The Eagles’ Nest October 2025 Edition

A Letter From The Owner:

We have not sent out a newsletter in a long time. Mainly because the marketing companies that assist us in advertising treat a newsletter like an advertisement versus a chance for us to send you information about our company, industry and opportunities versus a big sales pitch. This is clearly an adjusted newsletter, as it’s not very logical to print and have shipping costs when we can simply email you the newsletter. We are 100% going to get back into the habit of updating you more often. Seems our industry has never-ending changes, hurdles, and obstacles, just like everybody else.

Labor Shortages: We are well into a 15-year labor shortage expectation. Industry experts do not believe that we will come out of this labor shortage for another 7-10 years. Maintaining our standards of quality seems to be our number one concern and effort. We have increased our training meetings to weekly, and each technician has an in-house technical support staff member that reviews each job. We have seen a reduction in required second call visits which saves everyone time and frustration. We are now incorporating video eyeglasses so that in-house staff can see live the situation and be the most helpful in a successful service call.

Corporate Buyouts: I never thought our industry would be sought after by giant corporations. It’s pretty amazing how many companies are now owned by a large corporation that’s intention is to buy several service companies for access to customers and income. The result I’ve seen is many family-owned and operated businesses that I trusted to take care of the homeowner, change with ownership to a solely income/profit-based factory. Processes are getting skipped and short cuts are being made to make shareholders happy. You can’t simply look at a name and think, “Mom & Pop” or Family Owned. We have no intention of “selling out” and know 100% that putting our customers’ first is always the correct way to do business.

Governmental Affairs: We came out of covid struggling with access to equipment and parts to tariffs, efficiency requirements and refrigerant changes. Tariffs have significantly created pricing issues. Changes come quickly and range across a variety of parts and equipment. Over the past ten years, a water heater’s cost to me increased 300%. Efficiency requirements have pretty much eliminated replacing portions of HVAC systems. Changing the outdoor unit only has become an illegal option thus increasing HVAC systems replacement cost significantly. Therefore, maintenance and proper installation to extend the life of equipment is paramount. Manufacturers were required to change refrigerants this year. Many people still refer to refrigerants as “Freon”, but that was four refrigerants ago and this time some manufacturers chose one refrigerant while others chose something else. That requires us to carry at least three different types of refrigerants, tools, equipment and extra knowledge to work on all three types of systems.

I get asked about my parents all the time. Jimmy and Barbara are living in Frederick. They, like many at their age, struggle with health but are enjoying life. It has been nearly 20 years since they turned everything over to Jeff and me. Thank you for asking about them.

We are looking forward to 2026, I don’t think there are many known hurdles or scheduled changes. I hope you have a great end of 2025.

Fall Maintenance To-Do List:

Thermostat Mode

Change over your thermostat from cooling to heating or even use the auto feature that switches back and forth between heat/cool. Adjust your pre-set schedule to adjust for heating vs. cooling.

Air Filter

Change your air filter if you have a media filter. If you have thrown-away filters, you should be changing it monthly (call us to stop that nonsense). Change of seasons is a great time to change your media filter.

Humidifier

Change your humidifier media. It should be changed every year. Prevent flooding by your humidifier by cleaning it and changing the media.

Outdoor Spigots

Winterize your outdoor water spigots. Click Here to learn how to do it. Winterize it before you forget and end up with frozen burst pipes.

Carbon Monoxide & Smoke Alarms

Change the batteries.

Heat Pumps

Clean the outdoor coil of debris – especially towards the end of fall, to remove leaves and debris to keep the outdoor coils clear and free of debris.

Gas Fireplace Season:

Thanksgiving and Christmas seem to be a priority with our customers in reference to their gas fireplace. Whether it is servicing existing units or installing a new, having an operating gas fireplace on these two holidays seems to be a priority.

Service / Maintenance – Your gas fireplace should be inspected every year. There is no piece of equipment that produces higher levels of carbon monoxide that can directly enter the home than a gas fireplace. Making sure it is operating properly yearly is absolutely critical. We are not saying that you should not use your fireplace before its inspected, but having it done early is the safest thing to do. Do not wait to call for service or maintenance for cold weather. We can get a month booked for gas log maintenance quickly.

New Installation – I suggest that you have contracted a new unit a month before you plan on using it. That can even be too short a period for some specialty units as venders simply do not keep inventory in stock anymore. I suggest planning on an estimate, two weeks to get that adjusted to where you are happy to sign a contract and maybe up to month before it can be installed. So the deadline to start moving for a working Thanksgiving gas fireplace is quickly approaching.

Electrification & Hybrid Gas / Heat Pump Systems:

There are electric car people and those that are not. Going electric with your HVAC system is not as big a decision. You can do both! We do not have to get rid of your gas furnace to take advantage of today’s super high efficiency heat pumps. We can install a new heat pump instead of an air conditioner and conjunction with your gas furnace. We set up your system to operate in heat mode on the most efficient unit, either the heat pump or the gas furnace. Nothing needed by you, the system does all the calculations and uses the most efficient heating source. If you want for any reason or there is an issue with the outdoor heat pump, a simple switch allows for gas heating at any point. The result is a hybrid heating system with built in back up heating source that takes maximum advantage of federal tax credits and EmPower MD and DCSEU rebates. Up to $7575 in tax credits and rebates with lower utility bills each month.

Condensation / Home Comfort:

We have noticed an increasing number of condensation issues in homes over the last two summers. Condensation from HVAC grills and registers, bathroom fans, even walls and ceilings being damaged or even sweating themselves. The fix is to determine why whatever is sweating is sweating.

Condensation occurs when hot air comes into contact with cold air or cold surfaces. The result is condensation. If its bad enough, there can be enough condensation to stain drywall or create water damage. HVAC duct work is generally metal and cold in the summer. Hot air comes into contact with the metal and condensation forms. So the first step is to find where hot air is getting into the home and making contact with cold air or cold surfaces.

We call this infiltration, and we are looking for where hot air is infiltrating the home. We can test for this with specialized equipment to exasperate the leakage into the home. We then use infrared cameras and sensors to locate the infiltration. Its actually easier to locate the infiltration during cold weather. It’s a little strange that its easier to locate a summertime issue during the winter but its true.

Once that infiltration is located, the next step would be to prevent the hot air from getting into the home or at least prevent it from touching the cold air / surface. Adding insulation, sealing foam and other remedies can help stop the infiltration.

If you are experiencing condensation issues in your home, give us a call to discuss options to diagnose the issue to prevent damage to your home. If you see water stains, there’s leakage that has been happening and you should investigate before a small problem becomes a mold problem.

Air Flow / Air Quality / Efficiency:

Your HVAC system includes an air filter. The reason it has an air filter is to keep the indoor coils of the HVAC system clean. A dirty indoor evaporator coil will reduce cooling ability (capacity), decreased air flow, higher monthly utility bills, stresses the blower motor and blower capacitor, creates condensate flooding, and shortens the life of the outdoor compressor. A dirty air filter kills systems and creates a lot of service failures.

Somewhere along the line, someone thought, we could also filter the air circulating the home to create a healthier home. Genius – except the way to create healthier air is to filter the air so much it can remove very small molecules (dust, pollen, smoke, viruses). The issue, the more you restrict air, the more a brand-new filter acts as a dirty clogged air filter creating all the issues stated above.

There is a balancing act. Finding the right filtration but still being able to provide the proper air flow for your system to operate as designed. We find that almost any 1” filter that has any ability to filter for air quality restricts air too much right out of the box. A 4” media filter with the same length and width provides better air filtration with vastly improved air flow. Increases in the length and width of the filter allows for even greater air filtration without reducing the systems air flow.

Another added benefit of a 4” media filter is the ability to leave it in the system for up to a year. We generally suggest changing it twice a year, but depending on the home, its possible to change it once a year. So much less maintenance is required by you with better air quality and better air flow.

Send us a picture of your filter arrangement. We will let you know if its easy or not to convert to a 4” media filter.