HVAC Slow Season? These Tricks Keep You Booked

where Riley and I come to you from the metropolis of Albany Georgia to talk about all kinds of HVAC stuff we leave BS at the door we talk about products we talk about service we talk about prices this is one place where we can just be open and talk about things the way we really want to nobody pays me to say anything here so my opinion is not biased it's based on real world stuff And today we're going to talk about some news. About the lawsuits against HVAC companies in the U.S. And about what we do during the slow season, which is upon us now. In between the hot and the cold, or what people call shoulder season. We're going to be talking about pricing. What we actually do during preventive maintenances. And maybe how to get those jobs. Stay tuned. There we go. It was almost on loop there. Y'all forgive me. I am glad to be back. It is the weekend. I have my regular drink here and I see we got some guys in the comments. I'm going to tell you, I did try to get somebody to come on with me today to talk another business owner or something. So if y'all have business managing experience or business owners, feel free to pipe in because I want to talk about. What we do during, I've just recently learned that people call it shoulder season. It's been the slow season for me for a long, long time. And it's like, I think every business owner goes through this, goes through the stresses of this time of year. It's like, we don't hear calls from our regular customers. We don't, the phone's not ringing as much. And we get to thinking, hey, is something wrong? And there's nothing wrong, guys. There's not. It's just this time of year. I reach out to other people sometimes and say, hey, are y'all slow? I have a supplier where one of the ladies that works there, I have a real good relationship with her. I'm like, are y'all busy, too? So that is my point of contact sometimes when it's just really slow and it's just this time of year. And what I want to talk about is some of what we do to help keep us busy. Neil, no, this is not a beer. I do not drink beer. I don't drink any alcohol because I learned the hard way as a young man that I tend to do stuff that gets me in trouble if I drink alcohol. I'm just one of those people who had to learn the hard way. That's not for me. So, yeah, but before we get into what we do, what we're doing during the slow season, let's talk a little bit about last week. Last week, I talked about these lawsuits with... American air conditioning manufacturers, a class action lawsuit that was filed in Michigan. Well, ACHR reported more news on that saying that there are more lawsuits popping up in other states filed by contractors and customers. People are mad about that. So if it's true, I actually contacted a lawyer here to say, hey, I might want to get on board with this if it's a It's a class action lawsuit. Because one of the companies listed in this lawsuit is one that I've done business with during the time period that they're talking about. But anyway, that's just the news that ACHR was reporting. And I wanted to relay that to y'all. Mostly, I wanted to talk about the slow season and doing preventive maintenances and stuff. For a long time, I would give a low price. for a preventive maintenance trying to lure customers in and I just realized that that is not to my advantage. I'm doing a thorough job. I'm doing a lot of work for probably over an hour on every system that I work on when I'm doing a preventive maintenance. Riley just entered the room and I just felt like hey I need to at least charge what I'm charging per hour To do a job. So I basically doubled my prices on preventive maintenances and I'll tell you I'll be honest because I'm doing a good job. I'm doing a really good service for the customers. I'm charging $165 for preventive maintenance and for each additional unit at the same address, I'm charging another $85. So that is a little bit high for this area. But for what I am bringing to my customers, I don't think it's high at all. Good afternoon. Here, it's five o'clock here. So is that evening? I don't know. I was just sending saludos to someone on the West Coast a little while ago. And he was like, good morning. I'm like, dude, it's already afternoon over here. But yeah, when it comes to the preventive maintenances, I take my time. I try to be thorough. And I feel like my job on preventive maintenance It's not just to prevent problems, but to find problems that could appear in the future. And I'm not just talking about cleaning coils and stuff like that. I'm talking about, for example, the Rheem air handlers. They have a breaker in them that is renowned for burning up or getting humidity controls in them or something. Y'all forgive me. We just had to make sure that Riley got his dinner. These Rheem air handlers have a breaker in them that is renowned for getting humidity in them and failing. So when I do a preventive maintenance on one of those, I turn the screws and make sure that I have a good connection. I might put some no-ox on it if I find an aluminum wire with no locks on it just to prevent problems. I feel like our job during, yes, predictive maintenance. I feel like our job is to... Prevent problems and find problems that need to be addressed. That's why we are there. And in all honesty, if you're not being thorough, as for me, a one-man show, if you're not being thorough or if your employees are not being thorough on the preventive maintenances, they're missing work. Forgive me if y'all hear some screaming in the background. My wife has discovered Magic Mike. I'm Yeah, but for example, one of the recent preventive starting maintenances I was on, I found very dirty blower motors. Y'all hold on just a sec. I found very dirty blower motors to and a couple dirty evaporator coils. speak. So if I had not been thorough and put a camera up underneath the blower to take a look. I would have missed that work. And the customer has already given me approval to come back and pull the blower motors and clean the squirrel cage. So it's our job to find problems and hopefully not have to return for something major until the next time we do a preventive maintenance. And that customer that I found that on, I installed those systems like 11 years ago. And I've been watching these blower motors. Slowly get dirtier and dirtier and it just finally got to the point where I'm like hey I took a picture of it and I showed it to him I was like hey I want to come back and clean these it's not something that I normally do in my preventive maintenance so I'd like to come back and just charge you an hourly rate to pull these pull the blowers out and clean them real good because they need it and that's what your customer wants you to do if there's a problem he wants you to tell him so that you can take care of it. And you find other things during preventive maintenance. For example, if you have an air handler in the attic and it doesn't have a primary or, excuse me, secondary drain safety on it or something, those are all things that you can do to, to me, that's a service to the customer to prevent water problems. Yeah, that's a no-brainer to me. There's a question here. What's the hourly The hourly rate in my area, I charge $100 an hour. Um, I have a friend of mine who runs a HVAC company. He's one of the guys I had asked to come on today and I think he charges 95. Um, so that's, there are some big companies that have very loyal customers that charge higher than that is to me, that's a fair rate. My commercial rate obviously is higher, but, um, yeah, that's what I charge. And that's about average around here, I think. But anyway, one of the things I wanted to discuss, and maybe Steve and some of the others in here can give some input, is the pricing on the PMs. Before I was given a low price, like my hourly rate's $100, and it has been close to $100 for a while, but I was given a PM for like $89. And I finally just realized for everything that I'm doing and all that I'm checking, That's just too low because sometimes my PMs last over an hour. So I did raise my price on the PMs and I don't lose customers. They see the value in what I'm doing. I haven't lost any customers from raising my prices. I don't think a preventive maintenance should be a ticket to get in the door. As some people, for example. Preventive maintenance for like $49 or something, some tune up special or something like what are you going to do for $49 right now with the gas rates as high as they are, you can barely get over there and back for $49, much less the insurance and anyway, you know what I mean? Price it fairly, let your customers know everything that you're doing, because they ask me sometimes, how much is your preventive maintenance, and I tell them, and then I immediately launch into. Exactly everything that I check and what I do and how I try to prevent problems. And if I find a problem, I tell them, for example, if an evaporator coil needs to be pulled and cleaned, that's something that I tell them. And that's also work that you can generate during the slow season. So the preventive maintenances have a purpose. And when you go to someone's house, you need to have that purpose in mind to prevent and look for potential problems. My buddy here, I just spoke to Rolando for the first time today. If I'm not mistaken, he also does videos here in Georgia. I think he's got a better clientele than I do. Let me see. And he just posted something that we were just talking about. Hourly rate here in Atlanta, 85 to 125. I'll be honest, when I first started my business, now we're talking, man, is it 16 years now? 16 years ago. priced myself as one of the lowest prices in town. And yeah, I snagged some really big rental companies. I mean, I was doing work for $45 an hour, but the people that I was snagging are not the customers that you really want. You need to know your value and price yourself appropriately. And I wasn't doing that for myself. And it took me a while to learn that there are no advantages to having a really low price. The customers that I was getting Even though I was giving them such a great price, they would want to haggle me down and tell me that a compressor shouldn't cost that much. I'm like, man, did you, you have no idea how good of a job I just did. And you're going to complain about that price. So I ended up dumping those customers and, um, you learn quick, which ones to dump and which ones to, um, really go after the ones that pay their bills, the ones that don't complain about a hundred dollars an hour. Y'all see me go into some really slummy neighborhoods sometimes, but the landlords that send me there know the work that I do. They know that I'm not going to sell them something that they don't need. They know I'm going to repair first, and then if I can't repair or give them options for a change out if they need it. But my mindset is repair first, and they are more than willing to pay my labor rate. So people ask sometimes, why do I Take these jobs in those neighborhoods. Well, it's because they're paying $100 an hour and they don't question my judgment. That's why I go in those neighborhoods. But anyway, that's another subject. We've talked about marketing. And one of the reasons I am marketing through Facebook, at least I've started to play with it a little bit, is because of those neighborhoods. And some of those neighborhoods are because of one customer. And he's been a loyal customer the whole time I've been in business. Thank you very much for joining us. But as you know, it seems like sometimes it's not appropriate to risk your life for a couple hundred bucks. And sometimes that's how I feel when I'm on those calls. So that's why I'm marketing, trying to go towards a better clientele. The little emoji things that y'all see next to your names, I can see them on my iPad. I'll show you right here. But I don't see them on my platform that I'm doing the streaming on. So, oh, and there's a couple people I need to give a shout out to. I've just started doing the memberships for people who want to learn how to run a business and get tips and tricks on stuff like that. And Jimmy Landers and Unseasoned Brother are my first two members of my channel. So thanks, guys. I hope to produce some really good content. Individual topics about running a business and how to start a business and the little details. I think the next one is going to be forming an LLC and opening the bank accounts and stuff like that. In fact, there's a little bit of that that I'm going to be going through in the coming weeks. I have to revisit the bank and give them some paperwork. But I hope to continue producing content like that for y'all. Looks like we got a question here. Let's take a question. Did you get with the Facebook marketing because of ACIQ or were you already thinking about it? I was already thinking about it. Yes, I was already thinking about it and I had contacted a company in Atlanta and honestly they wanted to sell me some kind of package for marketing and basically what I wanted to do was leverage my YouTube to try and use that to my advantage on Facebook marketing and I didn't like their response. Their package was a lot of money and it didn't make any sense. And you. at that time, I was starting to get on board with ACIQ. And between you and me guys, ACIQ is not treating me special. They give this treatment to everybody that signs up with them. Nicole there at ACIQ was telling me about how she could help with marketing. So I just made an appointment And I learned a lot about the Facebook marketing. I decided to give it a try for myself. Basically, instead of paying a marketing firm to set all this stuff up for you, she shows you how to do it yourself. And maybe I should do a video on that. It is super easy. Once you see how to do it, I recommend you try doing it on a computer. The customization of how you can target your audience is really good. I think you can do something similar with like streaming services and stuff like that. I haven't tried those yet, but so it appears on people's TV more likely. I just haven't tried those yet. Okay, here's a question. I have 18 years experience in HVAC and light electrical. Do I need a HVAC contractor's license for PMs in HVAC repairs? You at least need an EPA license just to be able to put your gauges on, And I would assume if you got 18 years experience. You already have that. You know, I'm not real sure about that question, especially here in Georgia. I am, I'm not sure. Maybe. That's questionable. I don't know. Let me see. Am I done with Rude? Dude, uh... For the time being, yeah, I'm done with Rude. They are my second option. My first option right now, every time, is going to be ACIQ. If I can't get my product that I'm trying to order from ACIQ in a timely manner, I'll install Rude. um unless it's one of the high SEI inverter systems rude doesn't make one it's anything remotely close to the ACIQ so um they're trying they're about 20 years late but they're trying here's a comment that um deserves mentioning uh and i'll go over this in some of my other videos especially the ones um geared towards businesses and stuff i formed my company For our company, as an LLC, the limited liability, it gives you the advantages of a corporation and a sole proprietor, but without the liability of a sole proprietor. For example, if something bad goes wrong, a customer can come after a sole proprietor's all their possessions. The limited liability kind of limits it to supposed to limit it just to your business if they're coming after you. But here's the thing. In Georgia, I don't know about other states, but you can file your taxes as an S-Corp even though your company is an LLC. So you get the best of both worlds. And the S-Corp has some really good advantages filing taxes like that. Basically, you pay Social Security and personal income tax on what you pay yourself, if I've got that correct. you still have to pay taxes on your profits and stuff like that but instead of paying personal income tax when you file your taxes on everything you earn you're paying taxes on what you pay yourself let's put it that way and then your company earns profits and you have to pay taxes on your profits it's a little bit different but um it does help it has saved me money So, how do you like the Bosch system you installed? I'm considering Midea, also Goodman, Trane. Okay, I don't like the Bosch system particularly. For example, it's a heat pump that still needs heat strips. That's why I don't like it. The Midea products, ACIQ offers some Midea products. Goodman, I think their advanced heat pump lineup is under Amana, and it's the Amana S-Series. and I think Trane is offering a product made by Midea also. Y'all correct me if I'm wrong, but if you're thinking about heat pumps, I do not know that Bosch makes a heat pump with hot gas reheat on the on the suction. I have not seen one. If they do, it's new. Let me see. This is an answer to the question about do you need a contractor's license to do preventive maintenances. From Steve here, Steve, will you list what state you're in? Licensing changes in different areas of your area may not require an HVAC license to do a preventive maintenance. He's right about that. I mean, that may be specific to whatever county you're working in. I really don't know the answer to that question. I do know that a lot of guys do HVAC work without a license. Here in Georgia, for example, apartment complexes can hire somebody with an EPA license to do all their HVAC work, installs everything, and they have no contractor's license, and that's legal. There have been some complaints filed with the... Conditioned Air Association of Georgia about stuff like that, but nothing ever happens. I think the real estate agents have more pull than what we call CAG, Conditioned Air Association of Georgia. Steve's in Kentucky. Let me see. Kentucky requires a license, but across the bridge in Indiana, you don't need one. So, and I'll be honest, here in Georgia, for example, subcontractors do not need a license when they're doing installs for you. They basically work under your license and your permit that you pull. So they're basically operating, doing HVAC work, but they do not have their own contractor's license. As long as they're not trying to work for themselves on the One aside, that's legal. Sometimes I do. Is this Victor in the house? I understand that the next AHR, which is where I met Victor, is going to be in Chicago. Now, the last one that was in Chicago, I didn't go to because I was afraid of Chicago snow causing problems with travel. And I was afraid it was going to be really bitterly cold. And then when the time actually rolled around, it wasn't that It was that cold and there wasn't hardly any snow on the ground. I might try to go this time. Oh, and speaking of which, traveling up north, Thursday or Friday, I'm going to be in Ohio. I'm going to be in a little town called Vandalia. It sounds like I'm giving you a bad pronunciation of Vidalia, which is here in Georgia, where the Vidalia onions come from, but it's Vandalia. And I'm going to see the warehouse and meet some of the people at ACIQ. great people and you know honestly i i let me qualify i don't have any sponsors that pay me not yet i did agree to do a video for these people if y'all can see that um partially because it's a mini split thermostat that acts like a smart thermostat that may not need wires that's why i agreed to do it um I also got approached by another company to do one, but you have to have it plugged in to a USB adapter or 24 volts supplied to it. And if you're installing a mini split or a window unit or a PTAC or something, how often do you have 24 volts sticking out the wall? So I just felt like that product was useless. And then when I tried to use it, it's like I had to have tech support over and over and over and over just to get the thing to work. So, no, I tried to make a video for that company, but no, that did. I basically told them there ain't no way in the world I'm going to promote this product. If y'all know who it is, you can mention it. I'm not going to badmouth them like that. Not too bad. Mike, have you been to Vandalia? I have seen where... I've seen a couple people go. I'm just looking forward to meeting the people that I've been talking to all this time. Thank I'm going to be there. Actually, I'm flying in Thursday night. I'm going to be there Friday and Saturday and flying back on Sunday, which I think is Mother's Day. But anyway, I'm looking forward to it. I've told you all, you. I am learning that the people over there at ACIQ, I feel like they treat me special, but they... Everything that I've seen is that they treat everybody like that. Nicole will help anybody out with marketing. It's just, that's just a great plus being able to sign up with them. And no, they're not paying me to say this. No other distributor or manufacturer has ever offered to do something like that for me. The only thing remotely close is maybe helping out with the wrap on my van if I put my logo in the wrap. That's about it. That's it. First time tuning into the live stream, so I apologize in advance that this has been asked. Have you installed any of the ACIQ thermostats? Yes, I installed one of those from my neighbor. We installed a fully communicating system, and we used one of the ACIQ. I want to say the model number on that thermostat has a TL in it or something, and it's fabulous. You know, people love their smart. Wi-Fi thermostats and one of the favorites out there that I have seen is the Ecobee. I like this one better than the Ecobee. It was really nice, easy to use, easy to set up. It already knows what kind of equipment you've got and everything. You just turn it on and set your program and tell it what you want. It connects to an app very easily. I like that thermostat, yes, but it's a two-wire thermostat. The first two-wire thermostat I ever hooked up, I thought I had to supply 24 volts to it. You don't. It communicates within the 24 volts with what I think is going to be pulse width modulation or something like that so that you can still supply 24 volts or whatever voltage that thermostat needs and communicate at the same time, which I've always known as a possibility, so I'm glad to see that they're actually doing that. The Amana S-Series does the same thing. Two wires to the thermostat, two wires to the condenser. They have to be in a shielded cable. They have to be in a shielded cable. Mike is mentioning the connections here on the ACIQ thermostat, excuse me, air handlers. The HA and HB are on the thermostat and on the board in the air handler and the S1 and S2 are on the condenser and on the board in the air handler. Easy peasy. Real easy to hook up. There is a catch, though, when you're doing the fully communicating system on the ACI-Qs, and that's the float switch. It's not obvious how to hook up a float switch correctly. I did a video of one. The first time I tried to do it, I messed it up. I didn't do it right, and I had to get in touch with tech support. There's like a C123 plug. And actually you find out when you start looking for it, that there's two of them and a dip switch you got. I mean, it was, I had trouble, but once you learn it and you figure out how to do it, the communicating systems are nice. They are really nice. You know, I resisted the communicating systems for so long because I like to be able to put my gauges on the condenser and be able to tell if it's getting a call for cooling or heating or Y1 or Y2. But the advantages you get with a communicating system I think kind of outweigh that benefit of just being able to tell whether or not it's asking it to cool or not. It's really nice. Oh, and I wanted to mention I tried to do a communicating condenser one time. I have supplied, I've installed multiples of the ACI-Qs with 24 volt thermostat, a regular 24 volt thermostat and then communicating from the air handler to the condenser. And one time I tried to do, I pulled a new 18-8 thermostat wire and tried to do communication through the thermostat wire thinking, man, it ought to work. It didn't. Did not communicate with the condenser at all. So if you're going to do communication, do not try to rely on thermostat wires. In my experience, it does not work. You have to have communication cable and have it grounded. Um, according to the manual on one side, I've been grounding it, the metal sheathing on the outside, wrap that around the ground lug and you ground it. Um, I've been grounding it on both sides. I think the manual says just ground it all the way. Um, as far as embracing the technology, I, uh, I think the technology that we really need to embrace is these mini split style heat pump condensers. To me, that is the future. Sure. It... It is leaps and bounds better than the traditional heat pumps. Even the Bosch heat pump that I have on my house, it is much, much better. The reheat capabilities on those is a technology that American manufacturers have been avoiding and acting like it doesn't exist for really two decades. And finally. A company like ACIQ is making it mainstream, they're bringing it to the market and making it easy to install. I do agree there's going to be a bit of a learning curve on learning how to work on these, but hey that is the future. That's where air conditioning is going and We just need to embrace it, learn how to work on it. Don't be afraid of it. I mean, I've seen technicians that are afraid of something that they don't understand. I used to work for a company that had this one technician who was afraid to work on anything green because it energized blue instead of orange and he didn't understand. And you know what I mean? Just it's new, it's different, but it's not crazily different. I mean, basically, all you got to do is. Take one apart, see how it works, visualize it, the flow of refrigerant and how they inject the hot gas and what they do. And once you see how it works, it's more easily understood what's being accomplished. And really with the IPMs, the power modules and stuff like that, you don't have to completely understand everything that it's doing. Look at it like the module on the back of an ECM motor. If the motor's good, Just getting a call to come on you replace the module. I mean it's basically the same thing. It's just a little more high tech, a little more involved. It's basically the same thing. That's what the module on the back of an ECM motor does. It converts AC to variable DC and runs a three-phase I mean, that's what it's doing. It's just on these condensers, they're doing it on a much larger scale. It's the same thing. And Mike, I have been saying this for a long time. The technology has been there. I don't think I've ever worked on a mini split that needed heat strips. That's how long this technology has been around. And American manufacturing companies have just been acting like, our customers don't care about that. I literally had one of their representatives tell me that. Yeah, well, they do. And I'm hoping that this shakes up the industry and makes them realize that we can vote with our dollars and the equipment that we buy. We're voting with that for the technology that we prefer. So if they're not paying attention, they ought to be by now. I think, I mean. The company I used to buy from, they just acquired a mini split maker company, so I think they're finally starting to wake up. I mean, the world's largest air conditioning manufacturers are Gree and Midea. It's not Trane, it's not Carrier, it's not Rheem Ruud, it's not York, it's Midea and Gree, because they're making mini splits, and they make them all over the world. So they got experience in this, and finally the technology in those mini splits is coming here, finally. The U.S. is a little bit unique in its air conditioning market because of our unitary systems. Most places don't have that unless it's like a commercial application, but the ductless is really... It's starting to take hold here. I mean, there's some really good options like the ceiling cassettes and stuff like that. Yes, that might be a little bit hard to work on, but they've got some good options. In fact, there's a couple of channels on Instagram and stuff that are showing some good installs of those and the options you have with them. with mini splits. In fact I've got a customer that I'm working up an estimate for right now and in the technology for what I want to do is really just coming out. He wants to cut off airflow to half of his house and supply that with mini split and he had a company come in and say ah we can still use the existing heat pump. Well, no, you can't. Not down here in the south, because if you supply three tons of air to an area that needs only a ton and a half, you're going to have severe humidity problems. So what I wanted to quote him was one condenser, one air handler for that half of the house, and then three mini split air handlers for the other side of the house. And that technology is coming to fruition right now. I think on The Amana S-Series has an option for that. ACI-Q just programmed the air handler that I like so much, the AHRI, I think, so that it can operate with a multi-head mini split like that. So I can have an air handler. I can have three heads on the mini split. It's not going to be a cheap job, but man, it would be so much nicer than what they've got right now. Mike, one of the things, if you're still in the stream, One of the things I've been discussing is What we do during the slow season, and also Carlos is here, he's another business owner. What we do during the slow season to keep ourselves busy, and one of the things I was discussing is being thorough on the preventive maintenances and Finding more work while you're there. No, you're not there to replace parts that don't need to be replaced. What I mean is if you're thorough, you're going to see things that need to be addressed and you can bring it up with your customers and it does generate work. So I think we need to be thorough. Tomorrow? Um... Don't try to sell yourself short on the price of these preventive maintenances. And that's some of how we stay busy. Maintenance agreements. God forgive me. One of the reasons I have not sold maintenance agreements is because one of the companies that I was working for just way over abused that. I mean, it's just everybody you talk to for whatever reason, they wanted you to sell them a maintenance agreement. So they literally had like three technicians all year long doing nothing but preventive maintenance. I mean, really, what am I doing a heating preventive maintenance for when it's 85 degrees outside? I mean, come on. It made no sense to me. I thought it was ridiculous, and a lot of the time, I felt like it was redundant. I've learned it, like sometimes, The customer did not need the preventive maintenance and I didn't see a need for it. I was just checking something that somebody had just checked six months ago. It was perfectly clean. I felt like I was selling them something that they didn't need. And so I have not pushed maintenance agreements if a customer asks for one or if they want a preventive maintenance or if I see a need. That's when, and I don't even sell them an agreement then. What I do is tell them, hey, I'll put you on my schedule and give you a call when April or October rolls around. I'm going to address this comment that Mike has here on this, doing this, discussing the maintenance agreements and adds value to your business, especially if you are thinking about selling it. That, to me, was not my primary goal. My primary goal was to give a value to the customer and sometimes if I see a sparkly clean system or if I install a new one or something, I may tell them, yeah, call me in a couple of years and we'll start doing the preventive maintenances. I just don't push the contract. I never have, but it does help generate work when it's slow. It does add value to the company. And if you have employees, it does help to keep them busy. The last thing you want is to be paying a technician $20, $30 an hour to sit around your shop and play with Facebook on his phone. Trust me, I've been there. You don't want that. So if you have employees, it is probably much more important to work on the service agreements. I do not, so I don't really push them. Welcome. If. If I don't have something to do between us, I can work on YouTube stuff, work on videos and stuff like that. That is still productive. Let's see what Carlos has to say. Here in Southwest Florida, it's different because the drain lines clog frequently and they might need maintenance at least once a year. It's not that much different here. Here. Honestly, we run our air conditioner probably every month of the year. We do have some cold months where it might get down below freezing a handful of days. But you know, that same day, it might hit 78 degrees, which means we're turning on the air conditioner. So we have problems with drains a lot. In all honesty, two problems probably make up 50% of my calls during the summer. clogged drains And low on refrigerant. Between those two, that makes up 50% of my calls. Probably more. You know, that is very frequent. Let me see. Thanks for the answer about the thermostat. The reason I asked is because I'm considering an ACIQ inverter and uncased coils to replace my dead R22 system. That would be a huge upgrade. Really nice upgrade. You would like it. You would like it. Y'all forgive me if I keep going back to Mike, but he's got some good stuff to share. Every system he installs offers a $34-a-month lifetime maintenance and warranty on the equipment. Covers everything except refrigerant and all else we have plans for. Now, does that cover repairs? $34 a month covers everything except refrigerant and all else. You know, I discussed in a previous live a few months ago. No, it does not cover repairs. A previous live a few months ago about companies that are selling a 10-year parts and labor warranty, everything covered, and man, they're charging like $5,000 a year, or less, $2,000 to $3,000, up to $5,000 a year for full coverage on everything for 10 years. And. That sounds like they're just raking their customers through the coals to me. But people do that, and that comes from a friend of mine down in Florida and some other people throughout the country. That's what their companies do. But anyway, guys, that's my talk about preventive maintenance and a little bit about those lawsuits that are going through right now. I do hope you enjoy the lives. I think now next week, I'm not going to have a live on Sunday because I'm going to be coming back from Ohio. But the next week I have a guest, a fellow business owner. And the week after that, I think I have somebody lined up. So I won't be flying solo the next time you see me. You're right. But people are doing that. I'm reading a comment. Five thousand a year is nuts, but companies are doing it. And it's. They're just taking advantage of their customers. I feel like their objective is just to make as much money as possible, no matter what. And that's not good long term. As far as I'm concerned, that's not good for the business and it's not good for the customer. Guys, I do hope you enjoy the video. I hope you enjoy the live and I will try to make it into a podcast that you can get on the Amazon, on the Apple podcast and all that good stuff. In time, you can find me there, and if you want more videos on opening and running a small business like mine, consider becoming a member to the channel. I'm making more videos and tutorials on specific topics on what people need to know to open a business. Catch you on the next one. I hope y'all enjoy.