Dan: You are listening to Cool Air Hot Takes.
Charlie: Welcome, welcome, welcome to the first episode of Cool Air Hot. Takes a brand new podcast, and we're gonna do this every two weeks.
Dan: We're going to talk about anything and everything from the world of Buildings, HVAC, and Energy. We're your hosts.
Charlie: I'm Charlie Gellan. And I'm Dan Gentry. And between us, we've got over 30 years of industry experience.
Dan: So I started at Fair State University and honestly fell in love with HVAC at a modular equipment manufacturer. After that, moved over to Trane in product support, and now I help design some of the most complex systems as an applications engineer. I.
Charlie: And my background is in engineering with Stinson Energy modeling, product management, application engineering.
I spent a few years on the contracting side of our business, and now I'm a sales leader for some of our next generation technologies. And amazingly, we've been friends for even longer a friendship that started at Longfellow Middle School. Dan, do you remember the mascot? Those were the Longfellow
Dan: Trojans.
Charlie: The Trojans. The Trojans. Green and white. And we somehow both found our way back into this exciting and sexy world of HVAC and we're starting a podcast to bring you along for the ride.
Dan: We've got everything we're covering, stuff from industry insights. Cool. New tools, big trends. Think about decarbonization.
Uh, we're gonna talk about energy efficiency of course, and really cool new upcoming things like artificial intelligence and how that affects you, your operations, your buildings. So whether you're listening in your van, rolling between jobs, sitting at your desk, catching lunch, or you just want to catch up on what's going on in the industry, we are excited to have you guys here.
Charlie: My hot take for the week is definitely going to be, I think, geothermal systems from the amount of geothermal system projects we do today. We are going to triple the amount of geothermal projects. Maybe not this year. Maybe not in one year, but by 2030 we are gonna do way more geothermal systems. We're gonna have to do a, a whole episode on geothermal.
I was just gonna say,
Dan: I mean, geo's getting hot. It's getting hot cold. It is. There's a lot of geo going on and new advancements. It's exciting. So that, that, so that's my hot take. There you go. That's my hot take. What, what do you got?
Charlie: What's your hot take for the episode?
Dan: No, that, that, that's, that's pretty hot.
Um.
I tell you what, what I really like, I want to go for my hot take. I just think this episode and this podcast is hot. Do that. I am. You can been talking about this. Can't we do that? I'll have to think about my hot take. That's a self-serving hot take right there. Well, I'm gonna tie to your geothermal, like there's, I think there's been a lot of, there's a lot of new pro, there's, there's been a lot of geothermal products out there.
There's more and more geothermal products out there. Like I, I could even say geothermal could be hot. I think it's very exciting because it's a very efficient system. It can be very sustainable. I like that.
Charlie: Well, just like seventh grade math with Mrs. Modern. Just copying right off. Right over the shoulder.
Right over the shoulder, alright. Works every time. So here, here's the lineup for today, listener. We are gonna go through some HVAC headlines. We're gonna get you up to speed on, on some of the things that we saw in headlines that, that looked interesting, and we wanna get out there. Uh, we're gonna talk with one of our good friends, John Horn.
He's the managing director of a venture capital company called The Idea Fund. We're gonna talk about where VC funds are at, what they're into today, and what that looks like over time. Uh, and then we're gonna go into, I talked about this earlier, the Innovation awards for the A HR Expo in a little feature that we like to call.
Cool. Or hot. Or hot or cold, hot or cool. Either one
HVAC. Headlines your news today. Alright, listener, it's five o'clock in Shanghai. That means it's time for your headlines. First one, startup aims to decarbonize big buildings without hassling tenants. This one is from Canary Media. The startup name on this one is Hydronic Shell Technologies. What caught my eye on this one is a lot of large cities are looking to reduce their emissions and, and primarily electrify and large multi-family high-rise residential buildings are going to struggle with this, with electrification, primarily moving to heat pumps.
Kind of the core of this is the current heating technology. A lot of high temperature heat or steam heat, probably a lot of steam heat for, for older cities. And so when we look to electrify these systems, we wanna try to use heat pumps. One of the things that we need to do there is we need to move to lower hot water temperatures.
With that transition, we need to start to replace the terminal units. We need to move to more rows, bigger pipes. And so for those who don't understand what I'm saying here, the terminal equipment is that thing in the room that actually makes the space hot or cold, right? And so. What this company is looking to do, what this startup is looking to do is actually create a new facade on the building in order to make it easier to replace the terminal equipment and run the pipes.
And so if you're, you can imagine if you own a large building in one of these big cities and you wanna electrify with heat pumps and you have to replace all the terminal equipment, that means you have to get into every space. Right, which means you're going to have to displace renters or you're gonna have to significantly hamper their day-to-day schedule.
Sounds expensive. It sounds very expensive. And so what this startup is looking to do is on the outside of the building, it's like Lego blocks or like Tetris, is build up this new facade that runs the pipes and new terminal equipment on the outside of the building so that you can put. Air to water, heat pumps on the ceiling, water to water, heat pumps in the basement, and you can run all that pipe work on the outside of the building.
On top of that, you increase insulation. You have better infiltration. It's a really interesting way to try to get at that problem.
Dan: I. That is very cool. That's a really innovative idea. I, I like it. Yeah, I like it too. I mean, if it's, we picked it. I think if it's cost effective, it looks very cool. It's a very neat idea.
Yeah. The cost side of it, as long as the cost is reasonable, I think this could be a, I could see that.
Charlie: Yeah. We'll see where the cost goes. The first demo project is in Syracuse, New York. It looks like it's scheduled for completion mid 2026, so it's a ways out, but very cool concept. Can't wait to, to follow up on the case study there.
Next headline. I think this, this one caught my eye in and and instantly knew what we were gonna put it on here. Headline, most lucrative states to be an HVAC technician. Yeah. This one from AC r News. Here we go. Alright, Danny, boy. Top five most lucrative states. Take a guess. What do you got?
Dan: I mean, I'm gonna guess something like, uh, I dunno, like one of those big, uh, state out East Massachusetts, New York, Massachusetts, not on the
Charlie: list.
They are number 36. Oh,
Dan: wow. So, uh, we gotta go somewhere else. We go to, we go south, we go Midwest. Uh, what about the Dakotas?
Charlie: Good guess. So the way that they did these rankings, they looked at the average annual technician salary, and then they also looked at the cost of living ratio. So they, they put the cost of living ratio at a hundred for the average across the us.
If you're under a hundred, that means your dollar goes further. If you're over a hundred, it does not go as far. So at number five, very good. Guess North Dakota. Average annual salary for a technician. $64,000 a year. The cost of living ratio at 95. Look at that. There you go, North Dakota. Alright, next on the list.
Number four, New Jersey, $78,000. That is I believe the second highest average for technicians. Cost of living ratio, a little higher, one 14, but right up there. Way to go, New Jersey. Uh, third number three, Missouri. $62,000 a year 89 ratio for cost of living. Number two, Minnesota $71,000 94 Ratio number one, the fighting a linei, Illinois, $77,000 for the average HVAC technician and a cost of living ratio of 92.
Dan: Well because we're here. What about the badger state? Just 'cause you know, self-interested. There you
Charlie: go. Wisconsin came in and number six. Okay. Pretty good. 64,000. That's respectable. Alright, let's look at the other side of this. The five worst, the lowest paying average annual HVAC technician. What you got for guess?
Dan: Oh, I'm gonna guess, uh, I'm gonna guess Louisiana. No, I mean, I don't know why you're calling out Louisiana.
Charlie: I'm
Dan: just,
Charlie: I don't, I don't, I gotta pick a state. I only got 50 choices. No, they're not, they're not on the top five. Lowest. Number five in terms of worst is Maine. $56,000 a year for I did not see
Dan: that coming.
Charlie: I know me. Yeah, I agree. Uh, one 10 for cost of living up in, in Maine, Florida number. Four $51,000 a year for an average annual technician. That is the third. That blows my
Dan: mind.
Charlie: Yeah. Don't, they don't have a lot of
Dan: cooling.
Charlie: I did too. That's exactly where my head went to. Like tons of chilled water plants, big stuff.
Wow. Yeah. 51,000 is the third lowest in terms of average annual HVAC technician. Yeah. Number three, Vermont. $70,000 a year, which is actually pretty high for Vermont, but their cost of living is 1 47. Wow. Yeah. 1 47. That means basically, basically pay 50% more for, for everyday life. There you go. Hmm. Uh, number two, Washington DC Also $70,000 a year.
Not a surprise there. Number one though. Number one. The worst place. I shouldn't say the worst in terms of being lucrative. For Vern, HVC technician Hawaii. Okay. And now this is quite interesting. They have the highest annual average salary at $80,000 a year, but the cost of living ratio is 180, 80% more.
That's interesting than the average annual state.
Dan: I, I guess I'm surprised by the list, but it's the cost of living. It's cost. Yeah. Cost of living. Yeah. It
Charlie: matters where you live,
Dan: I guess.
Charlie: Well, uh, you know, what they say in, uh, in the real estate business.
Dan: Buy
Charlie: low, sell high. I think that's the stock market.
Well, I mean, location, location, location. That's what I was getting at. Interesting. There you go. And to be fair, across the board, I think all of these are going to go up significantly in the space because we are looking for more and more HVAC technicians every day. We have a shortfall there. So, hey, if you're looking to be an H-V-A-C-A technician, now it's a good time to get in.
Dan: They deserve it. Pay 'em more. We need more. I love it. Here we go. Here we go.
Charlie: Alright, so that's it for the headlines today. Next up, we are going to interview John Horn. He's the managing director at a venture capital fund called the Idea Fund. Stay tuned.
All right, first episode, first interview. Welcome John Horn to Cool Air Hot Takes. Before we get into the, the actual part of this, I gotta give you a little background on John. John is a key member of the Downhill Ski Team Veal. So. He was the ace on the central high school pitching staff. He is an avid snowmobiler.
He scored a 36 on his high school, a CT. He is probably the smartest person I know. If you're wondering how I know all this, no, it is not on his Wikipedia page. Myself, Dan and John, we go way back. We all are proud alumni of Central High School. So John, thank you for coming.
Jon: Charles, thank you for the invite.
I'm honored to be on the first and what, hopefully is not the last episode of your new podcast. Thank,
Charlie: thank you for the confidence. Very, very much appreciated. Alright. You know the title, cool Air, hot Takes is where we're gonna start. What's your hot take? You can go anywhere with this one. You can go in venture capital, you can go outside it.
Our industry personal. What do you got?
Jon: Okay. Well first thing that popped to my mind when you guys. Said I should do this, and told me what a hot take was, was that this podcast is either going to end or massively accelerate the career of one or both of you at a train company. But I guess, and that's not meant to be a dig, I kind of thought about it as like you guys aren't ones who are like, Hey, here's what we're gonna say, and take it down to the corporate communication department and get the approval and everything.
So that was my honest first take. But I guess for purposes of. You could edit this out, I assume, right?
Charlie: Yeah, yeah. We can,
Jon: well, we can take that. Okay.
Charlie: Yeah.
Jon: Yeah. My, my actual thought was if you look at the next five to 10 years in, you know, the HVAC market taken broadly, I think you're gonna see more change in the next five to 10 years than you have seen in the last 50 to a hundred years.
Oof. Interesting.
Charlie: What do you think
Jon: drives
Charlie: it?
Jon: Well, so you look at just all industries and they've been impacted by technology and disruption at different rates. And so some of the first to be disrupted were things like retail, travel, media, you know, like what's CBS? Right? You know, streaming, turn that upside down, Amazon turn retail upside down.
A lot of ways you have not seen that fundamental sort of reshuffling of the deck in a number of other industries. And HVAC Building management is one of them. You guys maybe will tell me I'm wrong on that, but you know, the fundamental products are the same. And more importantly, the market leaders have essentially been the same.
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. You know, when you look at like the auto industry with 15 years ago, Tesla is not a public company today. Tesla has. More value than the next nine auto companies combined, right? Like you have not seen that unseating of incumbents in this industry that you have in others. And so I think it's very timely that, that you guys are initiating this podcast because, you know, innovation is really starting to strike in this industry where it really, in ways it hasn't over the last any number of years.
Charlie: I mean, I gotta tell you, I had a high bar for you coming on the show and, and you just, you just went past it. That was, that was great. I could not have asked for a start. Alright, well let's get to you. Uh, tell us about the Idea Fund. What's the background? What are you guys into?
Jon: Sure. So Idea Fund's, uh, venture Capital Fund.
So that means we manage money on behalf of third party investors and we invest it in very early stage technology companies. And our strategy is technology company is based sort of generally in our part of the country, which is the upper Midwest. And you know, when you look at venture capital, it's highly concentrated in a few geographies, right?
About 80% of venture capital goes into California, New York, Boston, you know, the top three to four states. The other 20% is distributed across the other 46 states. We're specifically focused on Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Iowa because we believe the kind of innovation that's coming is the kind of innovation that this part of the country is strongest at.
This kind of ties into the original point where a lot of the stuff that's really been changing, you know, over the last 20 years of venture innovation is kind of consumer driven and mass market stuff. You know, it's not a lot of the nitty gritty B2B industries, so like, you know, you still want your Stanford dorm room kid or whatever on the team.
Mm-hmm. But to, to found a new company in the HVAC industry, you know, in supply chain and you know, and in the traditional B2B industries, you know, you really need industry expertise. So that's the kind of companies and founders that we really tend to invest in, is people coming in with deep industry expertise and areas that our part of the country is strong in.
Charlie: Yeah, we're gonna get into a little bit of that, where those ideas are coming from and, and who should be on the lookout for 'em. But in general, you're talking about like the trend of venture capital. Is, is venture capital growing or is it more of like a zero sum game where the, the money's relatively similar and it's just getting shuffled around between what's hot and what areas of the business are, are, are going, or is venture capital growing like crazy?
Jon: Well, there's a couple ways you can look at it. You know, venture capitalists and venture capital funds in general. It's, it's really California centric and it's, they're really kind of herd animals where you see these big sort of cyclical s swings. You know, we saw the.com boom and then the.com bust.
Mm-hmm. And then we are on sort of the bust side of another cycle right now, where in, you know, 20, 21, 22, we saw massive amounts of money flowing into venture capital. And now we saw a just as massive pullback. 2024. There was, this was the lowest year for venture capital fundraising over the last 10 years.
2024 was, wow. Okay. So there's like been this massive pullback in venture capital and now of course we're on sort of into the next cycle of ai. And you know, this massive investment in AI and infrastructure and all this that's going on right now. So, I mean, you see huge swings. It's a really cyclical industry.
But in general that's venture capital. What do you think about like taking a step back at like the innovation economy? Mm-hmm. You know, that is just consistently up and to the right, right? As you get sort of compounding returns from technological innovation. I mean that is just only accelerating how much technology's the impacting industry.
Dan: How do you think the Midwest is different than, you know, those, those states that you mentioned are kind of like boomer bust. Do you think the Midwest is any, is gonna be different?
Jon: You know, I think you, you gotta look at the, it all comes outta the people, you know, that's really what all, all this boils down to.
And when you think about, you know, the traditional venture centers, there was a lot of real heavy technical innovation that came out of 'em. You know, Silicon Valley means the silicon ships, you know, that were there. I mean, it was like really the foundational computing elements and stuff like that, that sort of like gave birth to, to that, you know, so we don't have like as much of a fundamental computing heritage and deep technical heritage, you know, in this part of the country we have.
You know, industrial agriculture, supply chain, you know those industries that make up 60, 80% of us, GDP, right? And the industries that happen to be the least disrupted by technology today. So, you know, Silicon Valley was in the right place for innovation over the last I. 75 years, whatever you wanna call it.
You know, now you've got this huge portion of the economy that has not been fundamentally transformed yet by technology. It's been changed by degree, right? But not fundamentally. That's where I think you're gonna see the rest of the country sort of come in and you're gonna see some really new and innovative, and I think potentially massively valuable companies ultimately created out of, you know, the heritage that we have here.
Charlie: We kind of dive down in there a little bit on the trends. Can you back us out a little bit? In our industry when we talk about technology, you'll hear people talk about, wow, this is at, you know, RMI, Rocky Mountain Institute, or it's at a Pacific Northwest National, like it's in a, it's at a university stage.
Mm-hmm. Or it's in venture capital, or it's early commercial versus commercial. Can you kind walk us through that spectrum on how technology goes kind of from in its infancy to like a company like train company or, or the likes having a commercial offering.
Jon: Yeah, it's, it's interesting and when you think about sort of innovation generally, I mean, you would think of just Amazon, for example, as like an innovative company that completely turned an industry upside down.
Mm-hmm. But when you think about the value that Amazon delivers to its customers, you know, its customers being you and me and other Amazon subscribers, you know, the product is identical. You're still getting essentially all the same crap you could get at Walmart or anywhere else through Amazon. Right.
It's, it's the delivery mechanism. Mm-hmm. So when you think about innovation, like as it relates to the HVAC industry, one big category of innovation is product innovation. Like what you're talking about. A new, new refrigerant. Right. Or you know, something like that. That's like a, a highly technical product that starts in a lab or starts in the brain of, you know, some engineer and somehow is funded to develop, ultimately commercialized and validated to the point that a trained company could acquire it.
A whole nother category of innovation is everything else that happens in the value chain, right? Not just a new product, but how about like a new way to sell the product, right? So how you, how you reach your customers, you know how fulfillment, right services, whether that's a live human service or a software product, delivering service.
But at the end of the day, they're all, when you think of all these, I mean, it comes out to a product innovation and somewhere in somebody's head, there's a product innovation, right? Whether it's. You know, a refrigerant or it's a process, right? Or whatever. And you, you need that. You need the management talent, and you need capital.
Mm-hmm. Right? Those are like the three pieces, right? And sometimes all those, that's
Dan: it. That's it, huh? Easy peasy,
Jon: right? When you start categorize it, right? Slice it up. And so like, if you've got, there's, I guarantee there's somebody sitting at every large. Industrial a track equipment, OEM with a brilliant product innovation in their mind.
Maybe they've tried to run it off the flagpole and hasn't gotten interest from the senior people on the team or whatever. I guarantee there are people out there right now that have that idea, and if they don't do something with it, it's never gonna get out into the world.
Charlie: There you go, listener. There you go.
Listener in, in the show notes. We'll, we'll give, we'll give you John's, uh, company's email. Address your inbox. We'll flood it up.
Jon: Idea F on vc. Come straight to my email.
Charlie: Here you go. Alright, so let's, let's talk about something that you have invested in that's, that's kind of close that our listeners would probably be more interested in.
We talked about this earlier, uh, generation. Can you give us a little background on, on what that is and what your role is with them?
Jon: I. Yeah, it's, it's really interesting company and they provide efficiency services to health systems, building efficiency services. Okay. So what they're doing is, it's a sophisticated services offering, right?
Where they're making healthcare buildings more efficient. You know, that's established. Their history is, is really interesting. Where they were originally developed as an internal initiative at Gunderson Health System, which is, you know, a large upper Midwest, predominantly rural health system. The CEO probably 20 years ago made a.
Put a stake in the ground and said we're gonna be net zero on campus, and actually went out and got it done. Mm-hmm. Through combinations of generation, you know, building efficiency, all the kind of things that you guys are working on, and they did it. And they had hired a number of people from Trane that came in-house to sort of build this out.
Mm-hmm. Get Gunderson. They accomplished it. And then they got all this attention nationally and other health systems started calling us and saying, Hey look, we wanna become more efficient. We've always put. The patient first, right? So we can't take risks on reliability and things like that. But it sounds like you guys have figured out a way to do this, right, without taking risk and in fact, maybe making your A system more resilient.
So they started doing sort of consulting projects for other health systems and turn it into this little internal business. Then a few years ago, they made the decision, Hey, this isn't our core. You know, we're very good at this. Right? It's very important, but it's not our core job. Right? Our core job is patient care, right?
So they took the business, they spinning it out, it's called, where they actually separated it into its own entity. The health system still owns a piece of it, and then they raised capital from outside investors and we're, we're one of the outside investors. And now we're, you know, we're working with management to try to, you know, just grow the business and make it a large, standalone business.
Charlie: So I think that's pretty, maybe, maybe it's not obvious, but like the differentiation that they have versus just any engineering company walking into a healthcare system. Is the innate knowledge, the internal knowledge that they've developed, that they've incubated over the years, is that kind of, is it,
Jon: well, you know, you get a lot of pitches and 80% of 'em are.
Hey, look at this awesome product I've got, right? Mm-hmm. And okay, that, that's great, right? Like to be a successful company, you need a credible, valuable product. It's necessary, but not sufficient, right? You also need, you know, a way to talk to your customer, a way to sell it efficiently. You need trust with your customers, all this kind of stuff.
And when you think about a health system buyer. Yes, they wanna save money on that percent of their budget that is, you know, spent on energy costs. Mm-hmm. But they also want a hundred percent reliability. They want their physicians to understand this isn't impacting the humidity in the operating room, or specific considerations that a health system might have that other building owners do not have.
And so part of what iteration offers is a really high level. Energy consulting business, but it's also a way to reach a certain customer population efficiently and in a way that builds trust very quickly. Because these guys really know their industry, right? Yeah. And the customer understands that they do right from the start.
Charlie: Got it. So from your spot. What is a, a successful turn on a company like generation? What did they get into and then where do you get out of that as a successful venture?
Jon: So when you look at our economics, so I manage money from third party investors, right? And especially when we started, a lot of the investors are individuals investing.
Personally, a hundred thousand to a million dollars, something like that. And you know, you go to 'em and say, Hey, I'd like you to commit $500,000 to Idea Fund. Um, I'm gonna go invest in 20 technology companies. They're all in the upper Midwest. When we make our initial investment, they're between zero and two or $300,000 a year maybe in revenue.
Mm-hmm. You know, they're so early. Our plan is at least half of 'em are gonna be complete loss of capital. Um, wait, what's the, what's the, what's the percentage? At least half. At least 50%. Okay? And those are national averages, right? Of companies nationally that raised this type of capital. Mm-hmm. At least half of a hundred percent loss of capital.
Okay. So like let's just say I'm coming to you guys. You got $5 million a net worth. I'm looking for a hundred thousand bucks from you. What kind of return do you have to expect outta the investment and idea fund 10 x to say, yeah, like, think about an annual return, right? Mm-hmm. Like what's a stock market return over on average?
10%. 5%. Eight. Yeah. 10. Yeah. 10, 8, 10, 12, whatever. So if you're gonna get 8, 10, 12 outta the stock market, right? Which is a hundred percent liquid. Essentially 0% failure rate, global diversification. You know, if you want your money out, you call me. You got it. Two days later, what are you gonna need out of idea Fund the do people looking
Dan: for 25%?
Jon: Yeah. I mean twice large cap equities, you know, something like that. And that's just to be in the ball game, right? Like that's just a sort of be okay, right? So like say you need net 20% return out of the portfolio. Okay? Then you take the next step and you say, all right, half of them are out, half of 'em are zeros, national average, you know, one or two, maybe get your money back, a couple returns.
And then really one or two out 10 will typically drive your portfolio return. Okay? So if I'm gonna get 20% debt and one out of five of them is gonna drive. I mean, you guys know math. You're gonna need, you know, 80, a hundred percent annual return on the winners to make up for the losers and get you even at parody with the stock market.
Yep. Right. So is that, is that stressful? Well, you get a lot of chances, you know?
Yeah. We lose one. I mean, yeah, that's, they're just getting close. We're just executing the plan. Right.
Charlie: Well, a friend of ours once said, A gamble every day of my life.
Jon: No, that's good. So back to your short answer to your question is. I mean, that's always, people say 10 x, like you need a big result outta these companies for it to be worth all the risk you're taking on.
Charlie: Well, John, we've held you for probably too long in your day, but how can people get ahold of you if they think they have something?
What's the best way to get ahold of you?
Jon: Yeah, I would love to talk to my idea Fund VC is in venture capital.com. We've got a submission form on there. It goes straight to my email. Um, so I'd love to talk to anybody and we're, you know, we, you don't need a business. I mean, we've, we've come in and actually co-founded businesses so we can work with a product inventor and.
Put something together around it. Love to talk to him.
Dan: Super cool. There you go. Listener, reach out to John next opportunity. Thanks for having me guys. Thanks for joining us, John. Very interesting. Up next we're gonna talk about the A HR Innovation Awards in a feature we like to call. Hot or cold? Don't go anywhere.
Charlie: Is it hot or cold?
Dan: Alright, we're back. We're gonna talk about, uh, the A HR Innovation Awards and our hot and cold segment today. So. For those of you that aren't, uh, I would say familiar with the A HR Expo, really what I like to compare it to is kinda like the Detroit Auto Show of HVAC. You're gonna have some, you know, cars that are gonna be readily available today or tomorrow.
You're gonna have some new interesting things, some crazy concepts, just to kind of get people thinking about, uh oh, that's cool. Or, oh, that's kind of a strange idea. So there's a whole bunch of different categories. Yeah,
Charlie: there's 10 different categories. It spans a lot. We're not gonna talk about all of them.
We're gonna concentrate on. Three and we're gonna go hot or cold. Hot means you'll like what they've got going there. Cold means you, you, you don't like it so much. All right, so number one, the category is heating. And the winner of this year's innovation award is Airco with their CFR boiler. A little description here.
CFR is the world's first stainless steel condensing boiler that can be installed in a category one vent, making an ideal solution for the commercial retrofit market. Danny boy, what? What? Say you. Uh,
Dan: you know, I'm in a, it's a boiler. Uh, I'm seeing it, it looks like a boiler. It is a boiler. So I'm not thinking it's like that.
Crazy and innovative. So it makes me a look cool if category one vent is like a game changer and we can install these in a, a whole new place and it changes everything. It could, uh, I could get hot on it, but I, I, I, I think I'm cold. It's, it's a boiler. Yeah.
Charlie: I, I'm, I'm with you on this one. And you know, if no offense to Airco and CFR, I'm sure it's a great, great product, but when I was thinking like innovation award, bleeding edge, like what's out there for the, especially for the heating category, which, you know, our industry's going through a, a massive change right now.
Yeah. I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm gonna say cold on this one too. Okay. Okay. There you go. All right. Next category is the refrigeration category. And the winner of this, uh, this year innovation award was Dan Foss Bach, CO2 Trans Critical six Cylinder, CO2 Compressor. That has expanded range to enable larger refrigeration and heat pump applications with a smaller footprint, strong energy efficiency performance.
Dan: This is an interesting one too, where I kind of like. Uh, you know, I'm, I'm, uh, I'm not, I haven't seen a lot of good CO2 stuff around here. It's a, it seems like a little more of a difficult, more specialized, uh, application, if you will. I know, uh, over in Europe they've done some really cool things with some large scale stuff.
So I'm, I, I'm like kind leaning towards like hot, it seems like kind of innovative. Get off the fence. Big one and uh, but, uh, I'm hot on it. Yeah,
Charlie: you are leading cold the whole time went hot. I am definitely hot on this. I, I think CO2 is gonna be a refrigerant. We're going to leverage a bunch more in the future.
Where we're at right now, going from, you know, higher GWP refrigerants to lower GWP refrigerants, incorporating more natural refrigerants. I think the more we can use CO2 in applications, it's gonna push the industry forward. And there's definitely some limitations to it, but. I like the innovation. Think move the cheese.
It thinks I'm, I'm hot. I'm hot on that one.
Dan: There's a hot guy right there.
Charlie: Alright, last category. The last category is sustainability category. The winner here was LG for their residential cold climate heat pump. I'm not even gonna. Offer this one up. We're both hot on this. There are a bunch of different companies that, that entered into the cold climate challenge through the DOE that have passed through it.
Um, I think LG was part of that. Trane was part of that carrier, I believe was in there too. A number of companies that are going after this segment. It is absolutely critical for our industry to move forward. We have to be able to use air to water, heat pumps in all the climates that we're we're operating in.
Dan: It's kind of a slam dunk. I mean, whoever can get there. Good for you. Good job. Thank you. Let's do it.
Charlie: Alright. Before Dan steals another one of my hot takes, uh, and we close out the episode, we are going to do a stat of the day for those of you who listen to Sports Talk radio. This is a. Absolute 100% ripoff from the Dan Patrick Show.
So thank you Dan and the Danette's. I'm sure you guys are gonna be listening to the show. Here we go. Stat of the day. Here you come, Joe. Stat of the day. Stat
Dan: of the The
Charlie: day. The day. Stat of the day.
Dan: Alright, Charlie, what do we got? What's the stat of the day, bud?
Charlie: Alright, this is gonna be applicable mass, mass market here the stat is the slowest depreciating cars.
In America today, model year 2018 to present. So which cars have lost their value the least in the last five years? Take a guess at top 10. I'm gonna run through 'em quick.
Dan: I'm gonna give like a Toyota Corolla, a uh, Honda Civic a um, Toyota Tacoma. Yeah. A minivan of some
Charlie: sort. I would've definitely put a minivan on there.
You did really well. That was three of the top 10. Okay, so number 10, Toyota Corolla, 25% depreciation. Number nine. Subaru Cross Trek, number eight. Toyota CR-V. Okay. Number seven. Chevy Camaro. That one did not see that coming. That one surprised me. Wow. Number six. Subaru BRZ. Honestly, don't know. Don't even know what that is, is even.
Uh, number five, Honda Civic. There we go. Shout out to Scott Winger. Number four. Dan. This one should be close to home. Big deep. The Jeep Wrangler. Go. How did you pick that one? Number three, Toyota Tacoma. Okay. Rob Jordan. The squire of the, the night. 20% depreciation. Goodbye. Number two. The last two, the top two are both Porsches.
Yeah. Which.
Dan: Okay.
Charlie: I wouldn't have
Dan: guessed that. No, but uh, there
Charlie: you
Dan: go.
Charlie: So remember number two, Porsche Cayman, 18% and number one, the Porsche nine 11 at only a 9% depreciation for five years. Maybe go pick myself up a Porsche after this. There you go. Thank you. Thank you for listening to the first episode of Cool Air Hot Takes.
Thank you to John Horne for joining the show. A very special thank you to our wonderful producer, Elena Guthrie. And finally, a thanks to Christie Upton for getting this all pulled together. Please join us next time. We have a very special guest, a friend of the show, and therefore a friend to you, Mr. Joe Hagar.
He's a compressor engineering leader. And he'll be giving us a peek behind the curtain on some of the latest compressor technologies. If you wanna get in touch with us, please reach out. Cool air.hot takes@trane.com. We wanna hear what you have for questions. We want to hear what you have for hot Takes.
Anything funny from the jobs you've been working on, any funny stories like that One time that you got called out to fix some duct work because an inmate tried to escape through it. Whatever it is. Maybe it's some new tools you have, saving you time, saving you money, please reach out. We'd love to feature it on the show.
Dan: If you like the show, please like and subscribe. Give us a rating and review for the podcast wherever you listen. So until next time, stay cool and keep those takes hot.
