Can Startup Crews Fix The Residential HVAC Industry? - An Interview With Paul McHugh

Ben sits down with Paul McHugh from Ray O. Cook - a HVAC Contractor in Sacramento, California - to learn how Ray O. Cooke is built differently than their competition.
Ray O. Cook has been around for many years and has integrated high-tech best practices into every project. This allows them to outpace their competition while ensuring that every system can operate at the maximum performance possible.
This can't be done without a platform like measureQuick paired with Ray O. Cook's unique approach to equipment startups.
Ben & Paul dive deep into discussing why best practices are not adhered to in the residential HVAC industry, how regulation could help (if used properly), and how company culture is an important factor in a successful transformation to becoming a data-driven HVAC company.
This interview was originally recorded in September, 2023.
Chapter Markers
00:00 Introduction By Ben
00:31 Introducing Paul McHugh & Ray O. Cooke
03:48 What is A Startup Crew?
08:32 Culture: The Core Of HVAC Success
10:00 Why You Shouldn't Do Same Day Commissioning
11:46 Structuring Your Crews
13:23 Is Commissioning Non-Existent In Residential HVAC?
15:49 Everyone Is Doing The Bare Minimum, No More
17:49 Offering Commissioning As A Choice
20:10 Commissioning Is Mandatory With High-Efficiency Equipment
22:28 Should Commissioning Be Mandated?
25:47 Forcing Change In Our Industry
28:08 How To Establish A Commissioning Culture
31:16 The Only Constant Is Change
34:00 Waking Up From The Small Business Nightmare
36:34 We're Running Out Of Time To Get This Right
39:48 Mandate Sizing Guidelines First, Then Commissioning
41:17 There's No Excuse To Not Size Equipment Properly
42:47 Load Calcs: The 80/20 rule
45:56 High-Tech Load Calcs: Anyone Can Do It, Everyone SHOULD Do It
49:38 Regarding Enforcement Of Building Codes
51:54 Wrapping Up

[@UncleEarlHeatingAirCondition]

My Hat's is off to the Ray Cook company.
The customers who you serve do understand the quality of service you are providing.
Even the ones who think they do, do not really understand what it takes for a company to offer what you do in 2023.

[@measureQuick]

They are for sure one of the good ones.

[@HVACRTECH-83]

Kinda funny you say especially residential has these problems cause i find that commercial/ industrial has all the same issues. Either over/undersized everything, wrong pipe sizes and bad piping practices, ductwork is hardly ever engineered correctly so airflow you can almost never get to spec, i could go on and on it really sucks and its too late to fix once installed in large commercial systems especially, it just is what it is forever

[@coldfinger459sub0]

👍

[@blh3741]

As a homeowner/contractor, I hear this as "during the summer, we do half-ass volume installs that barely squeak by and 'IF' the Homeowner complains about poorly performing system, we'll send a service tech out to fix the issues/complaints" Sorry, I'm hearing this as BS. if you are going to do something...do it right the first time.

[@iiMEiii]

As some one in Australia who does domestic install and service for almost 10 years is standards when I started as apprentice was not very high and now its not much higher.
People want AC in Sydney they don't want to pay for AC.
You can't tell them that we need $1000 extra so after we get it working we will send a team in for 5 hours set up a bunch of equipment and balance the AC correctly they will just look at the quote and say well this guy will do it $1000 cheaper and the system will still work.
Sure it might give the system a extra 10 years or cut the running cost by 20% for the rest of the units life but they don't want to pay it even when its offered.

[@measureQuick]

Not sure how you arrived at the assumption that this commissioning approach results in lower quality or sub-par work. Ray O. Cook is already offering a better quality installation by coming back two additional visits. By no means is the customer left with a system that is barely running. All installations are third party verified, the day of installation, by an independent third part rater as part of the required building inspection. This is a minimum test, (many states do not even have this) Ray O. Cook chooses to exceed the minimum by commissioning the air conditioning, and the heating in order to establish a much higher level of equipment performance. The fact they choose to do that at a time of year when they can actually do the best job for the customer, enabling a higher level of focus, is a win for all parties.