Industry Blogs

Although residential construction projects often focus on major living spaces such as the kitchen, other rooms — for example, the bathroom — are growing in prominence. People want to save money on their water consumption, and they do not want the change to result in poor water pressure. Instead, they are increasingly willing to pay for the technology that allows them to enjoy greater comfort while minimizing the consequences of leaks and other plumbing problems. These popular bathroom design trends reflect the effects that plumbing innovations have had in the industry.

Smart Technology

The integration of smart technology has made plumbing a great way for homeowners to improve efficiency without compromising practical use. Modern plumbing systems rely on smart systems to track water usage and use sensors to identify leaks before they cause significant water damage. Smart technology and AI can integrate into every aspect of the plumbing system, from smart watering features in the backyard to smart toilets that can be flushed using a mobile device. With this technology, plumbers gain more information about the condition and function of the plumbing system, making problems easier to find and address.

Efficient Fixtures

Water-saving fixtures have become a standard in homes, with features that homeowners have come to expect. Low-flow showerheads and toilets have been available for decades, but the function of these fixtures has dramatically improved. Modern designs use a fraction of the water of older models, but they provide similar levels of water pressure. When combined with smart technology such as sensors, residents can avoid using water when they do not need it. Tankless or heat-pump water heaters round out the package, allowing homeowners to minimize energy consumption for water heating.

Water-Saving Plumbing

The conversation about water-saving features continues, expanding into the entire plumbing system. Homeowners pay for their water consumption, when much of the water they use ends up going back to the municipal water system almost immediately. The latest systems allow homeowners to maximize their use by conserving certain types of greywater. Plumbers can install a system that cycles water from certain drains to other parts of the home, for irrigation or other uses. Property owners can see their water consumption decrease, while growing their home’s overall sustainability.

Data Analytics

People no longer have to wonder about their water consumption or the function of their plumbing systems because data can readily provide that information. Many homeowners can now spot a leak using sensors that alert them to a sudden change in water consumption. This information can save thousands of dollars in expensive repairs, while minimizing stress on the local water supply. Plumbers can use AI to find patterns based on existing data to predict the likelihood of a leak and help guide homeowners in the best time to upgrade their plumbing.

Chic Designs

Plumbing innovations are transforming the bathroom from a limited space to a true retreat. The separation of bathtub and shower has revolutionized the style and function of the bathroom. The bathtub becomes a place for rest and relaxation, featuring designs that become the statement piece of the bathroom. Without a bathtub, shower spaces can expand to meet the needs of the residents. The latest designs feature full-body showers, steam showers, soundproof ceiling installation in North Aurora, IL, and the technology homeowners need to control all of it with voice-activation or the touch of a button.

Homeowners may think more about their plumbing in recent years, which highlights the changes to the plumbing industry. Modern plumbing innovations allow homeowners to reduce their water consumption and maintain a closer watch on the condition of their plumbing. While these advances improve efficiency, they also give residents a comfortable, relaxing space while they rest from the cares of the day.

Brothers Dave and Jeff Dunaway are the Founders of Dunaway Brothers, which specializes in carpentry and decorating for commercial building projects throughout Chicagoland. Dunaway Brothers was founded in 2006 and also owns Sandwich Millworks, its residential branch, in Sugar Grove, IL. Sandwich Millworks specializes in custom millworks and is a Marvin certified window and door dealer.

By Chris Hondl, Nexstar Network Sales Coach

Before I got into sales, I was a teacher. I taught for five years at the elementary level. My wife was also a teacher. At the time, we were newly married, with no kids, and looking ahead to how we were going to afford kids, buy a house, and put together all the other pieces that come along with the American Dream.

Unfortunately, our two little teacher paychecks didn’t add up to making that happen. So, I took a stab at getting a second job. I had seen advertisements for the Minnesota School of Bartending and I decided to enroll, with hopes of teaching by day and bartending on nights and weekends. I went through the program and achieved the lifetime certification, which proved I had mastered how to make more than 100 of the most popular cocktails and knew about all the top brand-name liquors.

That was almost two decades ago, and I have yet to make a single drink as an official and employed bartender. In fact, if you were to ask me for any of those 100+ drinks I am “certified” to make, the only one I think I would be able to make you would be one of the simplest: a rum and coke.

You see, I never adopted my newfound bartending skills into practice. I learned the skills, but I never used what I learned afterward.

We see the same thing in our own businesses, don’t we? We send an employee to a session, and they gain all of these new skills and ideas, and then what? They come back to work. And if we don’t actively apply what your employees learned in the field, it’s eventually as if the session never happened. What a waste of time and money!

Recently, I asked the 40+ previous attendees of the Sales Objection Bootcamp about the effectiveness of the bootcamp.

The results I got back from the attendees, four months after the session occurred, generally fall into three buckets:

1. We haven’t done a thing with the information we learned at the Sales Objection Bootcamp since we left, and we’re seeing the same results we were getting before the training.
2. We realized we have some process issues to fix before we continue with what we learned in the Sales Objection Bootcamp.
3. We are following the plan we learned and seeing amazing results!

These answers aren’t in the least bit surprising. It’s just like me and my experience with bartending school. Had I attended the school and then immediately gone out and begun bartending, the skills I had learned at school would have become second nature and helped me realize my goal of making money as a bartender. But since I never practiced what I learned, I ended up in the same place I was in before I attended bartending school: with no results, not retaining what I had learned, and not making money as a bartender.

Participating in the bootcamp is only half of the journey. Putting what you learn into practice is the other, more important half.

There are a lot of sales-focused training courses out there for our industry. Take time to identify the right one for you and your team. For example, the Sales Objection Bootcamp we’ve developed here at Nexstar is an intensive three-day session where your dedicated sales coach comes to your location and works with your team to master their presentations and objections such as: Price, Spouse, Shopping Around and many more.

Want proof that it all works? Here’s feedback from a member who is following the plan and currently seeing incredible results:

Nathan Andreas, owner of  , attended Sales Objection Bootcamp with his sales team. Since returning home and practicing what they learned, their closing rate has gone well above their budgeted goal, with one salesperson averaging 69% closing on tech leads and 55% closing on marketed leads. Nathan says the take-aways that have been key to their success are:

• Buying into having a strong sales process before presentation
• Maximizing skills-practice
• Clarifying the objection
• Digging deeper to uncover the real objection
• Using a trial close prior to asking for the sale
• Riding along with his team

So! Are you ready to dramatically increase your sales in FY25? It will take commitment and follow-through. Otherwise, would you prefer to keep getting the same results you’ve always gotten?

Chris Hondl serves as one of two Sales Coaches at Nexstar Network and has more than 15 years of experience in coaching, training, and sales. If you are a Nexstar member and are prepared to implement what you’ve learned in the Sales Objection Bootcamp, contact your Sales Coach for an assist. If you’re not a Nexstar member, but you’re curious to learn more, click here.

The other day I performed a Google search for ‘How to detect an air leak’. Not surprisingly it came up with millions of results, over 18 million in fact.

Whether solving the problem in a commercial establishment or a domestic home environment, the majority of search results pointed to one solution. Namely, soapy water!

Before we all ridicule the idea as belonging to a bygone era, take a vehicle with a slow puncture to a tyre fitting depot and the chances are they remove the wheel and spin it in water to determine the leak. It’s a simple time proven method for determining leaks from pressurized systems.

But of course, not all equipment can be placed in soapy water. What if a system is known to be losing pressure and yet the lines carrying the compressed air from the source are located 10 metres above the ground, and dismantling the system is out of the question? Thankfully there is a fast and effective solution to hand.

Each time air or indeed any gas, leaks from a pressured system there is an associated sound. If the leak is significant, it can be audible to the human ear and therefore easily identified and rectified accordingly. However, most leaks in high pressure systems are extremely small and are out of the range of a human ear.

Think about a pressured air system on a large factory delivering compressed air from a bank of compressors to various stages of production throughout the manufacturing process. The chances are there are hundreds if not thousands of connections in the form of joints, reducers, valves, elbows, condensers etc. Each of these has the potential to leak small amounts of air, reducing the pressure of the system.

One leak might make very little difference but multiply this by the number of potential leaking joints and efficiency can be significantly compromised. The compressor will seek to compensate for any pressure loss by simply working harder. However, as any engineer will know, compressors can be expensive to operate in terms of energy and therefore will certainly increase an operators energy consumption.

With electricity costs being so much higher in Europe due to geopolitical factors in recent years, most companies are seeking to reduce the amount of energy used. Having a compressor work overtime to compensate for leaking joints is certainly not something senior management would smile about!

These scenarios are certainly not uncommon, in fact one European compressor manufacturer has stated that in some industrial settings, up to 80% of air generated is lot in leaks. So clearly identifying these small leaks can make a real difference to a company’s energy bills.

Although the sound produced by a small leak is inaudible to the human ear a high performance acoustic imaging camera such as the FLIR Teledyne Si2 – LD will have absolutely no problem identifying the source. Launched earlier this year the camera is capable of detecting leaks of 0.05 litres per minute at a distance of 10 metres, meaning those elevated air lines pose no problem for this latest instrument in the FLIR acoustic imaging camera line up.

For closer work the camera is even more sensitive and can detects minute leaks of 0.0032 litres per minute at a distance of 2.5 metres. Coupled with this improvement, the third-generation camera has improved microphones now capable of detecting sounds over an extremely wide frequency range, namely 2 – 130 kHz.

Areas of plant are often dark or dimly lit. for this reason FLIR have fitted the FLIR Si2-series of cameras with two powerful LED lights to make component identification easy even in poorly lit conditions.

Of course, it’s not just compressed air that the camera is capable of detecting; noise emitted by any escaping gas is identified by the powerful microphones. However that’s only part of the story.

The FLIR Si2-LD has built in software termed Industrial Gas Quantification. If the leaking gas is ammonia, hydrogen, helium, or carbon dioxide, very commonly used gases in a number of industries, the software is capable of quantifying the financial loss caused by the leak. By simply entering factors such as the cost per litre, the software identifies the amount each leak is causing over a given period of time. Such data is invaluable to financial analysts and senior management within an organisation.

It goes without saying that the financial considerations are only one aspect of leaking gas. The gases mentioned above all carry significant health hazards and can present a variety of dangers to personnel if allowed to leak for any period of time. Ammonia and carbon dioxide can cause serious breathing problems and asphyxiation even in smaller concentrations, whereas hydrogen can explode in the presence of oxygen. Clearly the cost of such problems goes way beyond any financial considerations.

We’ve come a long way since the ‘soap and water’ approach. See how the latest technology from FLIR Teledyne can help in reducing downtime, lower energy bills and improve safety in your organisation.

Visit www.flir.com or contact you local FLIR Teledyne agent or distributor.

Author: Darrell Taylor

Email: Darrell.Taylor@teledyne.com

By Heather Ripley

It’s every business owner’s nightmare: You wake up to news that an employee has gone on a crime spree in the branded company van, he’s arrested, and your logo is seen in the background all over social media.

Or your staff accountant gave out his username and password to a phishing email. As a result, the online accounting platform your company uses was hacked, and all your customers’ financial data has been accessed.

It doesn’t matter that neither of these incidents are your fault, your company might still be seen in a bad light.

But if you have a public relations crisis management plan already in place, you know what your next steps are to mitigate the damage a bad event can have on your company’s reputation.

If you don’t have a plan, here are five steps you should take immediately so that you aren’t caught flat-footed when a crisis happens.

1.    Don’t assume the crisis will organically go away

There was a time when news didn’t spread as quickly as it does now. Back then, you might have been able to sit tight for a week or two and wait until people grew tired of talking about the bad news. That’s not a luxury in this day and age.

You need to take immediate action and get in front of the crisis. Whether you need to issue an apology or get your side of the issue out, you need to act as soon as possible.

2.    Don’t downplay the severity of the situation

Even if no one was physically hurt in the scenarios listed above, that doesn’t mean that individuals weren’t affected. People may have lost a precious family keepsake due to your employee’s actions, or your customers may have had to spend all day changing their banking and credit card information to protect their finances.

Even if you aren’t at fault, you should show empathy for what has happened to them. You need to be authentic in your concern and act quickly to remediate damages.

3.     Do communicate immediately with stakeholders

Make sure you hold a company-wide meeting to explain the crisis to your employees, critical managers and any partners you may have. Let them know that you will assemble a team to respond to the accusations and ask them to direct questions to the individual you’ve selected to be the spokesperson.

Your employees should not feel like they have to defend your company or their jobs.

4.    Do get with your PR team to ready a statement

It’s never a good idea to hide from the problem. Once you have found out more about the crisis, you should get with your PR team and attorney to pen a statement. This doesn’t have to be shared unless the media reaches out for comment, but it should be vetted and ready to share at a moment’s notice.

You should also have social media statements ready, as well. Social media is used by thousands of people as a news aggregator, so being prepared to put your statement out on your company’s Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn channels is a necessity.

Your statement should let the public and your customers know you have fired the offending employee, for example. Or let them know what steps your financial institution or accounting software company is taking to remediate damages.

Apologize for their troubles and inconvenience, and state what you are doing to fix the problem.

5.    Do be sincere with your apology

While it might be tempting to start pointing fingers and burying your apology in a flurry of other online responses or press interviews, don’t do this.

Sure, you can’t help what your employee does on his own time, but it doesn’t do you or the people who have been affected by these actions any good to muddy the waters by discussing issues that aren’t related to the crisis at hand.

According to a recent Price Waterhouse Cooper survey, 69% of business leaders have experienced a corporate crisis. It’s not a matter of if a crisis will happen, it’s more a matter of when.

Ideally, this is why you should already have a crisis communications plan ready to go. A complete plan will help you take control, protect your assets and put you on the path toward regaining customer trust.

A true PR partner will anticipate your needs and have a crisis management plan already in place. This plan generally includes a list of personnel on the crisis management team, the name of the person who will serve as your company’s spokesperson, and the protocols for issuing press releases and social media posts, should they become necessary.

Your PR team will also provide you with ways to determine if your mitigating efforts are having a positive effect and can make adjustments for you if they aren’t working as well as they should.

While you can’t control the world around you, you can certainly control how you respond to it. Putting together a crisis communication plan may seem like a lot of work, but it’s an essential part of doing business.

A crisis may not spell the end of your business, but it can damage your bottom line, harm your employees and affect your future if you don’t take it seriously.

Heather Ripley is founder and CEO of Ripley PR, an elite, global public relations agency specializing in the franchising, skilled trades and B2B tech industries. Ripley PR has been listed by Entrepreneur Magazine as a Top Franchise PR Agency for six consecutive years and was recently named as one of Newsweek’s America’s Best Public Relations Agencies for 2024. Heather Ripley was recently named as a 2024 PRNews Top Women honoree in the business entrepreneur category. She is also the author of “NEXT LEVEL NOW: PR Secrets to Drive Explosive Growth for your Home Service Business,” which is now available on all audiobook platforms. For additional information, visit www.ripleypr.com.