’s just go. Yeah. And some people were like, yeah, that’s a good idea. Let’s do it. Um, some people were like, nah. So I was, it was pretty lucrative right at first because
I went and got certified, bought the gear, and then I called all the people who didn’t want to do it, and I said, hey, I’ll come do your test if you want to, and you can pay me. And I was charging, you know, I don’t know if we want to get into prices, but I don’t care, whatever. At this point, we’re talking, it’s like 2000.
Tessa Murry (21:37.069)
Yeah. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (21:43.376)
Sure.
Chris (21:47.568)
maybe 2008, 2010, I we’re in the early 2000s, something like that. I get certified blower door and duct leakage testing, it becomes code. And then I start throwing out numbers, I’m going to people’s houses where they have two or three systems, and I’m doing that test and a blower door test. And after I bought the gear, I’m just using what, tape? Okay, and I’m walking in there and I’m doing a test for, I wanna say I charging, you know.
Tessa Murry (22:09.359)
Yeah.
Chris (22:16.656)
I’m not this isn’t business advice right it so I’m just going to this out there, but I was charging I was charging I think it was 350 for the first duck leakage test 250 for any additional duck leakage test and Like 300 350 for the blower door test now you do the math I go in there and I’m testing two or three systems and a blower door test all in the same day on the same house That’s a good payday for a tape after the equipment’s paid off and some travel time and you know it I mean it that’s what you should make because you have
Tessa Murry (22:19.666)
Hahaha.
Tessa Murry (22:32.6)
Wow.
Tessa Murry (22:39.356)
That’s a good day. Yeah. Yeah.
Chris (22:46.094)
You paid for the training, all that. My caveat was all my friends who were in HVAC, I would tell them, hey, I’m not gonna pencil whip this, but here’s what I will do for you. If you hire me and you’re close to passing, but you’re not, I’ll air seal this job for you and I’ll get you passing. I’ll do a little bit of the work for you, because I’m like, know, what’s like, do we really want to call me back out to do because you missed the mark? You know, it’s like, no, not when I see a.
Tessa Murry (22:48.826)
Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (23:01.996)
that’s nice.
Tessa Murry (23:06.095)
Reuben Saltzman (23:11.49)
Yeah. When you’re that close, yeah.
Tessa Murry (23:12.61)
Yeah. Yeah.
Chris (23:14.094)
Yeah, like, yeah, I’ll go grab a bucket of mastic and handle up on the duct work for 10 minutes and then drop, you know, 80 CFM off this job and get you to a good passing score. Like, you know, why not? Like, let’s don’t, let’s don’t rock the boat. Why? Because I want the next house and the next house and the next house. So, so I didn’t draw a hard line. You know, I did some of the cleanup work, I guess, which they really liked because
Other people who had just started doing that, they were drawing a hard line in the sand saying like, you failed and I’m going to come back and test and this is the problem. And I’m not saying that’s a bad strategy either. It’s just, you know, that is the game I played. It worked well. So I did it that way.
Tessa Murry (23:54.21)
Mm-hmm
Reuben Saltzman (23:55.906)
Well, it’s real easy to figure out who somebody is going to want to call next. I mean, do we want to call Chris who’s just going to take care of it? Or do we want to call this guy who’s going to just going to fail it? Now we got to do this again and pay him more. I mean, it’s like you’re building a sustainable business with what you’re doing.
Tessa Murry (24:04.306)
Thanks.
Chris (24:05.572)
Yeah. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (24:06.925)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (24:11.394)
Yeah, yeah, it’s smart.
Chris (24:12.026)
Yeah, and I, you know, there had to be a fine line there too. You know, if you’re barely not passing and I see opportunity, I’ll clean that up. But there was definitely times where his job is like, this is a disaster. Like, I’m sorry, I can’t clean this up. yeah, right.
Reuben Saltzman (24:26.668)
Yeah. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (24:27.698)
start over. Yeah. So you were kind of new to that front and then so what have you seen now change in the last you know 10, 15, I guess 20 years of HVAC industry? Where is it at today?
Chris (24:41.802)
I would tell you that I’m highly encouraged. I’m optimistic and I used to not be, you know, I used to be one who was salty about it and like, we were going to get this together. but there’s a lot of people making a lot of moves nowadays. It’s funny. I just, I just listened while I was working today, I listened to a podcast called the heat pump podcast and the guys who host that are two guys and they own Amply.
Tessa Murry (24:48.924)
you
You
Chris (25:11.14)
which is a scanning load calculation tool, which is pretty neat. They had a guy on who is kind like a Silicon Valley guy, you know, and usually you always hear that, you know, like, here we go. But this guy had a hell of a story and his company was called Jetson. I literally learned about it today. And so I want to go inquire more and see what he’s up to. But he’s brought the entire
Tessa Murry (25:12.018)
Mm.
Tessa Murry (25:33.106)
Hmm.
Chris (25:38.272)
Like to electrify a home he’s bringing the whole thing in house with his business model so he went and raised millions of dollars and He’s like producing his own equipment his own software his own thermostat He’s controlling the game from start to finish from from like making the equipment to installing it into the house and system monitoring to follow And I’m super intrigued to learn more about what he’s up to Because that’s a big issue with
Tessa Murry (26:03.078)
Hmm.
Chris (26:05.206)
equipment is, he paints a really good picture in that podcast. It’s worth a listen because he talks about the struggles of inverter based equipment and how hard it is to buy a piece of equipment from an HVAC contractor. And hell, I was one of those for almost all of my life. And I do understand what he means by that. It is complicated. It’s complicated even as a contractor to put your book of business together, to put it in front of somebody. Right. Because manufacturers have different
Tessa Murry (26:31.366)
Mm-hmm.
Chris (26:33.103)
tiered level systems, the matchups. I mean, it’s gotten pretty wild with what you can put together. You know, I mean, just think about it, single stage. There may be two tier levels of single stage equipment. Then you could have two stage. Some manufacturers have just eliminated two stage. They go with an inverter, but the inverter can act like a two stage. You know, I mean, it just keeps getting like deeper and deeper and deeper to where you almost need like a.
for your degree to understand the matchups and what they’re capable of. And so I then tried to go present that to a homeowner. What’s a homeowner gonna know in even an hour’s time of you explaining it? And so we’ve pulled it down to three options of what we think is the best three options you should present as a contractor to a homeowner. And then a homeowner sitting there going, deer in headlights going like, okay, do I wanna spend?
Tessa Murry (27:03.218)
I’m sorry.
Tessa Murry (27:10.834)
Mmm.
Tessa Murry (27:17.81)
Hmm.
Chris (27:25.136)
10,000, 20,000, or 30,000, and what’s the differences between these three pieces of equipment, and why, and why should I care, and does it matter? And then you don’t even know, does this contractor understand my home very well? Did they run a load calcul, like nobody in the homeowner space is even asking, well, is this paired up with a load calculation? Like here I am presented with three different options of equipment that are radically different priced, but which one’s the right fit for my home? Are they all the same tonnage?
Does that tonnage line up with the load calculation? Did I even get a load calculation? Like there’s all these missing links that aren’t being talked about at the kitchen table. It’s just extremely difficult, right? So I guess what I’m saying is there’s good and bad going on right now. The good is there’s a lot of people who are talking.
Reuben Saltzman (27:57.964)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (27:58.075)
Mm-hmm.
Chris (28:18.736)
and encouraging and vertically integrating building science into HPEC and their understanding that, we’re not playing this whole game of just like for like tonnage and just guessing. You’re like, we’re going to take measurements. We’re going to make good decisions because we want to be able to back up our decisions with evidence in case something happens. And that’s happening because there’s more money in the trade. Here’s the just kind of the bad side to that. Everything got more expensive.
Tessa Murry (28:44.184)
Mm-hmm.
Chris (28:47.3)
And because it got more expensive, more people got interested. And now you got more interest and you’ve got more players. You’ve got more people and whatever good player, I get a bad player. Yeah. So now there’s more noise to deal with than there probably ever was. So I’m optimistic, but as the field grows and more players come into the space, there’ll be good and there will be bad. And I think that eventually the good
Tessa Murry (28:56.402)
Hmm. Mm-hmm.
Tessa Murry (29:04.924)
Hmm.
Chris (29:16.078)
and the technology that comes with the good players are going to outweigh the bad players and they’re going to shine because these good players who are doing it right, they’re learning ways to market themselves like never before. like a lot of people don’t like social media, I personally do because I think it gave those people who are the good guys, maybe smaller, a really good way to have a voice.
Tessa Murry (29:31.378)
Hmm.
Tessa Murry (29:41.785)
Well, and Chris, can you talk about, can you give an example of how kind of some of this newer technology and actually piece of equipment that TEC makes, the Truful Grid, how that has impacted businesses and their growth model and reducing callbacks and increasing profitability? I know you’ve been in touch with some of these businesses that are growing, that are integrating building science and home performance testing.
Chris (30:10.096)
Yeah, okay. How do I want to unpack that? Let’s see. Okay, here’s a fun way to start that. Someone that I like to listen to, I read a couple of his books, I find fascinating is Neil Tyson deGrasse. Or is it Neil deGrasse Tyson? One way, either way, something like that. Smart guy, astrophysicist, but he’s relatable. Good dude to listen to.
He made a statement one time that always sticks in my brain. He said something along the lines of technology always wins. And if you think about that, it’s like, he’s pretty, pretty much right. Like sometimes technology’s here and it’s too early and it flops. And then the second go around, it wins. Heat pumps is a big part of that. Like everybody’s seeing this huge heat pump movement around the country right now. And this is a major phase two in my mind for heat pumps. Heat pumps were here already before. They were here in the eighties and
Tessa Murry (31:05.266)
Mm-hmm.
Chris (31:05.808)
It wasn’t awesome for it. know, a of people didn’t understand the technology got installed wrong. know, time defrosts is more the way it was being played instead of demand defrost so much, especially in commercial equipment from what I remember. And, you know, you’d have issues out of it. Things are getting set up wrong. And then here you are in the next phase of heat pumps and you’ve got, you know, like vapor injection press compressors, modulating outdoor condenser fan motors, modulating indoor fan motors.
PCV boards on the indoor unit, outdoor unit, thermostat, everything talks to zeros and ones. You got the misters, right? Like super advanced equipment that yeah, it’s not fun when it breaks, but when it works, it can do things that the old stuff could never imagine doing, which means what? Like, okay, now my heat pump can deliver like 110 or maybe even more for a supplier temperature. And maybe an old heat pump was doing its best to pump out like 95, 98 degrees.
Tessa Murry (31:42.202)
It’s really advanced.
Tessa Murry (31:53.413)
Mm-hmm.
Chris (32:04.76)
And so it’s more of a comfort feeling to the homeowners and they’re even doing things where they’re like, you know, ramping down the indoor fan to a really low speed. So if it does go into default cycle, you don’t feel cold blow from it. You know, there’s a lot of cool things happening along the equipment like that. So technology always wins. That’s good. I guess what I’m saying, it may not win today, but it will win tomorrow. I find that statement to just be true. And so.
TEC invented a product called the Digital True Flow Grid and I have one. I’ll go get it. I’ll show you what looks like.
Reuben Saltzman (32:44.462)
And Tessa, when we get a minute to, I gotta try to stump you guys with something I saw at a home inspection recently. But we’ll get there.
Tessa Murry (32:52.656)
Okay, we’ll come back to it.
Chris (32:54.926)
Okay, so this right here is the digital TrueFlow grid. Okay. And it measures.
Reuben Saltzman (33:00.384)
Okay, he’s holding up a huge sheet of plastic with a dozen holes in it and each hole is about the size of a can of soda, maybe a cup of coffee, coffee cup, and there’s sensors in every one of these holes. Huh?
Chris (33:04.879)
you
Tessa Murry (33:08.027)
Okay.
Tessa Murry (33:12.654)
Mm-hmm. It’s about the size of a furnace filter slot. Yeah.
Chris (33:12.752)
Yeah.
Chris (33:19.056)
So I’ll deep dive into it real quick for you.
When you talk about commissioning HVAC equipment, I like to tell people this kind of story. You go buy a vehicle. A vehicle has miles per gallon on a sticker mounted on the left side windshield. Do you just trust it? You can, or you could verify it. A lot of vehicles now will have digital displays, and they’ll show you mileage you’re getting going down the road, stuff like that. In HVAC,
Tessa Murry (33:45.906)
Thanks
Chris (33:56.752)
There’s the box, there’s the equipment, and then there’s the duct system attached to it. So it’s like a car driving down the road. You don’t like go buy a car and then drive it down the road and then make it into something else and then drive it down the road. Okay, a little different story, but principle stays the same. An air conditioner is the box. You can verify that the box is working, right? But then you connect it to this intricate duct system and it becomes something else. And then how do you test that?
There’s ways to test that. If you don’t test that, you’re trusting that the box is doing what it needs to do while it’s connected to the duct system. But there’s so many failure points in the duct system and the grill selection and all of that that maybe the system’s broke down and you just bought a car that’s supposed to get 20 miles per gallon, but you’re getting four. That’s how I think about an HVAC system. I could buy the box, I could put it in, I could connect it to a duct system.
Tessa Murry (34:49.638)
Hmm.
Chris (34:55.696)
And let’s just say I should be getting, I don’t know, 2,000 CFM of flow, but maybe I’m only getting delivered to the rooms, you know, 1,200 CFM of flow. Where’s the breakdown? Like, so that you have third-party tools that check things like airflow, refrigerant capacity checks, like super-e sub-cooling, things like that. There’s all these diagnostic tools, third-party tools you can deploy on equipment to make sure it’s doing its job.
And so it’s important that we do that. We call that commissioning. Commissioning is used in a lot of different aspects, but let’s just say HVAC commissioning is what we’re talking about. Now, the aspect or role that we’re playing in that is the airflow part, total system airflow. So we want to capture the airflow that moves through that machine. And there is so much that comes with airflow about that system working right. It’s like the number one
problem in HVAC, which is probably why we admitted a tool and we focused on that. Airflow always gets done wrong. And there’s a other side of this coin, which is pressure. Pressure and flow go hand in hand. So we are trying to tackle that issue with that product. And here’s what I say. There’s other products that have existed for years, like Flowhoods, for example. You could have a Flowhood. Flowhoods are a couple thousand dollars, right?
Reuben Saltzman (35:57.272)
Sure.
Chris (36:21.646)
And then you hold this flow hood up to a return error rule and you get a flow measurement. Now what? What do you do with the measurement? Well, if you have a deep background, you’re going to go use that measurement and, you know, look at capacity data in the charts and all this, know, you don’t have pressure with it. You just have flow. So it’s one side of the coin. So it’s like, that’s a lot of money to spend on something that gives you flow and flow along. And so we were like, okay, well, what if we invented a tool that
You know, measured flow kind of the same way, meaning volumetric airflow. And then it also paired with a gauge and you took static pressure measurements throughout the system. So now you’re getting pressure and flow at the same time, more or less. And now you got both sides of the coin. And with both sides of that coin, you can give diagnostics. Right now you can start to say, OK, now I’ve colored dials based on inputs you gave me in an app workflow. And you can say, OK, what is the
pressure that this blower motor can handle. Let’s say it’s 0.8. I know that’s getting nerdy, but just say there’s a limit to it. I enter 0.8. What tonnage is it? It’s a three ton. know, yada yada. You get the point. There’s questions being asked. Then you get measurements and the measurements get plotted on graphs where you gave some details which paint a picture of, let’s just say, good and bad. And so now you have software that helps you paint a picture based on the measurements you got.
whether those measurements are good or bad. That way your tool’s not just saying, here’s a measurement, go do something. The measurement’s saying, here’s the measurement, and here’s how it applies to the system that you told me you’re working on. And we tell you, that’s good or that’s bad with that measurement. So there’s this move of technology doing way more than just giving you a measurement. It’s giving you a measurement, it’s giving you diagnostics and advice. And that’s where technology’s making that move forward.
Tessa Murry (38:15.772)
Thank
Yeah, it’s very cool. The app that goes with this piece of technology, I think it’s brilliant because any HVAC contractor can put in one of these TruFlo grids, put in these test ports for pressure measurements and test the system and know exactly what’s working, what’s not working, what they need to do to adjust the system to make it work efficiently and not have comfort issues, not have callbacks.
and to you know, make sure the system is working the way was designed to so I think From what i’ve heard and what i’ve seen it sounds like there’s a lot of companies that see You know how wise it is to invest in a piece of equipment like this because it’s going to increase their profits Because they’re going to reduce the number of callbacks and they’re going to make sure that the equipment they’re putting in is actually working the way it should and the customer is happy and comfortable With it takes out all the guesswork and it does everything for you
And it’s pretty quick. It’s a quick test too, right?
Chris (39:19.534)
Yeah, it’ll take I tell people which once you understand it, which we won’t take you long to understand it, but you’re probably looking at about 10 minutes when you deploy it.
Reuben Saltzman (39:28.451)
Mm.
Tessa Murry (39:30.65)
Yeah, yeah, I think it’s pretty cool. well, so we need to wrap up soon. So I want to make sure we get in Ruben’s. Ruben, you had two things you wanted to discuss. One was the Scottsdale, Arizona situation. And the other was the home inspection question that was going to stump us.
Reuben Saltzman (39:44.108)
Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (39:48.224)
Yeah, just might try to stump you guys with an interesting thing I saw the other day. the deal with this house warm climate and I’ve experienced this at a couple of houses I’ve stayed at. They’ve got a sign on the HVAC equipment, right? The thermostat. And it says, please don’t turn the thermostat down below whatever it is, like 72 degrees or something, because the HVAC system will freeze up and it’s not designed to cool that much.
Tessa Murry (39:53.169)
Okay.
Reuben Saltzman (40:17.92)
Is there a better truth in this when I see that? I don’t live in a hot climate, so maybe I just don’t know. But my initial thought is, yeah, right. You’ve got some broken old equipment that is not doing what it should. And this is your excuse for it. Chris, what do you say about this?
Tessa Murry (40:31.238)
Mmm.
Chris (40:39.824)
Do you want the high level answer or the deep dive?
Reuben Saltzman (40:45.23)
Give me the two to four minute answer.
Tessa Murry (40:45.618)
You
Tessa Murry (40:49.714)
I’m just kidding.
Chris (40:49.72)
Okay, I’ll talk fast. An air conditioner’s job is to remove heat. So there’s a thing called the total heat formula, and it goes like this. There’s a constant, which is 4.5 times CFM, whatever it is measured, times…
I’m drawing a blank. What’s the other piece of the puzzle? No, it’s 4.5 times 1,200 times enthalpy, delta enthalpy. right, so which is enthalpy is the total amount of heat in air, right? And so there’s delta enthalpy would be how much work happened across that indoor coil when in cooling mode, which a lot of people who like say train on this formula will start with a staple or basic formula as a principle is
Reuben Saltzman (41:13.282)
You can make something up, I’ll believe you. I don’t care what you say.
Chris (41:40.592)
4.5 times 1200 times 6.6 will roughly give you a capacity output of about 36,000 BTUs. Not exactly, but really close to that. And that’s what a normal air conditioner should look like if you measured it using that formula. That’s a very basic formula in HVAC. They teach it in trade school in the beginning, and it’s used widespread today. It’s a staple, right? So knowing that, that’s the capacity you’d want to be looking for.
Now, if I had a situation where a coil was freezing up or somebody said, don’t lower the temperature down to 68 because you’ll freeze up the coil, I have to start asking myself, well, the purpose of an indoor coil is to get cold. That’s the whole point is to try to make ice, right? Get cold as it can. Why? Because the colder it gets, the more it can remove moisture or sensible heat from the space, right? But there’s a degree where it works really good.
For sensible, there’s a degree where it works really good for latent, and there’s a sweet spot where you’re trying to hit both. And so depending on the amount of flow and the amount of enthalpy the coil has going, delta enthalpy that’s going across that coil, is going to depend on if that system is dialed in and working perfectly, and it would still work fine even at 68 degrees. And then there’s a situation where it wouldn’t work good at 68 degrees, and that situation would look like this. You would have
low flow and that coil would not have enough airflow going across it, where the enthalpy would get really, really high. But if the wet bulb temperature coming into that coil was low enough, meaning like you didn’t have a lot of heat load in the house, and you had low flow, the coil might freeze up. And that depends on if the expansion valve isn’t pinching off enough to throttle the refrigerant moving through that coil enough.
Then you could run into this example where if this typically would happen at night, the house gets cooler, there’s not a lot of load, the airflow is really low, let’s say the coal is just a little bit dirty, boom, coal is going to start to freeze up. And that’s probably from a system that’s just not set up right from the get-go. It’s dealing with low flow, and it just can’t handle that low flow situation. Now, to go just a little bit further, there is probably a point where you…
Tessa Murry (43:53.97)
Hmm.
Chris (44:02.512)
You run a system just too hard and it does get too cold inside and you may freeze it up from just running it in wildly improper conditions. Right? But you’d be freezing in that room and you would want to turn that air conditioner up at that point. The 68 degrees is not that point. But I would say you shouldn’t have to a house at 68 degrees to be comfortable. If you’re holding a house at 68 degrees to feel comfortable, you probably have a house problem.
Reuben Saltzman (44:20.566)
Okay.
Reuben Saltzman (44:31.554)
Yeah, yeah, that sounds really uncomfortable to me. Like I’m freezing at 68 degrees. Yeah, no thank.
Tessa Murry (44:35.538)
Yeah. I was going to say they just didn’t want you. They just didn’t want a high electric bill that month with the Airbnb guests. like, please don’t turn it down. man.
Reuben Saltzman (44:46.51)
I was thinking it’s either that or your system is screwed up. One of the two. Yeah. Yeah, I don’t know. But okay. All right. Not like I wanted to turn it down to 68 anyway, but it just the sign bothered me along with many other things. Okay. All right. Now I’m going to I got
Chris (44:50.928)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (44:58.414)
See you.
Chris (45:02.97)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (45:05.05)
So yeah, what’s the Scottsdale, Arizona situation? We’ve got a couple minutes. okay. Okay.
Reuben Saltzman (45:08.718)
No, that was it. But there was a home inspection thing that I thought I wanted to share with you guys and just see if you guys could figure this one out. I thought this is a fun one. I had a tough time figuring this out. So here I’ll share my screen and I’ll just kind of describe for the listeners what you’re looking at. It’s this is a this is a big house. It was built in 2003. It was very well done. I mean, they had like super insulated walls.
Tessa Murry (45:16.498)
Hmm.
Reuben Saltzman (45:38.882)
They had the spray foam in the attic and then a bunch of insulation on top of it. And it was what else? They had a huge kitchen fan, you know, one of those monster jobbies where it’s like a couple different motors running and they had in floor heat. They had a boiler in the basement and, it also provided in for heat to a bunch of other spaces in the house, like bathrooms and all that. And it had two furnaces.
You can see one of the furnaces on the far left side of the picture. It’s mostly cut off, but you can see the whole house. Met a fire for it. And then kind of in the middle of my picture, we’ve got another furnace. It’s a gas, high efficiency, forced air furnace. We got all the return duct work underneath it. And then to the right of that, we’ve got an electric furnace. We’ve got electric resistance heating coil furnace and then.
Tessa Murry (46:12.421)
Mm-hmm.
Tessa Murry (46:21.852)
Mm-hmm.
Reuben Saltzman (46:34.838)
we’ve got some type of evaporator coil sitting on top of it that had no tubing going to it. Like the evaporator coil was doing nothing, but it’s an electric furnace. So that’s the setup. That’s what we’re looking at. We crank up the heat at all 17 thermostats in the house or however many, there was a lot. mean, I may not be exaggerating a lot when I say 17, there was a lot of thermostats.
Chris (46:47.376)
now.
Tessa Murry (47:01.767)
Thanks
Reuben Saltzman (47:02.35)
We turn up the heat to all of them to get all the heating systems kick on. The one thing that would not turn on is this furnace could not get it to fire up. But what did happen is the electric furnace was running when we get down into the utility room. So I’m thinking, is this emergency heat? You know, when you got a heat pump, the emergency heat is the electric resistance coils. So I’m thinking one of these thermostats is set to emergency heat.
Tessa Murry (47:18.396)
Huh.
Reuben Saltzman (47:32.184)
but no such luck. I mean, I went through all the menus and every thermostat, there’s no emergency heat setting and the electric furnace, the blower fan is running, but the coils aren’t drawing any power. It’s not adding any heat to the air. So I’m going, how do I even test this furnace? I’m totally stumped. And I spent a while on this and eventually,
I ended up calling the listing agent and I said, I can’t figure this out. You got to get me to talk to the homeowners or something. She’s like, they don’t, they probably don’t know. They got a company who handles all that. And she got me in contact with the heating company. So I called the heating company and he was able to explain what this was for me. But I just thought I’d let you guys take a quick look. Any guesses as to what was going on here?
Tessa Murry (48:25.81)
question.
Reuben Saltzman (48:27.252)
And I’ll go back and I’ll repeat, they had a huge Kitchen Hood fan.
Tessa Murry (48:35.411)
Okay, I was wondering is that a heated makeup air situation with that electric furnace and then it’ll only kick on when that fan is running. I don’t know.
Chris (48:37.39)
interesting.
Tessa Murry (48:49.49)
Okay, but still why didn’t the natural gas furnace kick on? Because the in-floor heat was satisfying thermostat? Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (48:57.742)
Why wouldn’t the furnace kick on? Oh, the electric furnace was a red herring. It had nothing to do with any of this. It was just giving off an error code. The furnace was flashing 40, it was giving error code 43. It had a bad sensor or something. Had nothing to do with any of this, but I was so fixated on switching it over to the furnace.
Tessa Murry (49:07.31)
Okay.
Tessa Murry (49:19.951)
my gosh.
Reuben Saltzman (49:27.31)
I didn’t even take the time to look to see if it was generating an error code. Once I knew what the electric furnace was doing, I was like, all right, let’s take a closer look at the furnace. And sure enough, oh yeah, I didn’t even stop to look at this. okay, so yeah, yeah. So just thought it was interesting. I’ve seen plenty of those makeup air units installed at the ceiling where…
Tessa Murry (49:27.952)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (49:39.666)
man, let that be a lesson to us all, I guess.
Tessa Murry (49:53.005)
Yes.
Reuben Saltzman (49:53.708)
We turn the kitchen fan on, it brings makeup air in, even the fancy ones got the heaters on them, but I’ve never seen somebody use an electric furnace for this.
Tessa Murry (50:00.189)
Yep.
Tessa Murry (50:04.56)
Yeah, or set up where it looks like it’s going to be heating the house because it’s right next to the other natural gas furnace, like set up vertically like that.
Reuben Saltzman (50:09.772)
Yeah, yeah, and it pumps the air right into the same return duct. Yeah, just thought that was interesting. Had to share it. Fun times.
Tessa Murry (50:15.884)
Yeah. Yeah, that is definitely unusual.
Huh, huh. Chris, have you seen anything like that?
Chris (50:25.732)
Residentially, no. And I will say, yeah, that’s pretty wild. I think it’s good to think about how to make up air for a hood, because I think it is important to make that air up. thinking about strategies, here’s something that I’ve deep dived in is kitchen hoods don’t run that long. They run for a moment in time. Let’s say five minutes in time, 10 minutes in
Tessa Murry (50:27.844)
Welcome to the Northland.
Chris (50:55.824)
So going back to that formula I was telling you about, you know, got total heat formula. You’ve also got total sensible formula, which you might use when it’s cold outside. stop and if you’re in a situation where you’re designing makeup air for a house, for a hood, that’s going to run 10 minutes, you should start to play out the formula and say, how much of a problem is this problem going to be? And then you can start calculating how much load you’re going to bring into that house for the 10 minutes of runtime that the hood is going to run.
if it actually produces, let’s just say 500 CFM. You could calculate with total heat formulas and design temps, how much load that would be. And then you could make better design choices about how I’m going to handle that air that I’m going to bring in. And that’s just kind of like, you know, it’s a simple question of like looking at the load that’s in the air outside and how much of that you’re going to bring in versus how much you’re going to bring out. And you may find yourself finding easier strategies to deal with.
Reuben Saltzman (51:51.341)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (51:52.85)
Hmm.
Chris (51:56.416)
than having to put in very, very expensive equipment to where you’re buying a whole split HVAC system to deal with makeup hair.
Tessa Murry (51:57.553)
Well.
Tessa Murry (52:02.246)
Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (52:04.386)
Yes.
Tessa Murry (52:05.496)
Yeah, yeah, that’s crazy. And some of the requirements are in the, you know, in the code, probably in those contractors that are just like, we’ve got 1000 CFM hood, we need the next, you know, CFM of makeup air. And here’s how we do it. And every house. Boom.
Chris (52:18.157)
Yeah, and nobody needs a thousand CFM exhaust hood in their house. I’m just gonna say it. There’s no need for that.
Tessa Murry (52:22.845)
you
Reuben Saltzman (52:25.294)
But I’ll tell you what when people got enough money they sure want
Tessa Murry (52:28.978)
Shush, shush, shush.
Chris (52:29.456)
Yeah, no, I know. I’ve definitely been there. I’ve been there. People just, want to have it. But the secret is you don’t have to give it all to them. You know what saying? You can just throttle it back. Yeah. Right.
Tessa Murry (52:32.486)
high demand.
Reuben Saltzman (52:36.609)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (52:37.04)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (52:41.874)
that’s funny.
Reuben Saltzman (52:44.494)
Just tell them yeah, this is 2000 CFM. It’s the biggest there’s ever been. Just don’t tell them. Yeah, who’s gonna test it? Yeah
Chris (52:51.408)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (52:51.954)
yeah. Well, you know what? I hate to do this, but we’re going to have to wrap this show up. Chris, we could ask you million more questions, but that’ll have to be part two.
Chris (52:55.408)
Ahem.
Reuben Saltzman (53:00.76)
You know what, Tess, before you wrap, before you wrap, I know I had a heart out, but I gotta stay on for one more minute. I just gotta share something. I gotta share this with you, Chris, because at the beginning of the show, you talked about how every birthday you look back and you feel frustrated about the stuff that you haven’t done. And I just gotta share one of the best books that I’ve read in the past several years was called The Gap and the Gain. Tessa, have you heard me talk about this?
Tessa Murry (53:08.274)
Please.
Tessa Murry (53:15.9)
you
Tessa Murry (53:30.694)
think I have, yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (53:31.924)
Okay, it’s by, I think it’s Chip Heath and Dan Sullivan. I’m almost positive, but again, it’s the gap and the gain. And the gap is where you look at all of the things that you want to be doing that you haven’t yet done. That’s the gap. it’s where you feel bad about it. And you go, I look at this person and they’re here and I should be there.
And I wish that I had done all these things that I haven’t done them yet. But the game is where instead you look back on your life and you look back, where was I five years ago? And you go, holy cow. In the last five years, I’ve done this and this and this. And instead of looking to what you haven’t done, you spend all your time looking back on the things that you have done. And you end up being a much happier person. And that’s that that’s.
Tessa Murry (54:17.946)
Hmm.
Reuben Saltzman (54:27.45)
my very, short Cliff Notes version of the book, but I’ve read the book a couple of times and it’s definitely changed my outlook. So I’m not saying like go buy the book or whatever, but if you enjoy books, this one was very impactful for me. Really enjoyed the gap in the game. So that’s my blog test. I’ll let you get back to closing the show.
Chris (54:47.792)
Cool. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (54:52.21)
was just going to say, Ruben, thank you for taking the glass half empty to helping us focus on the glass half full. We all need to hear that sometimes, especially people that are always trying to learn, grow, and be better, right? It’s super easy to focus on the deficiencies or where we think we should be. That’s what drives us. But we have to remember, like you said, where we’ve come from and how far we’ve come. It’s easy to forget that. So there’s balance in life. We need that.
Reuben Saltzman (55:16.652)
Yes. Yes.
Tessa Murry (55:21.638)
So thank you, Mr. Rogers, Mr. Saltzman, Robin, the positive message of the day. Thank you. It’s a good nugget to end with. So thank you so much for coming on the show, Chris. If people have questions or want to reach out, what’s the best way to get ahold of you?
Chris (55:24.496)
Thank
Reuben Saltzman (55:24.75)
you
That’s right. That’s right.
Reuben Saltzman (55:33.58)
Yes.
Chris (55:40.624)
Email. My email is chughes at energyconservatory.com. C Hughes, my name is Chris Hughes. So that’s C, the letter C. My last name Hughes is spelled H-U-G-H-E-S. I always spell it out because it feels like there’s a few silent letters in there. So email me. I’m usually pretty good at getting responses back. Nothing gets dropped if it hits the email. If you call me, it might get dropped. That’s just habit. I have three kids.
Tessa Murry (55:59.228)
Man.
Tessa Murry (56:09.97)
Busy guy. Thanks, Chris. Ruben, for our listeners that have any questions or feedback or thoughts or ideas for future podcasts, guests or topics, how do they reach us?
Reuben Saltzman (56:10.09)
yeah, get it.
Chris (56:20.848)
Thank
Reuben Saltzman (56:24.088)
podcast at StructureTech.com. We read them all. Please reach out to us. So that’ll do it for the day. Chris, it was great meeting you. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Tessa, as always, great to see you. And for our listeners, we will catch you next time. Take care.
Tessa Murry (56:36.582)
Yeah. Thanks, Chris.
Tessa Murry (56:43.059)
Thanks.