At a national event in 2005, I listened to a presentation given by Garry Upton of Decision Analyst that presented results of their 2006 American Home Study. After viewing the high percentage of homeowners with comfort issues, I was convinced that adding home performance testing to our existing HVAC business model needed to happen. Subsequently, the 2008 American Home Study (of 30,000 homeowners) by Decision Analyst re-confirmed my thoughts that there were plenty of home comfort issues yet to be resolved.

Why was I so intrigued? Well, have you ever had to defend one of your installations regarding cooling/heating comfort issues? If you have, and you had checked and re-checked your load calculations, system selection, ductwork and installation as well; and if problems still existed, what did you do then? Most homeowners believe that any comfort issues must be the entire fault of the contractor, until the problems are either resolved or proven to be an issue within the envelope itself. 

And, homeowners have no evidence to the contrary to think any differently! With this in mind, I was convinced that home performance contracting would provide us with a significant defense, as well as identify the true root cause of the homeowner’s dissatisfaction.

Yes, occasionally, we missed something, and the problem fell back on us, which we fixed expeditiously. But the vast majority of issues had to do with a variety of building-envelope problems that were unknown prior to this specialty testing. As our confidence rose with this new testing service, we were finally able to remove the “targets off our backs” that seemed to have been permanently imprinted. HPC touches many aspects of our industry — HVACR, IAQ, energy savings, and healthier homes — a winning combination for the contractor as well as the homeowner!

Robert Wilkos has more than 30 years of senior management experience. He is former business leader for Peaden Air Conditioning, Heating & Plumbing. He is now an independent consultant focusing on healthy growth and long-term long-term prosperity of residential service businesses. To learn more about Robert, visit www.RobertWilkos.com.