You Could Be Saving Big Bucks on Your Heating and Cooling with Dennis Stinson

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February 13, 2024

122. You Could Be Saving Big Bucks on Your Heating and Cooling with Dennis Stinson

Industry expert Dennis Stinson shows us the world of energy-efficient home comfort systems. Learn ways to save money without having to spend a fortune. From demystifying heat load analysis to uncovering the benefits of zoning techniques and ductless heat pumps, there are ways to transform your living space into a cozy oasis while keeping your energy bills in check. Discover the financial perks of energy rebates, federal tax credits, and smart home integration that can make your upgrade more affordable than ever. 

Here’s how you can follow or reach Dennis Stinson:

 

Website: ConstantComfort.com

 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FujitsuGeneralUSA

 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fujitsugeneralusa/

 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/fujitsu-general-america-inc/

 

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/FujitsuGeneralUSA

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Episode Transcript

George Siegal (00:00):
How energy efficient is your house?
Are you taking advantage of allthe different things out there
that might save you some moneyeach month?
Now, if I was put on the spotto answer these questions, my
first answer would be no, I'mnot, because I have no idea what
the options are to save money.
Well, you'll learn a lot frommy guest today, Dennis Stinson.
He's the VP of sales forFujitsu General America and he's

(00:22):
an expert in heating andcooling systems and the things
you can do with them that couldsave you some money without
having to spend a lot of money.
I'm George Siegal, and this isHomeowners Be Aware the podcast
that teaches you everything youneed to know about being a
homeowner.
Dennis, thank you so much forjoining me today.

Dennis Stinson (00:42):
Oh, it's a real pleasure.
Thank you for having me andthanks for talking about this
subject of home comfort.

George Siegal (00:48):
Yeah, I mean, that's an important subject,
because you know if you live ina home where you don't have it
right or you're paying too much.
So tell me exactly what is outthere that we can start saving
money with as homeowners,because I know so many things
are inefficient.
How do we get to a moreefficient way of handling this?

Dennis Stinson (01:07):
Great question.
Well, there's always two reallyimportant things when you talk
about your home comfort system.
The first is that it's got towork.
And as simple as that sounds, ahome comfort system is to make
you comfortable.
So no matter how much moneyyou're spending or how much
money you're saving, if itdoesn't make you comfortable, it
didn't do what you bought it todo.
So buying an appropriately sizedand installed and service piece

(01:30):
of equipment is by far the mostimportant thing to do, so that
you actually achieve comfort.
The second is to make sure thatit's affordable, because if
you're comfortable and you can'tafford it, then you're
uncomfortable again, right?
So it's a matter of trying toget a piece of equipment that's
going to give you the maximumefficiency for your money's

(01:50):
worth.
And when we buy efficiency,like we buy cars with gas
mileage, you tend to pay forthat upfront.
So what you do is you buy ahigh efficient piece of
equipment and through your use,it's your operational cost is
where the savings come back.
So there's always a couple ofquestions you ask yourself on
that.
But making sure that the pieceof equipment makes you

(02:12):
comfortable and you can affordthe install on the operational
cost is is how you want todirect your efforts.

George Siegal (02:18):
Now a lot of us have no control over the system
that might be there.
So if you buy a house later inthe production and you're taking
what they give you, if you'rebuying a house from somebody
else, you're getting what camewith the house, and if you're in
the very beginning stages, youcan probably have more selection
choices.
So you have this.
But when you're kind of justyou know inheriting a

(02:40):
circumstance, how do you, how doyou, gain control of that end
of it?

Dennis Stinson (02:44):
Well, at some point, everything has a life and
everything mechanical will runto its useful lifespan.
And then, at that point is whenthe choices come in.
So you first take a step backand say, well, what type of home
comfort system do you have, anddo you have heating, do you
have air conditioning or do youhave both?
So let's assume, that's assumed, that maybe you have both, but

(03:06):
start thinking about the typesof heating you can have.
And in a very simplistic world,there are two types of heat.
There are those that make airhot and you blow that around
your house, and there are thosethat are some form of radiator.
So, whether that's a baseboardheat, a hydronic baseboard heat
or a steam radiator or evenradiant floor heating, there's

(03:29):
something that makes somethinghot that makes your room hot,
and then there's something thatmakes the air hot that moves
around your room.
So when we look at thatstandpoint, then you take a step
back and say, well, what kindof fuel are we using?
Are we using gas, we use an LP,or we use natural gas, or we
using coal, or we using oil, orare we using electricity?

(03:52):
And based on the type of fuelsthat are available to you and
the type of structure that youhave in your house.
Then you start getting downinto the options of where you
can go.

George Siegal (04:03):
What I've learned , what I've seemed to have
learned in almost the lastseveral houses that I bought if
you find a way to increase theairflow whether it's cool air or
warm air in your house, youalso have to have a way to get
that out of there, like if thecirculation is bad overall, if
there's not enough return airsin your house or anything.
So is that part of the equationis knowing how your whole
system is balanced before youtry to save money with it.

Dennis Stinson (04:26):
Yeah.
So really the best thing to dois you call a contractor that
you trust and you let them comein and do a heat load and heat
gain in your house.
And if we think back to thatsixth grade science class, that
physics class, remember that hotgoes to cold.
So in the winter time, theheat's going from inside your
house and it's trying to findevery way to get outside.

(04:46):
In the summertime, all that hotsunshine is trying to find a
way to get in.
So what you want to do is makesure that you got the right size
piece of equipment.
And then, if you're using aforced air system, you want to
make sure that the distributionsystem or your ductwork, or in
my case, the ductless work, issufficiently sized and sealed.
And yeah, return air grills areimportant because what you blow

(05:09):
in you have to take out.
And, by the way, I listened toyour podcast on indoor air
quality and that was really good.
That was a good discussionabout airflow in there and also
quality of air, but gooddiscussion of airflow and
balancing of a house.
That was a good podcast.

George Siegal (05:25):
Yeah, I mean it's having return airs.
You know, I have a feelingsometimes the people that
engineered the houses I live inmaybe it was their first time
out of the box- yeah, that couldhappen.
Now.
So tell me about ways I cansave money with a system I might
have, and is it significantsavings?
Or is it one of those thingswhere they say, well, over the

(05:45):
life of a house, you'll save Xamount of dollars, or is it
something you notice that you'resaving right away?

Dennis Stinson (05:51):
Yeah.
So if you think of that, yourhome comfort system is going to
comprise more than half of yourhome energy cost.
Now you're talking aboutsomething significant, right?
So we can.
We can change light bulbs, andthat's good we should, but the
real energy consumption is ourheating and air conditioning
system.
So if we make an effectivechange to that, we are Changing

(06:14):
our overall energy, home energycost pretty dramatically.
Now we measure let's stay withthe heat pump, let's stay with
air conditioning.
We measure that by a measure ofefficiency, and air
conditioning we call it searseasonal energy efficiency
rating.
The higher the number, the moreefficient the unit is.
Think of it kind of like MPGsfor a car, so the more the

(06:37):
better.
When you move up incrementallyin it, it can make a pretty
dramatic Impact to your bill.
So if I've got something that'smore than half of my overall
energy costs and I increase theefficiency that by 10 or 20 or
30 percent, now I am directlynoticing the difference in my
utility bill on a monthly basis.

(06:57):
You can save Depending upon thesize of your home and the
climate you live in.
You can save hundreds ofdollars a month.

George Siegal (07:05):
Yeah, I mean I.
I used to live in In Detroitand there we would have had it,
had nice savings in the in thewinter because you're blasting
your heat all the time.
But now I live in Florida whereyour air conditioning is almost
running all the time.
So what are some things I cando to start saving some money?

Dennis Stinson (07:23):
Well.
So it starts on a couple ofdifferent ways.
So it starts with Getting agood piece of equipment, get a
balance, get it installedcorrectly, right.
The second thing you can do isif you zone the property, so
what you want to be able to lookat is a piece of equipment like
a ductless heat pump that,coincidentally, I sell.

(07:45):
And if you put one, if the waythat that comes out of the box
it's individually zoned, soyou're putting an evaporator or
an air dispersion system in eachZone, then what happens is only
that comes on when you need it.
So hear me out on this if I'm,if I'm watching the, the AFC
championship, upstairs and I'mnot downstairs, then I don't

(08:09):
have to heat or cool thedownstairs while I'm upstairs.
If I have three kids and I doand Two of them are off to
college, I don't have to tempertheir rooms to the same
temperature as the rest of thehouse.
So now I'm only conditioningfor the most part the rooms that
I'm living in.

George Siegal (08:27):
Then, if I'm only living in 20% of my overall
space, imagine the savings thatI would have over a traditional
system where there's onethermostat in the hallway when
when I turn it, it makes thewhole house the same temperature
, but I'm not living in thewhole house, so zoning is a big,
big feature that can savepretty dramatically on home

(08:49):
energy costs so once you've donethat and and and you like, for
example, here in Florida we keepour air in the summer at 78
degrees and we have one is asplit system that goes one, one
splits zone, splits into twoareas and the other is another
section of the house, so I guessthere's three zones, but we

(09:11):
have some rooms that get muchhotter.
They don't have enough returnair so I had to put a split
system in my office because itwas four degrees warmer than the
rest of the house.
So when you do that, when you,when you just work on certain
areas, is one room going to beall hot and clammy versus, or do
you just keep it a few degreeswarmer?

Dennis Stinson (09:29):
Well.
So what I would do is if, if itwere me, I would find that
baseline temperature that youwant the house to be at and then
the rooms that you're living inyou would have them tempered to
to what you like.
So, living in Florida, maybeyou keep everything at 78 and
the rooms that you're Sleepingin or watching TV or reading a

(09:49):
book at nighttime, then maybethat's the 75 or 72 or whatever
temperature it is that you arecomfortable with with heat, with
heat and really with cool.
There's.
There's two elements you haveto think of.
One is latent heat and one issensible heat.
Sensible heat is thetemperature of the air.
So when I turn on an airconditioning, I feel that nice

(10:09):
cool air on me.
That's the sensible heat that'sblowing on me.
The latent heat is all the stuffin the room, the temperature
that is.
The great example is is when youclimb in your car in Florida In
the middle of the day, thoseseats are like sitting on hot
coals, right, that's the latentheat of the seats.
Now, if you were to Turn offall the air conditioning in your

(10:30):
home, all your furniture, yourrugs, everything would heat up
to a much higher temperature.
So when you turn on the heat orturn on the air conditioning,
it takes a while for everythingto come down the temperature.
So you want to find that nicesweet spot when you step out of
a room and you set thetemperature back.
You don't want to set it backtoo much because then you got to
get everything in that roomback down to a comfortable

(10:52):
temperature.
So normally somewhere betweenFour to six, maybe as high as
eight degrees is as far as youwould want to set it, because
that latent heat is gonna sitthere and that the couch is
gonna get hot and the chairs aregonna get hot and it's gonna be
uncomfortable for a long timenow.

George Siegal (11:08):
So, if I have, I get you an example of a typical
house, let's say a threethousand square foot house,
maybe twenty five hundred tothree thousand, and it has one
AC unit.
Maybe it's a large unit but itoperates the whole house.
Could, how specifically nowcould?
Could?
Could you come in and breakthose up into zones, or does it
have to be per air conditioningunit?

Dennis Stinson (11:30):
So you can do a couple of different things.
So let's assume in thatinstallation that it is duck
work, right?
So let's say, if it's in thenortheast that heating air
condition is going to be in thebasement.
If it's in Florida, that'sprobably going to be an eatic,
right.
If that's the case, thenthere's the possibility that
somebody could go in with hisown system.
A licensed contractor could goin and break those zones up,

(11:52):
making sure that they gotminimal air flow.
There's science to it and wecertainly appreciate the science
.
But they could divide thosezones up to take care of the
bedroom, maybe all the otherbedrooms in the family room or
what have you.
They could find reasonable waysof doing that.
On the other hand, if you useduckless heat pumps, like we do,
then that is traditionally howthey're broken out.

(12:13):
So each room would have its ownthermostat and dial in the
temperature that you want.
So if you like to sleep at 78and the kids like to sleep at 72
, nobody's got a blanket on andfighting temperatures or
sweating, you said it's 72, theysaid it's 78, you got the
temperature you need.

George Siegal (12:31):
Now would that be a separate unit for each room,
so each one would be its owncontained space within the house
, each room it used to be butnot anymore.

Dennis Stinson (12:42):
So now you can stick up to five units on a
single condenser and, frankly,there's a technology called VRF,
variable refrigerant flow,where you can stick even more.
So in theory you could stick aunit in each room.
And when I say unit, everybodythinks of the wall mount product
, which is by far the mostpopular, but you can also do it

(13:02):
ducted.
So if you have a consumer thatprefers grills and registers and
diffusers maybe they have anarchitecture that doesn't lend
itself well to something on awall, they prefer not to see it
then you can do grills andregisters and diffusers.
What most people do is theyzone the master bedroom because
that's who's paying the mortgageand that's who should be

(13:23):
comfortable, right, of course.
And then you take all the kidsin the hall bath and you put
that on one zone Right and thenyou take the family room and put
that on a zone and then if yougot a, you know, a partially
open lanai or some other part ofthe house and you put it on
that.
So normally you can do.
You can normally do a home infour or five zones.
Is how you do it.
Bedrooms are normally two.

(13:43):
Other part of the house isnormally another two, maybe
three.

George Siegal (13:47):
And then does it bend to the outside so it can
drain the moisture.
How does that get out of yourhouse?

Dennis Stinson (13:53):
Yeah.
So how our systems work is youhave the outside unit that's
called a condenser, and it pipesto the inside unit through a
three and a half inch hole inthe wall.
There's two pipes, a liquidsuction line but think a big
pipe, a little pipe and it runsto the indoor unit.
The indoor unit is called anevaporator, and all air
conditioning systems if theywork, because they drop below
the dew point, they willcondense and there will be

(14:15):
moisture or condensate that yougot to get rid of.
If you mount the unit on thewall, then it drains out the
back of the unit, runs out theflower beds and all the flowers
are happy.
If it's not on an outside wall,then you would normally put
some type of pump on it and thepump would pump it up to
somewhere where it could flow tothe outside.
So there's a you have toaccommodate the condensate

(14:37):
because you will have condensate, but it's it's.
It's pretty common technologyfor people to be able to do it.

George Siegal (14:43):
And without throwing out a blanket bid for
anything.
So is there a ballpark of whatit costs to come into a house
and do something like that?

Dennis Stinson (14:50):
Oh, that's always the great question, and
this is where I make friendswith all the contractors that
are listening to you.
The real answer is it depends,right, it depends.
So, if it's a, if it's an easyinstallation, single zone
equipment, no electrical upgrade, hole in the wall unit on the
outside, 15 feet of piping goingin, you're probably looking, I

(15:11):
don't know, dependent upon theefficiency of the unit, and call
it $3,000, right?
If you are more complicated,where it's a two story rise and
there is needs to be anelectrical upgrade and there's
not a pad and then disconnectsand there's all into it, then it
can go up from there.
The more units you stick on acondensing unit, it's

(15:32):
incrementally less because youalready have a single unit
outside.
So really, the best thing to dois to call a contractor that you
trust.
And the best time to call acontractor you trust is when you
don't need one.
So when you go to a, when yougo to a party as boring as that
may sound while you're playingcornhole with your buddies, ask

(15:52):
them who does your airconditioning work at your house?
Who does your plumbing at yourhouse?
Who does your electrical workin your house?
That's the best time to findsomebody that everybody trusts,
instead of when you're sweatingin the living room and you got
to get it fixed now.
So references, referrals, arealways the best way to find
somebody.

George Siegal (16:10):
Oh, absolutely.
You know we sometimes look atthings on Nextdoor but you don't
know who the people are thathired those people and what the
scope of the job was.
If they're friends of yours,it's easier to get the
information People shouldn't beshy of asking that question.

Dennis Stinson (16:25):
Absolutely, absolutely.
That's the again.
You know I'm a firm believerthat every homeowner should have
a couple of friends in thetrade.
They should know people to callbefore they need it.
You should know a plumber, youshould know an electrician, you
should know an HVAC guy and youshould know a guy that can fix
the roof and the siding on yourhouse when a storm blows through

(16:46):
.
So you should be able to callsomebody.
Maybe not know them if you bumpinto them at the supermarket,
but know somebody that you callthat you can trust when that
happens, because when thathappens, the name on the back of
the phone book or the firstsocial media ad to pop up may
not be the person.

George Siegal (17:02):
The best choice, that's that might be the best
advice you give this entire,this entire episode, because I
think people you just readstories all the time about
people getting screwed bysomebody who takes their money,
doesn't do the job or they do acrummy job and I think it ruins
it for all the good people outthere.
But you know, sometimes there'sa reason people are available.

Dennis Stinson (17:22):
Right, right.
Yeah, there's some.
There's a really goodProfessional trade people out
there and the way you're gonnafind them is by looking for them
.

George Siegal (17:30):
If they come looking for you, you get what
you get yeah, now are thererebates and incentives out there
, tax credits how?
How can people Absorb some ofthat?

Dennis Stinson (17:40):
Yes, yes, there's all kinds of money
available out there.
So, again, it's all based offof energy efficiency.
So there's, there's a couple ofthings that are playing out in
the world now.
Most of the equipment is goingto evolve around energy star, so
it's got to be, it's got to beabove average performance, which
is good.
That's the way it should be.
But you've got a couple ofthings playing out there.

(18:01):
One is federal tax creditcalled 25 C, and what this
allows you to do is to make animprovement to your home and Get
a tax credit that you wouldtake off of your income taxes
federal income taxes that youfile at the end of the year.
It's form 5695 and effectivelyyou can take 30% up to $2,000 if

(18:26):
you go to a heat pump.
So if I, if I have a gas, if Ihave a gas furnace and I upgrade
to a heat pump, it's going tobe heating and air conditioning
is going to be considerably moreefficient and I can get $2,000
off my taxes.
I like that 25 C a lot becausewe've had it for a long time.
It just keeps getting renewed,renewed, renewed.

(18:48):
It's been through everyadministration, so it's been
through the wash.
But the reason I like it isbecause everybody knows how to
do it.
Every contractor knows how tolook, what qualifies and what
doesn't qualify.
It's very easy.
That's what distributors stocksstuff that qualifies for that.
So it just makes it real easy.
The implementation is real easyand it's easy money.
It's too grand.

(19:08):
It comes right after your taxes.
Easy to do.
The second layer that's out.
There is the IRA or theinflation reduction act, and
this was passed by PresidentBiden.
That it's been kicked aroundfor a little bit.
It's a little bit different.
It's much richer, but it's alittle bit different.
And it's different from thestandpoint of it puts the

(19:28):
authority in the states.
So each of the states that arechoosing to participate, each of
the states, are writing therequirements To apply for that
fund.
So the states got money fromthe federal government.
Now they're creating the ruleson how to get it back.
We haven't seen a lot of thatout there yet.
We expect to see it the firstquarter of 24.

(19:48):
But effectively, how it works isit's based off of income.
So if you are, they take theaverage income in your area.
If you are in the under half ofthat, so 50% below, they'll pay
for up to 100% of the installcost up to $8,000 for a heat
pump, and then they will payadditional money for an

(20:09):
electrical upgrade andadditional money for a wiring
upgrade.
So you can get up to $14,000.
The mindset is is those thatare most challenged by their
electrical bill would get agreater or dish portion at level
of relief.
If you're between 50 and 150,then you get 50% of it, so you
get half of what the other.
So if you got the biggest houseon the block, you probably get

(20:30):
half of what it is, but youstill get nice relief on what it
is.
If you're over a hundred andfifty percent of Everybody in
your neighborhood, you're notgoing to qualify.
So it's an income-based formula.
States are still hashing thatout.
I think it's a good program.
I think it's got a lot oflayers to it.
I think there's.
I Think you got to kind of walkthrough it, see what, see what

(20:52):
applies and what works.
So it's not.
It's not the simplest, but it'sthere.
It is by far the richest To beable to do it and we'll see more
of that as we enter 2024.
Individual states will berolling out what their
requirements are.
I would tell you and I wouldencourage your listeners to go
to our website.
If we get to general comm,there's a rebate finder on there

(21:13):
Once you enter.
That it's a little creepy butit's kind of cool.
It figures out exactly whereyou are and it picks up the
rebates of where you're sittingand it tells you what equipment
Qualifies and how you apply forit.
So if there's a Florida powerand lighter I apologize for not
knowing the utility it'll tellyou exactly what those rebates
are, how to qualify for 25c.

George Siegal (21:35):
It'll walk you right through it but a lot of
those rebates are not incomedependent, are they?
I mean that just might be amanufacturer's rebate 25c is not
25.

Dennis Stinson (21:43):
See, there's two grand out there.
It's, it's, it's not incomedependent.

George Siegal (21:47):
Okay, now the smart home Systems.
I've had people try to sell methose and maybe I wasn't smart
enough to understand it.
But that's a thermostat thatnow ties into your phone.
Is there a way that you justprogram everything so it works
automatically?

Dennis Stinson (22:02):
It could, it could, I mean so all of all the
equipment that we sell is Can doit all.
So you know, if you want to, itcomes with a thermostat.
If you want to set it andforget it, it's good.
If you want to set it and haveit turn up or down at nighttime
to do a setback, that's fine.
If you want to be gee whiz andhave it on your phone so that

(22:23):
you can change the temperaturein your home from anywhere in
the world, you can do that.
If you want to tie it into yourAlexa and sit on the couch and
bark at it and have it turn upand down, it can do that too.
There's even a really cool lapthat's called if this, then that
.
So it ties.
It's an open protocol that andwe're part of it.

(22:45):
It ties everything together.
So if it, if it hits 40 degreesin central Florida, it'll turn
on your heat pump and your yourSonical start playing.
It's a white Christmas orsomething.
So I mean you can tie all thesedifferent apps together.
So it's really kind of cool forme.
I'm more old school I go overand I turn it up or down, but

(23:09):
but again, it's, it's a matterof what you want to do well,
when you have that kind ofcontrol, do you really save that
much money?

George Siegal (23:14):
because I Was told by an AC guy to leave ours
at 78 all the time, because whenyou take it to 82 and then you
bring it down and you go backand forth, that it, it, it
throws off the balance of thehouse.
So how are people doing thisand having it not affect them in
the the efficiency of theirsystem?

Dennis Stinson (23:32):
So that goes back to that conversation of
sensible and latent heat.
Right, and your AC guy is spoton.
You should keep him.
He knows what he's talkingabout.
If you, if you, adjust thetemperature too much, then the
catch up time and the energy ittakes to catch it up exceeds
what possible energy you saved.
What most people do is that atnighttime they change the

(23:53):
temperature because you'reasleep.
So in the, in the winter time,you can let the house get a
little bit cooler.
Chances are you're in bed, yougot a comforter on, you got some
jammies on, you're good.
The house rises a couple ofdegrees in temperature.
It's not going to mean a lot toyou, dorn, before you wake up,
if you have this setback, kickthe heat on.
So by the time it's time to getup, brush your teeth and get a

(24:15):
shower, the house comes up totemperature.
You can save a couple of bucksovernight not keeping the whole
house 68 degrees.
Then you're fine.
Same thing would be true duringthe day.
If you are, if you are one ofthe people that still leaves
your home to go to work, thenyou can set the temperature of
your house maybe to rise a fewdegrees, so that, uh, and then

(24:36):
just come back when you get home.
The coolness of some of theapps are is that you can also
geofence with it too, so it'llknow if you're within two miles
of the home, heading in thatdirection.
I'll turn the ac on when youget there.
But again, I a good nightsetback, a good old school
setback.
I leave work at five, I gethome at five thirty.
I'll adjust it, so it's thereWhatever works for you.

George Siegal (24:58):
So give me some simple energy saving tips.
One of them might have beenjust what you just gave me, but
what are some ways I can uh canstart saving right away?

Dennis Stinson (25:05):
All right.
So the more complex, but thingsto think about.
Certainly you buy theefficiency that makes sense for
your home.
The longer you're going to stayin a home, the more efficient a
piece of equipment you shouldbuy, because it's the
operational cost.
Second is, is that make sureit's properly sized so that all
goes back to that contractorthat you know and trust to be
able to do that.
The next is is how you controlit.

(25:27):
So are you doing setbacks or not?
Are you doing zoning or not?
Zoning is really, really good.
You should try to make thatwork if you can, um setting back
where it makes sense, like wejust talked about.
But what if I have a system inmy home?
What if I bought a home andit's there and I kind of got
what I need and I spent all themoney on carpet and I'm not
ready to Do the ac yet?
Well then, what you need to dois maintain what you have.

(25:51):
So you want to find a goodcontractor that's going to come
out and service your equipment,and what I mean by service it is
come out and take the paddleoff and clean your coil off and
make sure there's no dirt anddegree and Whatever on top of
there and keep it good and clean, because it's a, it's a
radiator, right?
So I mean we're runningrefrigerant through it and it's

(26:12):
it's emitting cold temperatureand if you got, if you got stuff
on it, then it's insulating itand it's not able to transfer
heat really well.
So if you keep it good andclean, they're cleaning the
outside unit to clean in theinside unit they're servicing
the traps.
So the condensates going away.
Get a good service contractfrom somebody's not going to
cost a lot of bucks, but Iguarantee you the preservation

(26:34):
of efficiency will pay for thatcouple hundred bucks that they
charge you to do it.
So maintain what you got.

George Siegal (26:39):
Now I've heard stories when people are coupon
clippers of the amount of moneythey saved.
You have any great stories fromenergy savers the amount of
money that they've saved, yeah,so we.

Dennis Stinson (26:51):
We see a lot of it.
So the equipment that theequipment that I sell is
incredibly efficient.
So ductless heat pumps areincredibly efficient.
So, for instance, minimum searrating in the northern half
United States is 13 sear.
In the southern half UnitedStates is 14 sear.
I got a piece of equipmentthat's 33 sear and we sell it

(27:15):
all day long.
So it's more than two times asefficient what's out there.
So somebody will take out afossil fuel or maybe some Some
baseboard and they'll stick ourpiece of equipment in and they
can save up to 40 or 50 andthey're comfortable.
So they're zoning, they'vechanged their efficiency
dramatically from where theywere and they're comfortable to

(27:36):
boot.
They're comfortable.
So again, it goes back to thatvery first conversation.
It doesn't matter how muchmoney you save if you're not
comfortable.
Eat and save anything.

George Siegal (27:45):
That's true.
Anything you want to plugbefore we go, anything that I
didn't ask you now I hit mywebsite.

Dennis Stinson (27:51):
I hit that we're incredibly efficient.
They hit that we're nice peoplejust trying to make a living
too.
So, um, you know, find a goodcontractor.
That's that's really what youwant to do.
Have a conversation with themabout the type of heating system
you have and what are thepossibilities.
Then, when they give you thatdream list of what you could do,

(28:12):
before you flinch on the price,take a look at what the rebates
are on it, because Today inunited states you can buy more
efficient piece of equipmentcheaper.
Then you can buy entry tierproduct because of the
incentives on the backside.
We're in a whole nationalenergy policy.
There's funds available.

(28:33):
It's your money, your taxpayer.
It's your money, so you mightas well enjoy that.
To be able to Put the rightpiece of equipment in your house
, make yourself and your familycomfortable.
Put a couple of bucks in yourpocket.

George Siegal (28:45):
Yeah, if they're gonna give all that money away,
we might as well take it right.
Get the line All right, hey, uh, dennis, I'll put all your
contact information in the shownotes.
Um, thanks for coming on today.
Appreciate your time.

Dennis Stinson (28:57):
Hey, thanks for having me and thanks for what
you're doing Good stuff.

George Siegal (29:00):
I want to hear your stories about being a
homeowner good stories and thebad ones, so the rest of us can
learn from your good or badfortune.
Just fill out the contact formin the show notes and you might
end up being featured on anupcoming podcast.
Thanks again for listeningtoday.
See you next time.