I found myself re-reading the ACCA Quality Installation Standard recently and it got me thinking about the industries tendency of offering free quotes. In this article, I’d like to just focus in on the items that are required as what I’m calling “prior to installation” items.

Prior to installation

1. Ensure ventilation calculations are performed.
2. Building heat gain / loss calculation (Manual-J / Manual-N)
   1. Room x room for new construction or duct modifications.
   2. Block load for existing (can use original if available).
3. Proper equipment capacity selection (Manual-S / Manual-CS)
4. Properly matched systems (AHRI or CEE-AHRI)

Let’s break the above items down to a rough estimated time to complete each of the items.

The above items are obviously just estimations and the person’s experience in the different areas / tools they use. Some of the items are probably on the low side while others are probably on the high side.

This is 1.75 hours just to do the calculations required to meet the QI Standard. This does not include any of the time spent with the customer building value in you or your product recommendations.

When you want to not guess at some of the calculations then a blower door test is generally required in order to understand the leakage of the home, which adds even more time to the estimation process. Depending on the understanding you are looking for, the blower door test can add 30-180 minutes. This takes the total time to 2.25-4.75 hours.

Pushing boxes

The majority of residential HVAC companies make the bulk of their income off of equipment sales, so they have to “feed the beast” by skipping steps in both the installation of equipment and the sales process in order to close jobs and keep the ship afloat.

This has helped contribute to these industry statistics:¹

• Incorrect refrigerant charge in greater than 50-80% of systems.
• Improper airflow:
  • 70% above the rated 0.5" w.c.
  • 47% above 0.7" w.c.
  • 85% undersized / inappropriate filter.
• 70-80% of systems have at least one fault.
• 90-100% if duct leakage is considered.

Consumer responsibility

Let me be clear, I don’t think that all the blame is on the industry here. The culture today is that everyone wants things for free and fast. They have been conditioned by online services and box stores. Should we not cater to those that aren’t willing to do their leg work? Is it really our fault, if they don’t care?

Liability

While it’s generally easy to shrug our shoulders and think that it’s ok to just continue on because all the competitors are doing the same thing. There is at least the possibility that skipping steps can come back to bite you. If things ever went to litigation and the steps outlined in the QI Standard are ignored, then there is high odds you would loose.

No matter what you do to try and protect yourself (having customers sign-off, etc) does not adequately protect your company from litigation. There are stories out there where contractors were still held liable for not performing load calculations even though the consumer signed off on it, because it is not inline with “industry best practices.”

Summary

This has led me to the conclusion that free quotes are just bad for the industry in general. The path forward is a challenge (changing perception is hard). I don’t know that I have answers on what the best path forward is, to be frank, but I do know that our current status quo is subpar to say the least.

Unfortunately, I don’t think the change is going to come from the industry, but that it’s going to require the consumer base to be more educated and demand more from the industry. There have been many organizations that have dedicated years to changing the skill levels of technicians in the industry, they are very well needed / don’t mistake my words here, however unless a company has faced litigation or facing requests on a regular basis that demand better results, then why would a company change!?!

I’ve been trying (unsuccessfully) to get rid of free quotes for 5+ years in my company. We try to educate customers during maintenance visits and when scheduling equipment estimates, however only about 10-20% choose to go down our paid Home Performance Assessment path. Our installation process does follow the QI Standard for the items that pertain to the setup / commissioning of the installed equipment, however there is just no sustainable way for us to completely follow the items outlined in this article without charging for our time, because at the end of the day we still have to be competitive in our market.

There are days that I can justify our actions to myself and also days that I just want to throw in the towel / not sacrifice our integrity. Integrity is something that I take very seriously, after all our companies tag line is “Since 1954, Integrity is in the Housh!”

As mentioned, I’m not sure what the best path forward is! I hate to not have answers, but some problems are just complex and somewhat beyond our control.

Let me know what you think some good solutions are.

• Does your company follow the QI Standard?
• What are resources that you’ve found helpful in educating your customers?