Arkansas HVACR NewsMagazine January 2026

News Magazine January 2026

FEATURE STORY

longer just limited to installing and fixing boxes. They can become building engineers with access to the right resources (and excellent educators) and widely available blower doors, duct leakage testers, and precision manometers.

What is bad is sacrificing integrity in the pursuit of sales. We can use data to drive sales; if a customer has comfort problems and requests a Manual J load calculation, we can sell them a properly sized system. We make a sale to feed our families (or pay our employees so they can feed theirs), and the customer gets better comfort in return. when people don't understand how to solve problems and push "solutions" that do very little to help and may actually worsen the customer's situation. Selling a bigger HVAC unit without offering to investigate the structure or perform a load calculation when a customer complains about a muggy home is a prime example; there could be duct or building leakage making the house feel muggy, and a larger unit is just going to have shorter runtimes (and reduced dehumidification), which makes the problem worse. And what does that say about the industry? One bad actor (or poorly informed HVAC practitioner) is just going to inform the opinions of their dissatisfied customers. But when we have several people (or private equity buyers) who put the almighty dollar above thorough diagnostics, education, and genuine customer care, there comes a point where the general public can't trust the industry. There are many great people out there who do things the right way and educate others to commission and diagnose HVAC However, the issue is

We can optimize comfort in ways that most HVAC technicians in the past might never have thought. Equipment has gotten better at load matching, we have many great industry resources (from organizations like ACCA and NCI to individual educators like Craig Migliaccio and Ty Branaman), and we have information available at our fingertips. However, all these improvements also pave the way for vices to emerge...

The Rise of a Sales-Driven Culture

First of all, sales aren't bad. Wanting to earn money to secure a better life for yourself and your family is perfectly fine.