Testing Live Stream, and Answering Some Questions

If y'all can hear me is that better? Move this a little closer to me. We're doing another test to see if the setup I have is actually working. Hey guys I've improved my lighting and some of my sound and my video a little bit. Y'all let me know if this is doing okay. Hey what's up guys? I don't always see right away what y'all are typing. How's the sound on this? I can't really see the sound maybe i can try to turn it up a little bit is that any better i'm glad it looks a little bit better i've improved my lighting i guess i could show you the setup i have here but it's um my office is a mess i'm not going to show you around my office good morning guys i figure we try something on saturday because during the week we um most of us are busy even if it's slowing down this time of year i'm i'm still kind of busy but yesterday was a little bit of a rain day and i have a um a video from my rain day that i'm going to post just a little bit later on sound is pretty good so the video is better that's good and good to know if there's a way i can turn this off but is that any better i can't tell how this i just see a little graph here oh i got a whole new light and y'all are saying get a little better lighting face in there yeah the light's actually over here if i turn and look at you and maybe i need to put it find a way to put it up above this screen here very good sound sounds fine thank you well guys i do have a time to do just a few questions or talk about what's going on in the industry one of the things that was really bothering me lately is i went to a Ruud class and y'all know i'm a Ruud dealer and they told me that the stock equipment that i have in my warehouse i couldn't register it come next year because of these new ratings they're going with and if you know about these new ratings they're going to start rating the air handlers for 0.6 inches water column before they were rating them for 0.2 which was just unrealistic and that's part of the reason some of these X13 motors were failing so with the new ratings they're saying we may not be able to register them and i still have several pieces of equipment that i need to get rid of but um i did call my distributor and they said is that we can register them so i'm a little confused about that 454B um well here's the deal with 454B i think um Trane and Carrier and there may be some others are going to start using the 454B and Ruud and Rheem i think they're going with R32 and it's this um it's this global warming potential or GWP the 454B has a higher rating a higher potential which means there's a possibility it could be phased out in the future so Rheem and Ruud are going with the lower one um and they're not going to bring in the new refrigerants they put it off for two more years so um we don't have to deal with that right away but it's coming yeah as soon as january of next year all the equipment being sold has to be rated for 0.6 inches water column and they're calling that 14 SEER 2 so it's still 14 SEER it's just got a higher static pressure rating forgive me i'm trying to read your comments pipe doctor franchise oh my word no no no no no we ain't going that route i am i saw where he was actually trying to do something in south carolina i do feel this far south the way you talk to people and the way you um present yourself matters just as much as the quality of work you do so um i do believe that like there's a fellow that i used to watch um steve lab steve lab now if he came down here in the south and talked to customers like that he wouldn't make it but i understand that's normal up there but down here that's not and when i watch him i'm just shocked at the way he talks to people well guys it's good to see y'all logging on i'm glad the sound is doing good i got a little mic here to help improve the sound forgive me i'm reading those comments yeah steve lab i'm sure he's a great guy and um but yeah that bostonian way of talking to people yeah that ain't gonna float down here but yeah the the new regulations coming um january has me wondering if i need to sell my equipment back to my distributor or if i need to um try to install them as soon as possible i've got one that i bought for my house and i'm not really worried about that one that um that's going to be a twin series inverter system and i hope to do that on the weekend probably the weekend after football season i'm going to install that one i've already done one and i've learned a lot of lessons about how to do them and using Nylog and the better way to torque down your flare nuts stream yard yeah the comments do go by fast forgive me i've got a cord right in front of the comments from upstate new york to start a career in hvac yeah it is a little bit of adjustment coming down here um i spent some time up north um well maryland to me is up north and i've been in new york city the lack of eye contact in places like that and the um the way that people talk to you i know it's normal up there but um down here it's kind of we perceive it as rude eight years experience with installing new construction well eric tech for 15 years you know i'm gonna tell you you don't have to be a tech for 15 20 years to start a business you just have to know what you're doing and there's a time when you when you're a tech and when you're working where everything just clicks and you realize even if it's new equipment you haven't seen you know how it works and you can work on it um i probably had less experience when i started my business than most people do but you don't have to know everything you just have to be good at what you do competent willing to learn and know your resources for help and just go do it you don't have to be perfect you need to be able to read the manual we so polite down south oh we have subtle ways of giving people um a peace of our mind like if somebody tells you well bless your heart that's a good way of saying you know go jump off a cliff bring back the magnetic parts tray actually i just put it back on my trailer i had it on a window unit that i took apart and somebody was supposed to come get it and i was saving all those screws so i got it back on my van now. Well, guys, years in the field before I started the business, including duct work and installation and stuff like that, I'm going to say seven years. Yeah. And then I started working as a technician and going through tech school and working with different companies. And I was working as a technician. I don't know if this is going to be great for y'all to hear, but I was working as a technician when I started the business for probably five and a half years that's it and I just jumped in it I had the I knew I could do it and I knew I was doing better work than most of the people around town so I just jumped in with both feet I was kind of forced into the situation the employer I had I had my own state license and I think he felt like I was some kind of threat or something. And he accused me of taking his customers and doing work on the side. So, and he fired me. So when that happened, I could either start a business or find a job with somebody else. And I was worried that having a state license, finding a job with somebody else was just going to lead to the same thing. So I just jumped in with both feet and started the business. I had no customers, no advertising. I wasn't in the yellow pages, no nothing. And I jumped in and rental companies really helped me get my start. The first couple of years, I probably didn't pay myself in total for two years, like $6,000. So that means I couldn't have done it without my wife working. And now my wife is retired and we're doing pretty good. but my wife is older than I am she was close to the age of retirement anyway and I ended up just telling her back in like 2016 just go ahead and retire you don't need to work let me see this one are you going to when I do house calls am I going to go live probably not no that's something I would probably have to ask a customer about because there's a chance they could end up in the video but yeah if y'all are thinking about going into business and you've got the experience is youtube helping with my finances um a little bit the the income coming from youtube i basically put it towards tools and y'all see i'm i buy tools a lot but that's about what uh i make um income from youtube can be anywhere from and i'll be honest because it's not a lot like three thousand a month to five six i have one month where i had two million views in one month now that was a good one but that's not normal normally um i get a quarter of that working for yourself for 50 years holy smokes that's a long time to be in one job before i started working for myself um i didn't hold a job for more than two or three years i would get a offer somewhere else that was for significantly more money and i would go to that and then the place i left would offer more to get me back and i felt like hey if you're gonna do that why didn't you pay me good to begin with but yeah my youtube income i put towards tools and stuff so it's just like a a fund where i buy whatever i want what business insurance company do i use i use a um a local insurance company called IPG insurance and they shop out my insurance my workers comp and my general liability with multiple carriers. In the last couple of years, I've been with the same carrier, but they shop it out every year to help get me a low price. I stick with a local company and they shop out the more national companies. 69 and just started your business. I think I started my business when I was 40. My background actually starts in engineering and that was not a job for me you have to renew your C21 i don't know what a C21 is yeah i started out in engineering that didn't work um i worked as an EMT for a short little while um a dump truck driver a heavy equipment operator and then i actually worked on car air conditioners before i started working on home or small business air conditioners i own and i didn't like it because it's such cramped tight spaces and the work was kind of difficult so um i switched over to residential and light commercial and um the companies i worked with just loved me and but at the time i was billing out as much as four thousand dollars a day for one big company in town and i kept thinking you know i can do that for myself i'm gonna cost you a fortune in tools now you don't have to buy everything that i buy good morning anthony a light bulb reflection yes there is a bright white round light over here i've got two um fluorescent lights up above me but i was trying to improve the light i've got the camera off to the side here and my screen is rather large if i put it up here on the top y'all are going to be looking down on me a little bit yeah it would go up here you mind telling me what town oh i don't care um i work in albany georgia and most of my work is in albany and i work in leesburg and some of the surrounding towns just a little bit i actually don't go any further than like 30 miles outside of my shop unless it's really slow and then i may go as far as like 45 or 50 but during the summer it's Albany or Leesburg or I'm not taking it well thank you Anthony thanks for telling me that it is good to get y'all on here somebody asked me about these hubcaps i don't know if y'all can see those very well but those are Volkswagen hubcaps those are reproductions from war era Volkswagen hubcaps it has like a workers party symbol with a VW emblem in the middle i have a 1967 Volkswagen Beetle and uh that's it is a hobby but it doesn't get a lot of my attention very much. Office is out of Tallahassee so it's Ashton. You do work in Albany from time to time. Albany is kind of in the middle of nowhere. There's no interstate going through it. There's no big you know sports reason to be here like a lake or a good flowing river or the mountains or a beach. I mean it's just right in the middle of nowhere. And that just happens to be where I ended up. How do you suggest getting an HVAC business up and started? An HVAC business happens to be a business that takes less initial investment than most businesses. Basically, you just need a van. It does not need to be fully stocked. You need software for your bookkeeping. You need a good accountant and you need, I do have a good lawyer. So, um, and they helped you get started, form your LLC or, um, incorporate a business and get your insurance. And I think I started when I started the business, I had a total of $12,000. I couldn't get a small business loan. The only loan I could get was for my van. And at the time i had a house payment a van payment and two new car payments so i was really jumping off the deep end but we did it and now my house is paid off all my vehicles are paid off everything i own is mine so all that money that i had in my house payment is going towards improving our house now you want to know what kind of camera i use i use a gopro hero 10 um with just a regular lens on it. No, Rob stopped. No, we haven't had a population explosion. Like I said, we're kind of out here in the middle of nowhere. Georgia, South Georgia, the economy down here is driven by agriculture. So we don't really have a big explosion of population. In fact, the city of Albany itself has shrunk. There has been a flight out of Albany. So the surrounding towns like Leesburg and Sylvester and maybe Dawson, they have seen a population increase. Well, Big O, thanks for telling me that. I'm glad y'all enjoy my videos. I have another one coming up today that I'm not sure if I fixed it or not. Let's just say it was working when I left. You were born in Albany. Albany is not a bad place. I appreciate Albany because it helped to give me a start in my business. Getting clients. you want to know about uh jimmy landers is that what you want to know about um you want to know about how to get clients um well the first part about getting clients for me was i would go to rental companies knock on their door give them a card shake their hand and let them see my face i was clean shaven at the time and several of them gave me a try one of them was a really big real estate company here in town and for like four years they would not try me finally i was able to get a meeting with a property manager sit down with him talk to him and say hey i do really good work and i'll work my butt off to keep your business and from then on i started getting business from them and you know this time of year it might be one or two calls a week but during the summer that might be two three calls a day but yeah rental companies and also home warranties they help a little bit i use them less and less it seems like i make them mad because of my prices and they'll leave me alone and then they'll come back because they don't have anybody else but um yeah volkswagen hubcaps those are yeah those are volkswagen hubcaps i'm not sure if y'all can see can y'all see that emblem that's a volkswagen with the workers party emblem around it from World War II, and if you look at that workers party emblem, it kind of looks like a stylized swastika, but that's what that is. I'm not a Nazi, but I enjoy Volkswagen memorabilia. You get a lot of leads from Home Depot. I haven't tried that. Well, I appreciate you saying that, Christian. Well, Jimmy, I am a man of faith. I'm more of a spiritual person. Let's just say there were things that happened to me in my past that made religion and church and just hearing some things about the Bible that kind of made me feel like I was sick, like something bad was going to happen. So I relate spiritually in a way that most people don't. Yeah, my previous employer did let me go because of my license, and maybe I should have kept it to myself, but it turned out to be a blessing in disguise because when he let me go, I started the business and that turned out to be one of the best decisions I made. It turned out really well. Trade school, any tips? If you can work while you're going through trade school, that way you're putting into practice what you're learning as you are learning it. It can help increase the pace of your learning. I haven't completely changed from Makita to Milwaukee um my 18 volt tools most of them are still Makita and i still keep Makita stuff on the van i still keep a backup impact but the reason i started using the M12 stuff is because i wanted smaller tools something that was light and small and Makita is going to 40 volts so their tools are actually bigger you can't put just a five battery five cylindrical battery battery on the bottom of a 40 volt tool and they're going to a new platform i thought well i'm just gonna try the M12 well thank you Richard good to see y'all too yes someone did claim the tool bag somebody locally came and got it and i do have some other stuff i could give away some nice stuff but i had a bad experience with somebody on spamming my viewers saying hey you've won and sending some crazy text to them um so i if i give something away i need to figure out a better way to do it than just commenting like sending me an email or something like that yeah i've seen some of the call spaces no impacts in them spots no i don't understand what you're saying what type of licenses do i have down here um down here i have a conditioned air non-restricted license so that means i can do anything air conditioning um from the largest commercial to the smallest less than five tons and um i had a master gas license which we needed to install with gas furnaces and stuff like that but my local municipality here in albany no longer requires that let's say it's covered by my conditioned air license so basically that's all i've got outside of like a NATE certification and the EPA i have a state conditioned air non-restricted license no oil you talk about fuel oil in this area very little in fact down here in albany i have not seen any of it and there was a town Dalton and Cuthbert not far away some of them have fuel oil and recently the only fuel oil i worked on was um one that i ripped out and put in a heat pump well hello from brazil i'm glad my videos helped well the the M18 i have been a little bit i don't have a whole lot of M18 i have the M18 on vacuum and i have an M18 light but most of my 18 volt stuff is makita my own circular saw my big saws all my grinder my rotary hammer of course i got other stuff here in the shop for vehicles that's all makita so i haven't given up on makita um but i do like the M12 stuff the M12 stuff seems to be catering to the trades and i like that i got i had a NATE for a long time i had um heat pump certification gas furnace certification and of course with that comes the air conditioning and installers and all that stuff um and i still keep it up but i used to have a jacket with all that those certifications on my sleeve it doesn't seem like anybody cares about that though no gas packs up up north i wonder how far north they go um if you have your EPA your employer is going to look at that and think well he's licensed to put gauges on the system and handle refrigerant um if you can get a job and get some experience under your belt um another good employer will look at that favorably. Just having an EPA license, if that's all you got, they're just going to look at that and say, hey, you can put gauges on a system, but try to get experience. Put your hands on equipment and get experience. I'm going to tell you some of the people I work for, I learned how to run a business and I learned how not to run a business. The last guy I worked for is running his business into a ground. So I learned some from him and maybe what not to do but um i did learn yes we have lots of crawl spaces yes Ruud and Rheem are very popular in my area rob um there's a Ruud dealer and there's a Rheem dealer we have no Trane distributor here so anybody who sells Trane they have to have it shipped in but Ruud and Rheem are very popular there's lots of it down here well Joshua the the inverter heat pump i bought for my house is a 20 SEER and i do not intend to even put heat strips in it and like i said i'm probably gonna do that after football season probably the week of like the Army Navy game and um get that installed in my house i also need to um re-insulate my ductwork basement nightmares i'll be a proud Ream dealer um okay the DR58 there is an update on the DR58 i just posted a video not long ago where it completely let me down and two days later i was contacted by Fieldpiece and they're going to send me a new one and take mine back to look at it and figure out what went wrong that DR58 had 11 hours on it um a new tip so the sensor should have been good and that should have been a good leak detector but yeah they are going to send me a new one and take that one back new excuse to get away from the wife oh that's terrible um trust me football what time is it football is coming up and by 12 o'clock i will be at the house the on the DR58 i did send it back not long ago because i broke the tip of it it got caught in my door when i shut the door so the tip just broke and i couldn't screw on a new filter so i sent it back and oh just to replace the the wand so i could screw on a tip um was nearly 200 and i thought i could have just bought a new one i'm not anymore hvac is a good career oh somebody's rooting for the ducks um oh my y'all got that quarterback that came from auburn but yeah and he's doing good but he didn't do so good when he came down here to play georgia issues with the wi-fi honeywells crapping out Yes, I have had customers complain that sometimes they won't connect to their Wi-Fi and they'll just go haywire or they have to go up to the thermostat and change it themselves. I have one customer who's convinced that the Wi-Fi thermostat is the problem, but she has an electric water sensor and it'll shut it off and she's not understanding that. i may have to go back with a regular thermostat with her and just make it go blank when uh well this one does go blank but just make it go completely blank and um give her a regular thermostat go big blue who's big blue are you talking about michigan oh yeah bo nicks yeah bo nicks has been lights out since that game i don't think that have they lost another game um down here we hear all the time how great alabama is and people like me just get tired of hearing it so what's happening to alabama this year is just uh that that's nice they're not top dog down here right now um you'd like the ecobee thermostats solotech um i install them if a customer buys them and they want me to install them oh the my apple watch i love it the um the reason i bought it is because it's so rugged the other day i was in the video that i'm going to post later on probably when i get done with this on live stream we um i'm turning on the gas and i'm pressing my watch up against a brick wall and putting pressure on it and this thing will not scratch oh no i don't like nest thermostats either and sometimes i have customers want me to install them and they're at work so i can't even configure the thing until they get home we do have a lot of package units yeah we do have a lot of package units on the ground i imagine where it snows a lot. It wouldn't make a lot of sense to put a package unit on the ground. The orange mag light that I use, it's actually a Milwaukee that has replaceable batteries in it that I got at Home Depot. Hockey pucks. Yeah, a Nest is a hockey puck. That's about what it's good for. Apple thermostat. I have not seen the Apple thermostat. The smart thermostats that I carry are those Honeywell T6 Wi-Fi thermostats. Most of the time, the customers seem to have a preference of their own and um i charge them by the hour to come out and install one a minimum of minimum of one hour the m12 shears for for pvc well let me ask you on that is the blade thin where it can get damaged even though you use it like it's supposed to be used because i've got this ratcheting one and i use it just on pvc or maybe the seal type just pure plastic and the blade still gets boogered up I think it's one of those Uniweld PVC cutters, all the way from the UK. Hey, Mike, I imagine, is it about 8 o'clock over there? What time is it in the UK? Yes, that is one of these old Simpson meters. When I was a kid, maybe that dates me a little bit, but that was the top-of-the-line meter that you could buy. That was the bee's knees, 330 in the UK. use those meters i've i've got the manual on this thing and i need to put batteries in it and just play around with it and see if i can figure it out what systems do i not work on well i'll try to work on anything i get called to um right now i'm turning down jobs for chillers and stuff like that because um it just it just takes more time than what it's really i can't bill out for the time that I'm spending. When I'm answering calls, residential or like commercial, I average on a service call about $400. So for me to take a call that's going to last me four hours, and it may be something as simple, I don't know, like a condenser fan motor, it's hard to bill out what that is worth to me. Oh, y'all got some real snow. Yes, chillers, many times you do need two guys. I worked on chillers the first company i worked in here in albany and i would travel as far as Valdosta and places to work on those well guys um i appreciate y'all tuning in and y'all let me know if this is working okay i've just got it sitting down right here and um maybe i can do something a little different with the light and let me know if last time there was an echo problem with um the room and i'm hoping this microphone helps that out what are my thoughts on UV lights um what's the halo the remy halo i like those there's some others you have a good day too y'all see i'm fixing to sign off i will keep up the streams i got a video for you coming probably in just a little bit but um thanks for tuning in guys and uh i will catch y'all on the next one it's been good talking to you and i enjoy answering the questions see y'all later