HVAC/Ductwork vendor Recommendations

Steve – I appreciate you taking the time to write this detailed note. Can you please share your contacts with me? I have exhausted many phone calls and have not made it past initial phone conversations exactly because of the BS aspect and not moving forward with said companies come on site. My definition of the BS I am talking about is simply not being able to articulate/communicate effectively over the phone. It’s a lot of word salad and the ole “trust me I’ve been doing this 30 years” line. I don’t doubt the experience, but I am not just taking someone’s word for it because they can’t properly communicate or address some of my basic questions over the phone.

in so far as someone taking the chance and bringing a third rate contractor onto their premises to save money, for the average homeowner, this would be a disaster. Someone like me can maybe get away with it in that if a less experienced contractor is willing to learn and listen and take some direction from someone like me (someone who has managed jobs and hired and trained staff), they might get through it (provided it is NOT something like electric or plumbing or ac where someone like myself knows we must hire a pro). if i hired a less skilled painter and he was willing to let me hold his hand, he would get through the job. but most often, egos get in the way and many of today’s contractors are extremely resistant to learning new things. many of today’s contractors are doing jobs because they have limited options. it is not like the old days where people wanted to be wood workers or auto mechanics and you had guys taking shop classes and even going to college for this stuff.

with HVAC, you are hiring people for a trade that we (you and I) know less about. We cannot tell them how to do their job and we WANT them to tell us how they will do their job and we want them to perform as they say they will. Right away, this eliminates a lot of people from doing that job. If they cannot tell us about what they are going to do, then we do not want them.

in thinking about this, i think what makes the numbers look skewed with these guys (as with electricians and plumbers) is that they have to be heavily insured to work in coops and condos and to protect their employees and that adds to costs (my worker’s comp was 17% of payroll; that means i have to charge 17% over someone who does not carry worker’s comp just to level the playing field; a lot of customers will take the chance on a guy willing to break the law). Because there is not too much AC work in plain old houses, you will not have too many HVAC guys running around with little or no insurance. You are stuck hiring pros. Trust me, with the electricians, plumbers, and HVAC guys, it is the way it should be.

sometimes the problems people have in this world are more about their perception of the world than the world itself.

I will try to respond to this as professionally as i can, even though as a contractor, and one who regards himself as an honest contractor, i have some issues with some of the language you are using. i will do my best to try to explain the market in this city and some of the things that make our jobs harder and make it hard for us to earn an honest income (which at the same time make it look as if we are a bunch of thieves).

First a little about me. i have worked in all sides of this, from a common helper and laborer in the early 1980s, to “day laboring” between jobs when i was younger, to a skilled trades person and building manager and eventually my own restoration business. At this time, i am a consultant and i coach homeowners on how to prepare for jobs, deal with contractors, what questions to ask them to see if they are who they say they are, and what to include in contracts to protect themselves. I currently have two clients asking me to review bids and contracts and one of them could be reading this right now and wondering why i am not helping him this moment.

Something about contractors. the top tier contractors are in manhattan. As much as we hate working in there because of the parking and non sense (by the way, for anyone thinking of hiring me in manhattan to consult, no worries, i take mass transit), this is where the professionally run buildings are with professional managers such as myself. as professional building managers, we would not risk our jobs bringing a second rate contractor onto the premises. What does this mean? it means the owner of the contracting firm is a highly skilled professional and can communicate and will not BS anyone because he knows with managers like us around, we will know how to read behind what he is saying. He also knows that if we do not know him or much about the job at hand, that we will call two other contractors and ask them questions and in this way will weed the bs’ers out. In truth, the bs’ers do not make it past the first phone call (never happens; they cannot talk the talk let alone walk the walk). if bs’ers are making it to your house (because they are not weeded out during the first phone call), that is your fault; this does not happen with professional property and building managers This ALL comes at a cost: It means that top shelf contractors keep employees on the books as part of a highly trained crew and that costs money to do with unemployment insurance or having to pay a salary when things are slower. those employees are treated like human beings following all modern labor laws and are probably given a couple of weeks paid vacation a year along with paid holidays and health insurance. It also means that many of these contractors will not work for homeowners in queens and brooklyn because they get tired of giving out quotes and being told they are thieves of bs’ers for trying to earn an honest living and take care of their employees and behave like “good” actors as opposed to bad actors (who are under insured and dump trash on the side of the park over here where i live).

if you want the name of a top tier company and wish to have them visit your house, i will get you some names. HVAC was under my purview when i worked in commercial buildings. i can promise you, they will know what they are doing and they will send trained staff to your house but i also know something else; you will probably tell me the price is too high (this is why I NEVER recommend my contacts from when i worked in management on this board; i recommended Grenadier once a decade ago for facade work and the homeowner said the “price was too high” as if i were crazy; two years ago i called Grenadier to see if they would visit a customer in Brooklyn and they said “we no longer do residential”) .

Then there are second tier contractors. i was a “second” tier contractor. i did good work and was respected and even though i was invited to bid on jobs at the Cooper Hewitt Museum, Forbes, and other museums, i rarely got those jobs and lost them to top tier people who i know and speak with (and we respect each other; we refer work around). I did get a small job at Forbes once. I rarely wanted to go to manhattan and let that be known and was happy in Brooklyn. i rarely worked over here in queens because i got tired of wasting time on calls with people who think skilled human beings should make $15 an hour with no protections and benefits. People would NEVER accuse me of being a BS’er and some might say i am “too direct” (as a consultant, my clients love that about me). this is the issue with a second tier company: i was not billing enough to even provide myself with health insurance let alone health insurance for workers (for those who know me, it was and is my spouse who carries the health insurance; this is the reality for many of us; if we want a family and want to own a house and do not have a spouse with health insurance, we have to work for someone else).

this is the problem for contractors at this level. Because of competition from below and because we lose jobs to those below us, we cannot justify the prices to a large percentage of customers. We also have trouble keeping the best help around because the talent goes to the employers who treat people well with paid vacation and health insurance and have less risk of lay off. This is the PROBLEM for customers: there are no “middling” contractors left for the homeowners. basically, as we retire, no one is taking our places because of the “third” tier contractors out there. Let’s talk about the third tier contractors:

Otherwise very intelligent people come on this forum from time to time and it does not matter that they work in business in manhattan and have more education than i have, but they still fall prey to the “lowest bid”. this industry is so competitive that honest contractors like me are always worried about “dishonest” contractors coming along an outbidding us and the customer taking it. the problem is, the city is so big with so many unknowing homeowners that those contractors are able to survive by moving to new neighborhoods (in a small town their reputation would precede them). this is how they sell cheap jobs: their business is often predicated on cheating. they cheat their unknowing employees, they cheat insurance companies, they cheat their customers; they cheat the taxman. They might knowingly write a low quote and turn around and put their hand out to ask for more money three months into the job when it is too late for the customer to tell them where to go (and sometimes it is a mistake; they did not anticipate something a more experienced contractor would have seen and included in a quote). Many of these contractors have no assets and because of this, they carry little or no insurance. they dump trash on the side of highways (honest contractors would NEVER do something like that).

It is the lowest tier of contractors who have run the middling contractors out of business. it is also the consumer willing to take a chance with them that allows those contractors to survive.

what does this mean for you? in a specialized trade where training is critical and they cannot pick up labor on a street corner but must maintain employees (and keep in mind, many of this people will work in small apt buildings in brooklyn: to do so means they are heavily insured and that costs money), keeping good employees around cost money. the truth is, you want employees who are professional enough to know what they are doing without a supervisor around and who will challenge a supervisor if he thinks a mistake is about to be made. people who don’t take care of their employees hire people who don’t give a crap.

other issues for us are traffic. i would have to work 14 hour days to make a living if i charged what someone in New Haven Ct charges to do a job. I tell people all the time “you are paying for my drive time”. i know it sucks, but it is reality. also, my contracting insurance was THREE times what someone doing the same work in North Carolina pays for the same coverage with the same company.

for anyone reading this, know that i do pre job inspections to help people decide what to do when and help them talk about scope, materials and some of the realities. I coach people on how to maintain their own roofs so they do not fall prey to bs roofers who know less than me, someone who states all the time “i am not a roofer”. I do leak investigations.

i am going to write a customer who just this morning asked me to review bids and contracts and tell him I will find the time to do so if he is willing to come on here and comment on what i just said long with my integrity and honesty. if you do not believe me, read reviews about me. No BS there. i don’t need fake reviews – and i will tell the truth to the detriment of losing a job (i actually refer people on to others more suitable).

Steve
brownstonehomeinspection.com