HVAC

NCB-H Condensing Combi Boiler

Navien, Inc. announced three new innovations during their boiler virtual launch event on February 16. The three new products include the NCB-H condensing combi-boiler, NFC-H condensing fire tube combi-boiler and NFB-H condensing fire tube boiler.

Navien’s new NCB-H condensing combi-boiler series includes 5 models ranging from 160,000 BTU/H for DHW and 60,000 BTU/H for heating, to an industry first 210,000 BTU/H DHW and 150,000 BTU/H heating. The NCB-H uses durable dual stainless steel heat exchangers for heating and a separate flat plate stainless steel heat exchanger for DHW.

NFB-H Fire Tube Condensing Boiler

Advanced features on the NCB-H include 15:1 TDR for DHW and up to 11:1 TDR for heating, advanced controls with intuitive display, built-in advanced DHW recirculation controls, 2” venting up to 65’ and 3” venting up to 150’, common venting capability with up to 7 NPE tankless water heaters, cascade capability with up to 15 NPE tankless water heaters, field gas convertibility to NG high altitude (5,400 ft. to 10,100 ft.) or LP (up to 10,000 ft.) and a new DHW module with mixing valve and flow adjustment valve.

NCB-H is available to ship from Navien immediately.

NFC-H Fire Tube Condensing Boiler

Navien also revealed updates to their fire tube lines with the NFC-H fire tube combi-boilers and NFB-H fire tube boilers. Both the NFC-H and NFB-H now offer turndown ratios up to 15:1, powered connections for 3 zone pumps or 3 zone valves, easy to use Setup Wizard for improved installation, 2” venting up to 65’ and 3” venting up to 150’. The NFC-H also includes increased DHW performance with up to 210,000 BTU/H for DHW, offering up to 5.4 GPM at a 70-degree temperature rise. Both the NFC-H and NFB-H will begin shipping from Navien in April 2021.

Navien will host another virtual launch event focused on water heaters on March 16, 2021. Registration is still open for the event at navieninc.com/live. For more information on all products shown during Navien’s boiler virtual launch event, visit navieninc.com.

Homeowners can now pay for projects in monthly installments, while home service businesses continue to get paid as soon as the job is done

Jobber, the leading provider of home service management software, today announced a partnership with Wisetack to allow home service businesses to offer financing options to their customers. The new consumer financing feature gives homeowners the ability to pay for jobs such as home renovations, landscaping, roof repairs, a new furnace or air conditioner in monthly installments—giving them more flexibility to pursue large projects or deal with urgent and unexpected repairs. While homeowners will have the benefit of paying over time, home service businesses using Jobber will continue to receive full payment for a job as soon as it’s completed.

“Consumer financing is another way that Jobber is helping home service entrepreneurs meet homeowner expectations, compete with bigger competitors, and ultimately be more successful,” said Sam Pillar, CEO & Co-founder at Jobber. “Jobber’s customers can now offer premium services with more confidence, and homeowners can take on projects and repairs with a convenient and flexible payment option. We’re thrilled to add consumer financing to Jobber’s suite of financial solutions and further empower small businesses to deliver great service to their customers.”

“Jobber’s reach among home services professionals means we can be more accessible to more businesses nationwide,” said Bobby Tzekin, CEO & Co-founder of Wisetack. “We’ve gotten really great feedback from the service providers we’ve worked with so far and we’re excited to empower more businesses with this launch.”

Through Jobber, consumer financing can be automatically offered on residential quotes between $500 and $25,000. To apply for monthly financing, homeowners fill out a short application and receive a decision instantly. Annual percentage rates (APR) range from 0 to 29.9 percent and there are no prepayment penalties, origination fees, late fees, or compound interest applied to the homeowner’s account.*

“My customer was extremely grateful to have this consumer financing option,” said Jobber customer Jeff Kerr, owner and operations manager at Marlin Wastewater Services. “The repair came at a really bad time for her, and she was left with a really good feeling. I think it’s an amazingly easy process, too.”

A Jobber-commissioned survey of 1,000 U.S. adults (age 25+) revealed how important the option of consumer financing is to homeowners, and how this offering could mean the difference between a service professional winning and losing a job. In fact, 62% of respondents said that they would choose one home service provider over another if the business offered monthly financing. Additional findings from the study include:

Encouraging Dream Projects for Homeowners

Sixty-three percent (63%) of homeowners indicated that they would be willing to take on a more expensive project if there was a financing option available to them. More than half of homeowners (54%) have put off a project due to lack of funds, while one in four (25%) have considered borrowing against their 401k for a home improvement project.

Enabling Emergency Repairs

Sixty-six percent (66%) of respondents would be more likely to use monthly financing for emergency work, such as fixing a damaged roof or burst pipe. Nearly one in four homeowners (24%) said they have less than $500 available for emergency home repairs and 39% said they have $1,000 or less. Homeowners aged 45 -54 have the lowest amount of cash available for emergency repairs with more than half (53%) indicating reserves of $1,000 or less.

Younger Homeowners Value Consumer Financing

Throughout the survey, younger respondents (25-34) displayed stronger opinions around the ability to finance home service projects. Eighty percent (80%) would pick a home service provider over another because they offered monthly financing—eighteen points above the overall average. Seventy-seven percent (77%) of homeowners in this age bracket would also take on more expensive projects if they could pay in monthly installments. More than half (53%) have put a home service project on a credit card so they could pay for it over time.

Consumer financing is available to Jobber customers in the U.S. who meet the eligibility requirements and are approved by Wisetack. To learn more about how this feature can benefit your plumbing, HVAC, landscaping or other home service business, visit: getjobber.com/features/consumer-financing/

What lessons did the Bradford White team learn in 2020? In a year dominated by COVID, COVID, COVID, we learned the value of flexibility and communication above all else.

Early in the pandemic we were able to successfully assert that we—as a company, in our factories, our distributors and our contractors—are essential to the health of the country. We can’t do without hot water for sanitation, cooking, cleaning, and bathing in hospitals, nursing homes, military installations, food processing plants and in America’s homes. Our contractor customers are vital and essential providers of heat and hot water. There was much that we didn’t know back then, and supply chains began to shut down. Adding to the confusion, the U.S.-based supply chain was operating under different COVID rules and restrictions than what we saw with non-U.S. suppliers. We worked through the initial uncertainty about how we could best protect our employees and stabilized our factories in Middleville and Niles, Michigan, and Rochester, N.H.

We’re entering a new phase of COVID-19 these days, with an evolving sense of normalization. We’re still currently running our plants to maximize employee safety, and we’re doing so in a market where there is high demand for our products.

Photo Credit: Alan Carlson, Armbrust Plumbing & Heating

We follow state and national requirements for PPE. We run through health protocols daily with a questionnaire and a temperature check for all employees, and we’ve adjusted our scheduling to handle that. We exercise social distancing where possible and employ contact tracing measures when necessary. We clean and sanitize our factories frequently. It’s been gratifying to hear feedback from those business partners who are authorized to come into the factory that we are going above and beyond to keep employees safe compared to what they’ve seen elsewhere. I feel very good about what we’re doing to look out for the health of our employees while striving to meet our customer commitments.

You can’t communicate enough. Constant communication with our customers is crucial. We understand our distributors’ day-to-day demands and frequently communicate with them through our sales team and rep network. All their manufacturers have been affected and in different ways, so distributors have a lot of questions. We share information with contractors through our For the Pro® site, and the contractors we talk with have all been busy.

The same goes for our employees. Communicate and then communicate some more. It’s imperative to share reliable (and factual) information with our employees to avoid confusion. If people can’t get reliable information, they may fill in the blanks and fuel an already overflowing COVID rumor mill. We had about 150 employee communications last year and 80% of them were associated with the pandemic. You have to make sure your employees understand what it takes to be safe both in and out of the workplace. The coronavirus has been particularly difficult because information on the disease and availability of vaccines varies from state to state and even county to county.

Where’s the best guidance coming from? It’s difficult to say what’s the best source, but the CDC appears to have been the most consistent central source for national guidance on what to do for health and safety during the pandemic. Local information can vary by county or parish or municipality. In southwestern Michigan and southeastern Pennsylvania for example, where two of our facilities are located, the guidance varies from county to county, so one county may be on the second phase of shots while another county is barely in phase one. Our Canadian-based team must look to the Canadian government for guidance nationally and then understand what each of the provinces are saying.

How many of these practices will live on beyond the COVID-19 era? As far as products, we’ll continue to see increasing levels of connectivity and remote diagnostics, particularly on the commercial side of things where building management systems are commonplace for monitoring performance. This is not new, but the constraints of COVID have caused an acceleration in the development of more remote capabilities.  Virtual learning will continue, but we believe that “hands-on” training experiences will continue to be preferred. In terms of our general industry dynamics, a lot of us are anxious to reduce our time in the virtual/remote world. For us, this is a relationship industry and we like to see our customers and suppliers face to face. We’re most effective when we can be with a contractor in their own space to understand their challenges. You need to ride shotgun in the truck so you can see what they see and hear what they see and hear. And a virtual trade show is not a substitute for the discoveries you can make seeing and touching new products. For a company like Bradford White that prides itself on its face-to-face customer relationships, this has been painful.

This pandemic has altered almost everything in our lives, including food, water, healthcare supply, healthcare delivery, supply chains, insurance plans and contracts. As we prepare for the next pandemic, the planning must include economic recovery along with the health aspect. We were looking at the bullseye, but we missed many of the rings around it. Now we can see how big of an impact COVID-19 has on all facets of our lives.

When it comes to doing business during a pandemic, you can’t deny the human element. When you talk about somebody’s health and well-being, including any challenges they’re experiencing regarding their financial health and well-being, it becomes emotional. As much as you might want to employ common sense and logic when it comes to work, people have lost loved ones and lost jobs. Plus, the coronavirus has become part of the partisan political landscape when we need to be bipartisan when it comes to taking care of the health of the country.

Carl Pinto, Jr. is senior director of marketing communications for Bradford White.

This Just the Tip comes from Eric Silva, Silva Mechanical, West Broomfield, Mich. What three things does he suggest before starting every job? Oh, and a BONUS tip?