2024 Dealer Design Awards: Contractor Services & Software

An accurate combustion analyzer is vital for diagnosing problems in fossil-fuel-burning heating appliances such as furnaces and boilers, and long waits for analyzers that are out for service or recalibration put a drag on an HVAC contracting business.

Working from those premises, UEi Test Instruments last summer introduced UEi Service+ Guaranteed! for the company’s residential and commercial combustion analyzers. The UEi+ pledge, the company says, means any analyzer in the C160 series that’s sent to UEi for annual calibration or servicing will be serviced and readied for return shipping the same day.

UEi Service+ Guaranteed!, which reduces the amount of time technicians have to wait for their analyzers and also guarantees an all-inclusive price, took Gold honors in the Contractor Services and Software category of this year’s Dealer Design Awards.

Cole Douglass, a field supervisor at A.B. May, an HVAC, plumbing, and electrical contractor in the Kansas City, Missouri, area, said he’s pleased with UEi Service+ Guaranteed!, which he started using last year for his company’s analyzers. Douglass oversees 10 technicians at A.B. May.

“I appreciate them for honoring the program,” Douglass said. “I look forward to a long relationship with UEi.”

A combustion analyzer is a go-to tool in an HVAC technician’s kit during the heating season, Douglass said.

Sean Tierney, director of marketing at UEi, said the company has been working to cut the turnaround time for analyzer servicing for several years, after getting feedback from technicians that manufacturers were making the annual certification process too slow and difficult.

“Waiting for weeks for service only to find a higher cost than expected should be a thing of the past,” Tierney said. “A technician’s work is hard enough. Keeping their equipment performing at a high level shouldn’t be.”

In 2015, Tierney said, UEi’s average turnaround time for servicing combustion analyzers was 14 days, which was about the industry standard.

“While service turnaround time has not changed much for most of the industry, we continually improved our service year by year until, by 2020, we reduced our turnaround to two days, and then down to one day in 2021,” Tierney said. By 2022, he added, same-day turnaround was achieved, and after a year-long pilot program during which the company achieved same-day turnaround 100% of the time, UEi Service+ Guaranteed! was launched.

Contractors should book UEi Service+ Guaranteed! within either 12 months from the date the instrument was purchased or 12 months from when it was last certified.

In addition to same-day turnaround, contractors can use UEi Service+ Guaranteed! to extend an analyzer’s standard one-year warranty for another year — for up to 10 years. The same-day servicing is guaranteed, or the service is free, and the price includes shipping both to and from the UEi service center.

“And we don’t just check sensors,” said Tierney. “We do a full inspection that includes the analyzer and accessories.”

In order to achieve same-day turnaround, Tierney said, UEi took a number of steps, including moving its servicing laboratory from the West Coast to Indianapolis, Indiana, in order to cut transit times, achieving ISO 17025 accreditation for the lab’s processes and quality standards, customizing workstations to process analyzers efficiently, tracking the lab work, and building a new website that technicians can use to book service.

“Our commitment to listen to our customers and investment in people, processes, and products have allowed us to create an unmatched industry-changing service,” Tierney said.

Going forward, Tierney said, UEi is looking into developing a similar program for industrial combustion analyzers, and looking into solutions for customers who need to have a high volume of analyzers serviced at once.

Charge Integrity, a new feature of Daikin One Cloud Services, was the Silver winner in Contractor Services and Software.

Charge Integrity alerts contractors to small refrigerant leaks in residential HVAC systems, allowing them to repair leaks before they becomes major headaches, the company said.

“Non-catastrophic refrigerant leaks from HVAC systems into the atmosphere contribute to greenhouse gas emissions while impacting system performance, efficiency, and operational cost,” said Jim Cahill, internet of things (IoT) business leader at Daikin Comfort Technologies North America. “For homeowners, slow leaks can add up over time, diminishing system performance, while increasing utility costs to achieve satisfactory indoor comfort.”

Charge Integrity, Cahill said, uses sensors to identify small leaks on many Daikin, Amana, and Goodman unitary inverter systems that are connected to the Daikin cloud. Contractors get emails or push notifications about leaks in these systems if the refrigerant level drops below a set threshold.

Cahill said Charge Integrity uses an algorithm based on data collected from a large base of installed Daikin systems. A graphic dashboard for each leak, he said, tells contractors about the loss of refrigerant and the system’s health, and provides other information that enables contractors to be proactive in scheduling a repair.

Cahill said Charge Integrity can often identify a refrigerant leak before the customer has a comfort complaint, but that Daikin is looking to make Charge Integrity even more sensitive.

Studying how system performance is degraded by small reductions in refrigerant charge levels is something Daikin has studied for years, Cahill said, and the data collected from smart HVAC systems has allowed the company to leverage that research with Charge Integrity.

AirLink, a program from Jackson Systems & Supply that allows consumables on IAQ equipment, such as filters and bulbs, to be ordered directly and easily, took Bronze honors in Contractor Services and Software.

AirLink, said company president Tom Jackson, gives contractors a passive income stream, through website purchases, for those consumables.

Through the program, which was introduced in March, contractors have a company logo and a unique QR code imprinted on IAQ equipment they purchase from Jackson. The code, when scanned, leads directly to a page on the contractor’s website for the replacement consumable — a filter, for example — for that particular piece of equipment. The customer can check out to complete the purchase, and the parts are stocked and shipped by Jackson Systems & Supply.

“Since the QR code is printed directly on the product, contractors will receive the residual profits on these sales time and again,” Jackson said.

Jackson said his company put two years into developing AirLink, basing the work on contractor feedback, focus groups, market research, and analysis of its IAQ sales.

“The QR code leading directly to the replacement filter or other consumables means the technician isn’t fielding phone calls from customers about what products they need,” said Jackson. “This was done to clear up confusion for the customer while freeing up valuable tech time.”

AirLink also lets contractors with branded IAQ products capture sales that would otherwise have gone to big-box stores or online retailers, Jackson said.