Talking With Jaime Montes About Working in HVAC

Stomp, spin. Dramatic entrance, I mean. One thing I have learned when I convert this over to a podcast is that if I just have the countdown and no sound and people are clicking on the podcast, they don't hear anything. So they click right off of it. So I got to have a little bit of noise there to keep on, keep the viewers. Guys, this is Jamie Martins who has quite the history, a family history of Let me make this big on my screen. Working in HVAC, they mentioned a little a while back about talking about the one thing that we cannot talk about in front of a customer. If y'all know what we're talking about, you know what we're talking about. If you see black spots on the wall and maybe feel that it's a little moist in a closet or something, many of you know you cannot say what you think that is. Am I right? Am I right, Jamie? We don't want to say the word. There's, you know, microbial growth or other words that can be used, but typically, no, that's a big no-no. No, we cannot say the mold word. No, I mean, right here we can say it, but in a customer's house, that implies legal implications. And around here, what I do, if I think it's mold and the customer's complaining, I got mold, I got allergies, I'm getting sick. I have to refer them to an environmental hygienist, environmental hygienist to come in, diagnose the house and work up a procedure to clean it up. So I am very reluctant to do that because if you've ever done it and you've seen the procedures that they write up, you know, you don't want to do that. And no homeowner wants to see what they're going to say. Because it involves ripping out walls, laying down plastic, dehydrating the house and repainting and is a huge project if they think there's mold in the house. I've experienced some horror stories with all this. I got some experience with it with various builders, but it's really important that whether you're hiring an HVAC personnel. technician, company, whomever you choose to go with, that you're getting qualified personnel that actually cares about the end product. And you don't want a homeowner moving in a home that has problems. Oh, it happens. And I do a lot of rental work. And I have seen where the homeowners will just cover up what was a massive problem, just basically paint over it. Somebody new in there. And I'm thinking to myself, they're going to have issues. Well, hopefully they didn't install a bunch of crown molding and then put like some paneling across the ceiling and use some really, you know, expensive chandeliers and other stuff. Don't, you know, have a data center under that room or, you know, whatever it might be. Hopefully there's no chase behind that wall. Well, this one particular house, rainwater was getting under the house. It had a small little crawl space, just big enough for the duct work. And rainwater was getting under there. And I pointed out to them where and how it was doing it. And there was another section where the brick was pulling away from the wall. Rainwater was getting in that too. They did make efforts to clean all that up and seal up around the windows. So maybe it's better. I don't know. Yeah. So. One thing I'd really like to point out is just the, I mean, the building science of it. There's a lot of professionals out there that I've researched on a lot of, um, yeah, definitely every bathroom has a little, uh, make sure your, uh, your bath fans actually sealed and not just to the bath fan itself, but actually to the penetration. It's very important because imagine That thermofin's, like, pulled loose a little bit. Where is that humidity going to go? Into the attic space? Yep. You know, one of the houses I was called to look at for possible mold one time was a block house. And this lady was cleaning everything constantly. If she saw a black spot, she cleaned the whole room with bleach. And the first thing that I noticed is a block house now. The main bedroom's got a shower attached to it, and it has no exhaust fan. And that was one of my number one things. You need an exhaust fan in that bathroom. A lot of people call them fart fans because that's what they're for. They're really there to remove humidity. Yeah. The one thing with that is ensuring that the house has balanced ventilation, too. If, for example, if. If your house is in a negative vacuum and now you're sucking in outside air because of, you know, if someone leaves like the bath fan on all day, for example, like we can control, you know, we can even get like the the bath fans that all go off relative humidity setting. And or maybe, you know, maybe you have a special switch on the wall that only lets it operate for 15 minutes or so. But, you know, if that bath fan's left on all day, like, the air's got to come from somewhere. And if you've sucked it all out, it's going to come from the outside of the house. You know, multiple times I've been called to, there's actually some military housing that I'm thinking of nearby. But there's... There's an old base here, and there is a Marine base here. I'm talking about the old base military housing, where people would call and say, my air conditioner's not running. And I go out there and check things. Everything's fine. The problem is they left the bathroom fan running all the time, literally sucking all the air out of the house. In about the period of an hour or two hours, that is my boy Riley. He has found a bag. He's very proud of it. I've seen him on your show. He is making his presence known. And that's my fault. I let the bag out and he found it. Sometimes we leave, like, a cardboard box, like a Pepsi box or something. We'll stuff it in the corner like he ain't supposed to see it and let him find it. And that's a treat for him. He just goes nuts. He loves it. Our cat loves to just crawl in there and, you know, hang out, jump on top of it, like, you know, all angles. Yeah, I think. Are there actual exhaust fans that can be triggered by humidity? Thank There are? Yep, there are. I haven't seen them, so I didn't know. That would be a really good idea. you In that same house, I recommended a dehumidifier. for They had a furnace that was sitting over the filter. having You know what I'm talking about? Like in a closet, a furnace and a coil. And it had a space underneath where you could put one of these tiny little dehumidifiers down there. me. You could just plug it in and run it right to the same condensate pump and run it for the air conditioner. And that's actually the house where they wrote up like on A $60,000 bill, the hygienist, the environmental hygienist came by and looked at it. And literally, this guy walked in, walked around the house, didn't do any kind of testing of anything, didn't touch anything, and wrote up an order that would cost like $60,000 for them to do. And I just felt like it was a total waste of time because he didn't touch anything. Yeah. If he's not jumping in the attic and taking like, you know, here's a particular one, right? I've crawled in a lot of attics and, you know, in these kind of circumstances, and I'll say, like, I've crawled to every single boot. I've taken hour-long videos of checking around the entire collar of the boot. And if there's stuff on there, for example. And, like, you know, I'm looking for, is the tape torn? Is this a complete seal? And typically when I was seeing this, the way that they connected the duct was, you know, you have your boot, you have your star collar in there. They're using mastic and tape to seal down the collar to the boot. Then they're using, like, a mastic around, like, between the black inner liner to the actual star collar, pulling it over, Panduit strap. Using tape, bring in like the insulation all the way down to the boot, taping around that outer foil layer to it and then masking that. And so like, you know. When, you know, like this, like all of the HERS raters that were on these particular houses, like there was never one time where the company I was working with, my family's company, had like a failed inspection or there was any kind of notice where they were beyond like the energy configurations, like duct leakage rate of like 4%. There is no kind of notice on any of that stuff. And then going through and really... Taking a fine-tooth comb and looking for any kind of leaks, and then it's like you're being pointed at as an HVAC guy for why this stuff is sweating when it's a matter of dew point and how much humidity is in the air. And then there's other factors like how much is the NFVA, the net-free ventilation area, correct on the house? Does it have enough vents? Does the ventilation actually work for what's going on? Do you have a radiant barrier? Um, well, it sounds like you're working more like with new construction when you're, when you're in new construction, a lot more of those things are under your control. Most of the time I do not do new construction. I felt like every time that I tried to do new construction. The contractors were wanting a lower and lower and lower and lower. And they kept going after the low bid. I couldn't do a good job giving them a low bid. So I quit going after it. It wasn't worth it for me to spend. And I wasn't quoting any flex. I think I lost you for a moment. Courtesy there. You back? I'm here. Yes, sir. I think I lost you for a moment. Basically, I would quote all metal and a duck job and an install on just one system might be a three- or four-day thing, and I couldn't see just making $1,000 on a three- or four-day job. It isn't making sense to me, so I'm not doing new construction. It's very tight margins. And honestly, risk isn't like the number one. The reason all people should be in business is ultimately about the product, but really it's about, you can't pay the customer to do the job, so you have to make a profit. And so being in situations like we were just talking about where you see an environmentalist go in, they don't actually crawl up in the attic, take samples, and then you're essentially blamed for whatever it might be, even though there's a lot of elements out of your control. I mean, you could have stucco that's, you know. Dung poorly that is causing like a, you know, an air leak through the wall of the house. Or, you know, you could have an unsealed window or. Or they didn't put down a vapor barrier before they poured cement. Yeah, even the, yeah, exactly. Now I've come across that on, I had a customer call me out. We have continued problems with moisture over and over. They're running dehumidifiers in their house. They're filling up in a matter of hours. I couldn't find anything wrong. Nothing. I mean, the problem was not visible. And they called somebody else out to come look at it, get a second opinion. And that's what they found, that there was no vapor barrier under the cement slab. And how do you fix that? The house is already built. That's a tough one. Now, you're in Georgia, right? Yeah. So very similar. I've been to Georgia on a disc golf tournament with my brother before. It's pretty humid up there too. Thank you. Thank you. So yeah, love the terrain, the environment, forest, trees, all, you know, it's, it's lovely up there. But yeah, similar, similar ecosystem, humidity. And I don't think it's required here in Florida though, for there to be a vapor barrier. I think there, and I mean, So with the track homes, I was, yes, my, so the family's business was in for several years, they did new construction and renovation projects with exclusively custom builders. So it was a whole different, and for the first, you know, they started their business in like 2008 or nine and there is never any problems with any kind of like the M word. And when there was, it was typically like maybe the spray foam wasn't like, you know, there's a doctor's house on the Each one time. And like, you know, they wanted to point at the HVAC company, but again, like, you know, the insulation, the mixture wasn't right. Or maybe the guy didn't check the humidity level of the air when he was spraying it. Or, you know, there's a lot of different stuff there. Basically, there's, we had three 18 SEER inverters in there. And, you know, they were all doing their job. It's a big, you know. Like square footage of the house doesn't really matter when it comes down to that. You really need a good manual J and we do all our own manual J's. And like, you know, it's just brings up another good point. Picking a manual J, you know, these are spec houses or custom build that probably already have a load calculation and recommended size air conditioner on it. And you're all running a manual J on top of that. So with the track homes, they were not, they were going through us or in the other companies in the area also provided their own manual Jays. So, and one, one. One really important thing to bring up is Ackermanial J does not account for how much humidity is in your particular climate to meet that 70, you know, 75 degrees, 50 percent humidity. Like whatever your grains of moisture per pound of air in your region. On the ASHRAE's climate website, like, that needs to be calculated. And, like, maybe, like, if you're not checking, like, the actual tonnage and sizing and making sure that the latent and the sensible loads of the house match up and are able to pull that humidity and moisture out of the house at a given air changes per hour rate with the blower door test, like, if it can't do it, then you need a dehumidification system. And I think that's a big breakdown across, like, the entire industry. And that's, I'm going to say that's another reason why I'm not doing, well, I'm not doing new construction because I didn't see enough profit in it for the amount of time I had to go in. But there are so many other things you have to be responsible for, from the vent hood over the oven to the bathroom vents. All of that falls under the HVAC permit. Mm-hmm. The few times that I did new construction, I would get called out. Inspector would find something, you know, like the roofer didn't do the seal around the vent or the, for the hood over the oven or something very well. I mean, little stuff like that. To me, that was frustrating. How often is it lame? So much work into the other part and he bailed me on something like that. Yeah. And you can't use foam and then mask is water soluble. So it's like, what do you use? Yeah, I've considered using like a, like a tar or roofing, like some kind of like, you know, JB 40 compound or something, but I don't know it's approved by code that's not mastic. And so that's a, we did roughly three to 400 homes a year, I think 300 homes a year with a particular builder. I'm just clicking on this. I'll have to check out your channel. Speaking of Manual J, I mentioned a Manual J software that has come out recently. Oh, I'm pretty sure not. Are you talking about QuickModel 3D? No. Oh, okay. Who are you talking about? And it's the best one I have ever seen. Okay. But it's real expensive, and it's called Conduit Tech. I'm going to write this down. It uses the LiDAR on the back of an iPad Pro. Okay. To map out the house, it gets the... The directions down, it gets your windows right, it gets all your doors, the dimensions of every room. You can get the whole house with it, and you can do different zones and everything with it. It's a fantastic software, but they want like $3,000 a year for it. Yeah. And for somebody like me, I'll be honest, if I'm just doing a change out, I do not always do a load calculation. If you're going to depend on your load calculation and not put any weight into the size of the equipment that's coming out, there's a lot of room to make a mistake on a load calculation. You've got to guess what kind of insulation is in the walls. Yes. Estimate the R-value of the blown-in insulation in the attic. You might have double-pane windows, but are they low E or something? There's a lot of guesswork that goes into it. And I feel like there's a lot of room for mistakes. Doing a new load calculation, especially if you're not real practiced at it, like me. So I've got a question in regard to that with finding all that information. Have you like have you ever tried to go to like the plans division of whatever municipality and see if they have any of that documentation or old plans or any of like the R values? Are you any of that stuff available to you personally? But I'm curious. No, I depend more on... About the estimation of when the house was built. Mm-hmm. Like after like 1960, you basically need to have insulation in the walls. Or 1950 something code, you got to have insulation in the walls. And bad insulation in the wall is basically an R11. So a lot of times that's what I guess is R11. I just want to confirm in some houses that it does have insulation in the wall. And we have a lot of old construction around here. Some of it don't. Um, and just a little thing. There's so much, there's so much room for, yeah, there's, there's a lot of fluff and manual J too, in terms of sizing and especially on the, like, I know they're fixing some of the stuff with, uh, like the heating load, for example. I know that's like whatever big revision is coming out, um, is going to be making some changes to that. And I hope they really get into that, that moisture content of the air. I think that would make a big difference for it to, you know. Well, around here, and it's got to be the same in Florida, Mm-hmm. our cooling load is what everything's determined by. Yeah, climate zone too. For example, if a house requires three tons of air conditioning to stay cool, 36,000 BTUs, that's more than enough to heat the house. Yep. So we don't even bother with the heating load. I mean, we calculate the cooling load, and even when we're sizing furnaces or whatever, every furnace I've ever put in has been way oversized. I mean, who needs 80,000 BTUs on a three-ton? But you guys at least have a real winner, right? Sort of. I mean, it can get cold below freezing. We can get to, um, like 17 degrees. Okay. But within the same week, we might be running our air conditioner. Like if that's on a Monday on Thursday, we might be running the air conditioner because it gets up to 80 degrees. You can see what I mean? So we don't have a long period of cold weather. We run the air conditioner probably Probably every month, maybe every week of the year. So in Florida. Growing up, I've lived here like 32 years of my life, roughly, and it might be like a few days a year, maybe a week, two weeks at the most. And it's actually required by law that you have heating, but it's not required to have cooling. Yeah, yeah. Same here. Same here. The codes are kind of weird. You have to have enough heat to keep it like 70 degrees or something like that, or 68. So many of the... Really low rent properties around here may just have a wall furnace or I've seen some that have like warehouse electric heaters up in the corner, which is against code here in Georgia on electric heat cannot be the primary source of heat and a ventless furnace cannot be the primary source of heat. Well, that includes like radiant heating or like when it's throughout the whole wires through the roof or, you know, through your ceiling or. Well, that kind of makes us the heat pump state, which means if you don't have gas, you're going to get a heat pump. Yeah, same. Most everything, especially in the residential new construction market, is a lot of change out. Sometimes people, you know, they're hurting and, you know, it's not always going to be a heat pump, you know, the worse it goes. And, you know, when I post videos of heat pumps, I always get these comments. Oh, it's a heat pump. It's a piece of junk. And I feel like a lot of people further up north don't work on it very much when it's an everyday thing for me. Yeah, that's the majority of what I've worked on is heat pumps. I work in a city that does have natural gas supplied to most of the population so we do have a lot of furnaces so I might have straight cool in a furnace which is probably about 40 percent within the city which means we have gas packs and you do you have gas packs down Uh, yes, but I mean, really, I've, I've probably came across maybe two or three dozen gas furnaces. I've installed a half dozen of them. Like they're, they're not very common. And what do you mean by gas pack? Exactly. I'm assuming you're talking about what other people call a rooftop unit. Yep. Um, they're rare, but yes, I get comments all the time. And I've never Ever seen an RTU on the ground? Well, around here is very common. A lot of trailers and then a lot of like, you know, I'm just now getting in the commercial side of the industry. Like most 10 years of my experience has been five ton and under. And so and, you know, I've been on, you know, smaller commercial buildings like plenty, but it was all smaller equipment, too. It wasn't anything like above five tons on that side of it. So. Personally, for me, especially now, because I've decided to work by myself, it is much easier for me to work on things that are five tons and smaller. My license covers the biggest that's out there. Mm-hmm, but do you is it not? I've actually heard you talk about this before, and I'm forgetting what you stated about it, but in Georgia, is it similar where you have a Class A, Class B license? I don't know what that means, but what we have is. A restricted and a non-restricted. Restricted is five tons and under. Non-restricted is anything goes from two million BTU boiler to a 200-ton chiller. I mean, we can work on anything. I don't mean we might be good at it, but we legally can. So with Class A and Class B, Class A is up to 1,000 tons, and Class B is 25 tons and under. And then there's a mechanical license too. And I'm not sure about the, you know, what exact, like for me as a 10 year residential and like three months commercial tech, I'm believing that it has more to do with like, you know, facilities that have chill water piping and all of like the kind of piping and everything that goes along with that for, for those systems, but I'm not too sure what they mean by it. No. In my business, I do not work on fillers, but I have. I've worked on chillers. In fact, there's one in particular I've worked on many times. It's a big golf course around here. The whole clubhouse Supplied with chilled water, and we have water coils on air handlers all throughout the attic. Yeah. And it's a nightmare to work on. It was terrible. Those things, and it's like regular copper coils that spring leaks. Yep. And then there's another facility downtown, which is bigger than that, that uses refrigerant piping It has real evaporator coils and air handlers. These great, big, old, giant condensers with pipes this big going into the building. Centrifugal systems or screw compressors. I just remember working on the air handlers because they had a VFD on the blower that wasn't working like it was supposed to, and we had to reprogram it. But I just felt like in a building that big, maybe you should have had a chilled water system instead of that much refrigerant. And you're talking about hundreds of pounds of refrigerant. Yeah. Have you had to deal with like the big old like 120 or plus pound refrigerant cylinders? I personally haven't, but, you know, as a residential tech mostly. But I think I'm going to get some of that experience soon. I have in years past, but no time recently. Yeah. Well, one of the advantages of me not doing big commercial is I can do it by myself. About the only time I need help is if maybe I'm doing an install or something and the job's going to take six to eight hours. Then I need help. Yeah. But anything else, I can do all by myself. I never realized that with the commercial side of it, that they had welders, they had all kinds of other skills and people that were involved in these kind of systems. It's amazing for me, like, coming in. I've really done a lot of studying, and thank you so much. I should have thanked you at the beginning of this episode, but I appreciate everything you've taught me. Like, what am I teaching you? You've got as much experience as I do. I mean, so... like electrical wiring, just like showing up how to, you know, go about your troubleshooting procedures and stuff. There's just a lot of little things here and there, and it's enjoyable watching you too. It just, I think the way that you, uh, you come across and you're just very good and honest with people and just trying to do the right thing. It's very, you know, apparent, like, well, thanks. I do cry. I don't, I don't want to be somebody who sells a customer something they don't need. Yeah. I'm the same way. Most of the time I'm called out there for a reason. I want to find the reason and fix it. And that's what the customer wants. Every once in a while it's something that, hey, I can't fix. It's going to look like a replacement. But I'm always of the mindset, fix it first. Yeah. I think Maya, I sit down and talk to people for too long and I try to be as informative as possible. And it's both from a perspective of like, you know, I want to sound like I know what I'm doing, but then I'm also trying to educate the customer. So the next time they have to deal with an HVAC guy, they, you know, they know a little bit more about what they're, you know, getting into and, you know, about, you know, they can kind of parse it out themselves a little bit, you know. I, um... I have many customers who like to look over my shoulder and they actually, you would think it's kind of weird if I'm talking to the camera, explaining what I'm doing, but they enjoy it. Interesting. They do. They like the explanation that I'm giving. And I can even hear them sometimes responding to me in the background, but I'm talking to the camera. Yeah. I've heard you say, I'm talking to the camera a couple of times. Yeah. That's great. Yeah. I had one like that the other day. Everybody was calling him a helicopter, but you know, he's a good guy. He was just, it's his house. He's interested in what I'm doing. You know what I mean? Yeah. I always invite those people. Sometimes it can be a lot when they're commanding your attention, you know, like, you know, where you can't do like, and I'm like. It's hard for me to not focus on one thing at a time for me to to multitask in terms of like staying really busy with my hands and then, you know, having my focal attention, you know, in multiple places and my mind in different places. Sometimes I find that difficult. You know, the other day I did a job and I put a AirPod in my ear so I could listen to music. But what I found was it kept giving me notifications about stuff going on in my phone. And I purposely turned my phone volume off so it won't bother me. But when I put that thing in my ear, all that stuff was back. And I got to figure out a way to shut that off if I'm going to listen to music because I don't like to be bothered when I'm deep into a job. I want to focus on what I'm doing. Uh-huh. You know, maybe grab like an iPod or something. I I was listening to music on my phone. I was listening to Pandora. don't But, um... There's got to be a way I can turn off notifications or something and still be able to listen to my rock and roll while I'm... know. Yeah, I have almost all notifications silenced and whatnot, but I saw your text. Thanks. Oh, do you want to share what you're doing in a couple days? Oh, yeah, absolutely. So I'm getting married, and I'm really excited. We've been dating almost two years now, And, you know. Two years was about time. Yeah, I'm 36. I'm 35. And we're just I feel so blessed. You know, I've found somebody who's like really stable financially, emotionally, spiritually, like physically, like all, you know, like someone I can actually bond with. And it's it's really good. I have a healthy relationship. Well, I wish you the best of luck with that. That's good. Yeah, we're going to be. So we're getting married Friday, and then Saturday night we're going, or Saturday afternoon we're going to go to Paris for a week. And I've been watching a lot of videos and content from, Thank you so much, Grandpa. Thank you, Carlos. Thank you. But I've been watching a lot of videos, and it's kind of like skeptical going to Paris right now. I don't know if you've seen the kind of content from over there, but there's like... About the... The locals being pissed at all the tourists. Well, that and then also there's a lot of people, you know, selling stuff on the streets and then like, you know, trying to scam people. And then like there's, I guess, YouTubers going around and like kind of calling those people out and they're being chased and beaten by, you know, whoever those people are. And then it's. It sounds like gypsies. Yeah, that's part of them. Yeah. It's pretty wild. It's a little bit scary going over there and trying to enjoy just the architecture and get a feel for some country, Three, two, one. some place that's supposed to be romantic and iconic. And, you know, like, you know. Who doesn't want to grow up and go to Paris? It's just a little bit scary with that. There's some other people. Keep your wallet in your front pocket. And, um... Just be aware of your surroundings and have a good time. Yeah. And then we're going to go to Rome for a week after that, too. Oh, wow. Now, I've been fascinated. Now, growing up, the culture in archaeology that I was most interested in was Egyptology. Okay. That first got me into like a fascination with stone architecture. Mm-hmm. And Rome would be a great place to go to see some fantastic stone art. Pieta, like I think it's Jesus on Mary's lap, like he's laid across her, like that stone. I forget where it's at. But I want to go to the Sistine Chapel. And one of my professors in college. He was a humanities teacher, of course, and it was the Baroque to contemporary period that we were studying. And all of the PowerPoint projections and everything that he had up were from his personal travels over there because he's Greek. And so one of the recommendations he'd said was like, when you go to see the Michelangelo's painting on the Sistine Chapel, make sure you get there first thing in the morning. And then be the first person in line. And that painting is at the very end of the museum. So if you run through it and get to the end, then you're like, you can be there amidst that beautiful painting by yourself in the quiet without anybody around and just kind of take it in, you know? Yeah. Yeah. I really want to do that. Mm-hmm. I would love to be able to visit. There's a lot of stuff I'd like to do. In fact, what I really want to do when I retire is get a nice camper, For travel around the United States and see some of the great parks and places here in the States. I would really like to be able to do that. I hope to be financially able to travel as well. I mean, like go overseas and stuff. So. I don't know. Yeah, we've talked about like suiting up a, like, you know, buying a school bus or something and retrofitting it and, you know, doing that kind of thing, wild little, you know, plan or whatever. But yeah, in regard to that too, I just got my first tack welds in with the commercial side of things. So. Are you just learning how to weld? Yeah. I got a little bit of stick time. It was just a couple of tacks and a couple of inches or whatever, and I did bad first time touching it or whatever, but they were goofing off. It was like striking your first, like putting your stick to the thing and getting that to not stick and whatnot is crazy. You know, I'm looking forward to it, man. I'm looking forward to camping. Yeah. I kind of, when I learned what you're calling stick weld, I was basically given this great big, huge generator welding machine, a bunch of scrap metal and probably like 20 sticks. I said, go out there and figure it out. so I went out there and for probably like six hours just practiced welding and making beads and learning how to do it you know the problem was I didn't have anything over my arms By the end of the day, I was sunburned everywhere that I wasn't covered. Really? From the welding. Yeah. Interesting. I wasn't aware that was a thing. Yeah. If you do it for long periods like that, like I did, it will burn. Now you sound like you could be a shirt or something. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah, I'm real excited to learn that, too. My dad just told me, because I told him, I called him on the phone, like, Dad, I just got the first opportunity to weld ever, and, you know, like, and so I'm talking to him about that, and he's like, well, I got one in my, you know, you could have it, and so he's going to bring it during the wedding, and I'm like, what kind of welder? He said it's a Lincoln, and it's like, he didn't know the model, but he said it's like maybe two foot by two foot by a foot or so, so it's... Like a MIG welder. He said he's got a MIG TIG, and he's got a stick welder. He's got two different ones, but he's going to let me use the stick one, whichever one it is. Okay, I get them confused. There's one that uses a wire, and I think that's MIG, and those are real easy. They're not easy. You ground it and flip your little thing down and you just pull the trigger and as soon as the wire touches it starts to weld. Okay. You just got to learn to work the pistol thing to make a good looking weld. I want to learn the hard way. What, like I did? And burn yourself? Yeah. I typically learn the hard way. Well, I did. I learned a lot. Um, uh, it's... It's MIG welding is much easier, but what we call stick welding, and for some reason I thought that was TIG welding, but for big projects like welding together a drive shaft on a multi-ton trailer or something, you might not want the wire welding. You might want the stick welding because you can grind away and get to a good spot and build up your weld. Well, for me, it would have been easier using that, but I was just learning. Interesting. Yeah, the boss told me that I can take some coupons or some pieces of metal or scrap or whatever home or just even at the shop in some of the spare time we got and just, you know. Coupons? Yeah, that's what they're calling, like, that's a new word for my nomenclature, but I guess small pieces of scrap metal and stuff. I don't, you know, maybe strips of metal or something, but. I just put a soapstone to mark the stuff with. I mean, some of the stuff I learned the hard way, like you shouldn't be welding on galvanized steel. I learned that the hard way. What was the lesson? It produces a noxious gas. Oh. Yeah. I think I remember them saying something about that now. And it's like... Like you feel sick the rest of the, like you sick to your stomach the rest of the night is similar to like the, the Phosgene thing, but it can make you sick. Yeah. Yeah. They're still talking earlier. They were talking about this new show that's out on land, man. Do you know anything about that? Yeah, it's really good. Is it really? Yeah. Is that, it was Billy Bob Thornton. Yeah. Billy Bob Thornton. And, uh, I can't remember the, who played in that old, like, uh, I can't remember her name. I can't believe it. Um, I ought to tune into it because we're all the time looking for a new series. Yeah, it's really good. A good new series. Demi Moore's in it, too. Jon Hamm, if you've watched Mad Men. I know who Jon Hamm is. Yep, he's in it. And then there's Andy Garcia, Colm Feore, a few other good actors. Um, but I'll have to look it up. yeah, I'll have to look it up. In the comments, they were talking about how much really they liked it. That's Especially for people like us in the trades, it just hits home. good show. Long days, like Billy Bob, he's out 12 to 16 hours a day you. a driving around Texas and you just overseeing job sites and dealing with all the problems. know Every day is a Monday for him is what he says. one. I have lived that life between you and me. I am partially retired already because I take the jobs I want and I try to get home by a certain time, you know, so I can get my sleep so I can be proficient the next day. I'm not going to work at nine o'clock at night. Yeah. If I get an after hours call, it goes to like voicemail and I deal with it the next day. All right. I'm moving. I'm not staying up. A buddy of mine, Jake, just posted an Instagram video where he was called out at 4 o'clock in the morning and ended up having to clean like a boiler at 4 o'clock in the morning. Thank you. Oh, no. No! No! Yeah, I'm pretty sure I know Jake. Not personally, but I've seen his channel. No, I am not doing that. I'm sorry. They can wait to the morning. You know what I mean? Yeah. Service life is, uh, it's difficult. I'm glad I don't like, there's no service like a on-call schedule at the company I'm with. And at the family's company, after several years, I was able to, you know, finally get off that rotation. But, you know, I ended up being like a superintendent with that track home and just kind of like doing video inspections of everything. And then also, you know, after the rough, after the trim phase, and then, you know, just making sure everything's good. But there's solutions, you know. The company you're working with... He said you're the one. Y'all working on new construction, and you've got multiple projects going on. About how many people work there? So my family's company, they had like 20, and that was the new construction and all that. With this commercial company, there's, I want to say, like maybe a dozen, maybe 15 people or so. And then he hires subs, and it's really interesting. He has, you know, he's got multiple licenses. He has his mechanical license. He has a Class A and a general contractor's license. So he can sub out who he needs to. So in terms of like he has his primary staff for most of the jobs he needs. And then when he needs to fill in with like an electrician or, you know, like fire controls or insulation or whatever, he brings those people in. Well, my experience here in Georgia, I don't need to have a... You know, a contractor's license to sub out a job to like an electrician. Okay. Basically, it's... They just pull their own permit? Yeah. If they need to pull a permit, they pull a permit. That's how it is with us too, like as in the residential side. And I guess it is with commercial too, like everybody can pull their own permits. But the reason why he, like my new employer, has the GC is that so he can go in as prime as the GC and be able to Uh, to get contracts that he otherwise wouldn't be able to, you know, and then, and then he can do the mechanical work. And then if he needs just one other guy or company to come in, he can sub them out. And, you know, it was very unique. It's, I think it's a brilliant like idea, honestly, I hadn't really considered it before, but, you know, um, There's a friend of mine. He actually helped build part of the porch on the house I live in now. He is basically a general contractor and he's been trying to get his condition there. Contractor's license. Mm-hmm. He went through the whole process of the application, which is crazy. Got, got applied. They ended up denying him because he has not worked five years for somebody else, even though he's been doing HVAC work on his own properties. Basically, that's how he makes money. He buys property, fixes it up, and rents it, or he sells it. So he's got a lot of rental property, and he does all the work on his own rental property. So even though he's been working in HVAC, he's not worked for somebody else. Interesting. So they are not letting them. Well, I thought, like, I assume he's in Georgia. Yeah. And so I know from prior videos I've watched of yours, you were saying that as long as you had three people sign off on you, then you're good to go. But is that no longer a, how they're. That is an application requirement. Okay. Three, either engineers or other contractors, condition air contractors. sign off on three jobs each that you have been part of from the ground up. He got that. He completed that part of the application, and I helped him with that. I was one of the people that helped him that signed off. But because he has not completed the other part of the application, working for five years for somebody else, they're not going to let him take the test, at least not at this point. He might be able to appeal that or something in some kind of way, but they're not going to let him do it. Interesting. That's a shame. I mean, especially when you've got several years of fixing your own equipment and, you know. He's wanting to be able to install his own equipment without having to pay people like me. Mm-hmm. Well, I'm sure it's a benefit to you. Thank you. It has been, but. Still, I was trying to help him, and he did work on these projects that I signed off on by himself in his own property. Mm-hmm. So, I don't know. I don't feel like I'm losing any work because he's doing all his own service work anyway, and that's probably 75% of what I do is service work. Yeah. I enjoy doing this service work because it's always something I can do by myself. Yeah. Yeah. There's so many attics. I don't know how many, what it's like in Georgia, but in terms of like pulling like an air handler to, to nuts and bolts and just, you know, piecing it apart and, and bring it up into a real tight horizontal application attic, or, you know, you don't got no room to install it in the first place. Those are all, I've done a lot of those jobs, not fun, but is there a lot of that kind of work up there? There's a lot of stuff in the attics or. Yeah, there are some houses and I'm sure everybody has seen them. where the air conditioning was an afterthought or the house was designed with no air conditioning to begin with and then air conditioning was added so it might be crammed into an attic space um or the duct work might be squished between the floor joists and the ground but yeah you see that a lot you still with me Jamie, can you hear me, you didn't mute me did you Jamie, you went quiet I can't hear you Anyway, I think we have partially lost Jamie I know he's still there. I can hear him. Say something to me, Jamie Jamie, try again, Jamie I'm just talking about four years My time's flying by for me Curtis? Yep. Can you hear me? I hear you. Jamie's lost audio. Is he frozen on y'all's end, guys? I can still see him and hear him. No, I'm not finished. It's almost 8 o'clock anyway Oh, it's on y'all's end. He's frozen Did you fill that permit? You're frozen, Jamie. I think he's texting me or something. Hold on Let me get on the air You there? I'm here. Are you there? I think I can hear you now. Can you hear me? Well, look. The guys are having a field day with you, Jamie. Look, it's getting late for me My bedtime is normally around 8 o'clock because I get up early So I'm going to say we're going to go ahead and sign off Call this a good time to say goodbye. And I'm going to say thank you for coming along, Jamie One second, I'm about to send him a message We are about to sign off. But guys, y'all, thank you for coming out and listening to us talk about HVAC Jamie has a complete different experience than people in the place that I do I hope you enjoyed it. Thank you for coming, and we'll see you on the next one Y'all have...