Bel Red Energy Blog

If you’re reading this post, you’re probably well aware of the many different services that Bel Red Energy Solutions offers including heating, air conditioning, home energy and plumbing services. For over 26 years customers have trusted Bel Red Energy Solutions to make their homes more comfortable, energy efficient, safe and healthy. You may, however, be a little bit less familiar with some of our other offerings, including a full range of handyman services for household repairs, maintenance and home improvement projects.

As is the case with all of our home energy and plumbing professionals, our professional handymen are extremely talented and experienced. Like those other services, our handyman services are guaranteed. Bel Red is licensed, bonded and insured for your protection; And our staff is SafeScreened Certified™ for your peace-of-mind.

Our handyman services are here to help with most any project our customers need. These services include:

• Deck repair
• Bathroom and kitchen repairs and upgrades
• Lighting and fan replacement
• Wall and ceiling repair, trim and moldings
• Interior painting
• Air sealing and weatherization
• Flooring and tile installation and repair
• Attic, garage and basement upgrades
• Pressure washing and gutter cleaning
• Finish carpentry
• Furniture, outdoor grill, and play set assembly
• Household projects and miscellaneous repairs around the home

It’s that time of year. With Spring officially just around the corner, daylight savings time went back into effect this past weekend. If you didn’t remember to set your clocks ahead an hour Saturday night or Sunday morning, you probably have by now.

With these biannual time changes come some important reminders for homeowners. Changing the batteries on smoke detectors and carbon monoxide detectors is a crucial step toward ensuring the safety of you, your family and other home residents. The batteries in smoke detectors should be changed every six months, which is why the beginning and end of daylight savings time are perfect opportunities to set reminders to do so. According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Housing Survey, only three out of four homes reported they changed the batteries in their smoke alarms in the last six months. We highly encourage you to remember to do so.

Furthermore, and perhaps more often forgotten than the battery changes, it’s extremely important to remember that sensors in carbon monoxide detectors don’t typically last as long as smoke detectors. The sensors in carbon monoxide detectors are only designed to last 2-3 years on average. Maintaining working carbon monoxide detectors is something extremely important, yet something not all homes do. While about 95 percent of U.S. homes report having at least one working smoke alarm, only 42 percent report having a working CO alarm based on 2011 U.S. Census Bureau data. As a reminder, it’s suggested that carbon monoxide detectors (like smoke alarms) should be placed on every floor in the home and outside all sleeping areas.

During the upcoming few days, Don Millard and I will be attending the ACCA 2013 Conference and IE3 (Indoor Environment & Energy Exposition) in Orlando, Florida. The Air Conditioning Contractors of America (ACCA) Conference runs from today through March 2^nd and is being held at the Marriott World Center convention hall. This conference (and expo) is one of the premier events and conferences in the country for Indoor Environment Professionals to learn and discuss the newest and most important issues that face our industry today.

The conference includes a wide range of sessions throughout the week, including discussions on professional development, plumbing and hydronics, building performance (including information on the latest home energy audit topics), industry business practices and many, many more. The conference also features “Learning Labs,” which are the heart of the ACCA Conference and what really sets it apart from other conferences and meetings. This year’s Learning Labs consist of more than 40 special educational sessions led by the nation’s top contractors and industry experts. We’re extremely excited about attending because the ACCA conference draws the highest caliber of industry presenters and the highest caliber of contractor attendees, which makes for very informative discussions both in-session and out.

Don Millard will be representing the Washington State ACCA Chapter (WaACCA) as the chapter President, at a meeting of the Local Chapters from across the country prior to the start of the general conference. These leaders, including Don, will be gathering to discuss best practices, general industry and business information and much more during these pre-conference meetings. I will also be participating in an annual planning session for the Building Performance Council as a member of that council. This council was set up in early 2012 by the ACCA with the intention of bringing building performance leaders together from all over the country to discuss ways to move that industry forward.

If you’d like to follow along with the conference, feel free to check out the ACCA Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/accontractors) or Twitter account (https://twitter.com/acca_kevin) for the latest news and updates from the show. Also, our attendance at this event is part of our commitment to making investments that will further our organization’s knowledge and cutting edge work so we can continually improve for our customers in the Northwest region.

We will also be tweeting from the conference, so feel free to follow along at https://twitter.com/BelRedEnergy1 as well.

This morning, I will be testifying before a Washington State Senate hearing on behalf of multiple facets of the HVAC and mechanical contracting industries on a bill that is currently under consideration. This bill, titled SB 5682, concerns the replacement of some common household appliances and the electrical work that is associated with such a replacement.

A passage of this bill and the resulting changes to current law would provide many working in the HVAC and mechanical contracting industries, specifically those with 06 electrical licenses the legal ability to replace household appliances such as hot water heaters and other basic appliances. Currently under Washington law, a fully licensed plumber or electrician must execute this type of replacement. Given that Bel Red employs both HVAC technicians and licensed plumbers or electricians, we are in a unique place to know that the electrical or plumbing work necessary for this type of appliance replacement does not require the specific skill set of the licensed plumbers or electricians.

Furthermore, it is legally allowable for homeowners to change these appliances themselves, with no training, supervision or licensing. Most of these homeowners certainly have much less training with plumbing and electrical work than certified HVAC technicians, which is another reason we support this change to the law.

We feel this revision would have a positive impact on our specific industry for a number of different reasons, including allowing companies like ours to:

·      Get the work done more quickly for our customers (which is of critical importance when an appliance like your water heater fails)

·      Be more responsive to our customers in scheduling the work, including in the evening or on weekends – saving them time lost form work, lost income, and inconvenience.

·      Provide a more stable work load, less prone to seasonal swings, and a more reliable income to our HVAC technicians and installers

·      Focus our licensed plumbers and electricians on work that actually requires their specific skill-sets and licenses to be done properly and safely

It is quite commonly known within the industry that there are contractors in almost every trade in our state that are performing these types of replacements without the proper license today. We feel this bill will have a significant impact on bringing this work out of the dark and provide a broader group of properly licensed skilled trades-people more work. I will be testifying this morning that this bill represents a common-sense change to current law that will provide many benefits to businesses and consumers within our industry.

This month, Angie’s List published an article discussed the shortages of skilled labor in many trades, from plumbing to HVAC. According to the article, hiring and retaining highly skilled workers in an industry like ours is becoming increasingly more difficult – something we’ve known for a long time.

Angie’s List sites a few reasons for dwindling numbers in this type of work – including the fact that the growing number of skilled workers reaching retirement age are not being equally replaced by young skilled labor workers. Rising material and transportation costs are also said to be factors in the decline in these special labor fields. As consumers look to hire skilled labor work from contractors, it becomes more difficult for them to find quality work and is contributing to rising prices.

This skilled labor shortage isn’t a new problem, especially in the HVAC profession. In fact, we wrote about this same topic last May. You can read that post here. Mike Rowe (of Dirty Jobs) testified in 2011 in front of the US Senate about this growing problem – a problem that is still very much alive today. “The Skills Gap is real, and it’s getting wider. In general, we’re surprised that high unemployment can exist at the same time as a skilled labor shortage. We shouldn’t be. We’ve pretty much guaranteed it ... In high schools, the vocational arts have all but vanished. We’ve elevated the importance of 'higher education' to such a lofty perch, that all other forms of knowledge are now labeled 'alternative',” said Rowe.

We couldn’t agree more with this statement from Rowe. We’re working hard to make up for this general lack of education opportunity by providing our own training programs for our employees. In fact, we provide 160 hours of initial training to all new technicians and plumbers and then partner with them through a tuition sharing program to enroll them in a local technical program. On top of that, we provide over 100 hours a year of ongoing training to all of our technicians, and require that they get all necessary licenses, as well as industry certifications like NATE. As you can see, we live up to our Core Value of Development. This also allows us to hire more based on the attitudes of our potential employees and then train for any skills they may need.