A Hot Summer Day
HVAC is one of the most expensive things in your home and almost nobody knows why. One day you’re comfortable, the next it’s inside, and you have no choice but to buy or repair your unit, costing you a small fortune. Technicians slave away in the summer heat dealing with cheaply made, badly designed products that do more to limit them more than help. Sure, you’re comfortable after it’s all done, but no one comes away happy at the way that went down…why can’t it be better?
Intro
I quit my job. There are a few reasons why, but not liking my work wasn’t one of them. When I left I really enjoyed my co-workers and loved working on controls software for HVAC products.
…But, I keep asking myself, if I can make it on my own, I can create value in the ways that align with my beliefs, unconstrained by the limitations of my bosses, executives or investors, or co-workers outside my control.
Why take all this risk, can’t I just influence the people at work and accomplish this same thing? …Where I have a factory available, I have capital, I have influence with suppliers, and teams of engineers??
I want to make great products. I want to make products people WANT and don’t just need and tolerate. I want to make those products in a way that conforms with my values.
…And most companies are not designed to share my incentives. If you’re a startup, maybe it begins that way…but you need a payback investors eventually, and how long can that last? You end up selling to Google or Amazon, or some other giant competitor, and the world just gets that much less competitive.
I want something different.
Issues in HVAC
I’ve been working in HVAC for about 10 years. Five of those years were in commercial HVAC, building the kinds of systems where one refrigeration system can cool an entire airport…that’s about 500 of your largest home HVAC systems all put together.
Five more of those were in low-cost residential and hotel HVAC products. Where adding a dollar to the cost of a system costs the company $1 Million dollars over that products lifespan.
These companies had hugely different incentives. But at the end of the day, certain decisions weren’t that different.
How can they lock in customers? How can we get people to buy more stuff? How can they make their products cheaper to manufacture? How do they make their stock price go up?
And so we get:
- Proprietary protocols
- Huge mark-ups on cheap sensors
- Expensive replacement components
- Manufacturer owned closed data portals
- Products that don’t change because the incentives aren’t there to change them And this isn’t a comprehensive list…but I’m not going to sit here complaining to you for 10 minutes today…
So I’ve started to ask myself: Why can’t we have a high efficiency HVAC at standard efficiency cost? Why can’t HVAC products be easier to repair and improve? Why can’t I choose who owns my data? Why can’t I look up why my HVAC is expensive, and feel good in understanding the costs if it is. Ideally knowing that the person who put my system together was paid really well. Why can’t HVAC be better?
…I think it can
Cooperative HVAC
That’s why I’m starting Cooperative HVAC. An ethical, transparent, user-focused HVAC business that will use Open-source to make everyone’s lives better.
Whether you’re a technician tired of working around equipment that fights you, a homeowner who just wants to understand what you’re paying for, or a tech person who thinks HVAC is overdue for a disruption — this is for you.
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Thanks for watching and have a cool day.