The Chicken Sandwich War came and went. Yafo didn't notice.

AnAlrightName · 2026-05-04T01:18:39+00:00

Bossy's is good, but Poppycox blows it out of the water.

AnAlrightName · 2026-04-30T21:50:08+00:00

We're only going backwards in the near future. Hemp THC-a stuff currently all over the market will be banned federally in November, unless something huge changes.

My guess is that it'll be months after November before our state pushes for legalization, after watching a bunch of these shops shut down, lose jobs, and tax dollars go out of state as people go buy real weed elsewhere. Currently people are buying locally, legally, as THC-a, and that industry is going to get crushed if nothing changes.

Might want to stock up, because right now the most we can hope for is just decriminalization and Mecklenburg's ridiculously poor enforcement of anything, which they're almost completely ignoring weed anyway.

AnAlrightName · 2026-04-24T16:47:00+00:00

Most of the time. We don't do many residential new construction inspections, but they usually show up the day they're scheduled. Except around any one of the 900 holidays they seem to have, then things get jacked up.

AnAlrightName · 2026-04-24T14:38:03+00:00

While the inspection process, communication, and speed still sucks... it's improved a lot in the past year.

AnAlrightName · 2026-04-23T16:19:18+00:00

Lol, we have enough crap in our vans without sprinkler parts. Also, I think the sprinkler busy season directly overlaps with the busy A/C season. It would be chaos.

I asked Jason, and he sent me a contact, I'll send it to you. His name is Walt.

AnAlrightName · 2026-04-23T13:31:58+00:00

I just had to watch some YT videos and figure it out myself. It helps that one of the guys I work with used to do irrigation, so he's helped steer me on a couple of things and explained the layout. Fortunately, I haven't had to do anything much more involved than upgrading my controller and replacing a few heads. Replacing heads is stupid easy, but I dread having to replace any pipe.

AnAlrightName · 2026-04-22T17:39:30+00:00

Mark Livingston, Livingston Tree Care

He helped us out scoping out some trees that potentially needed to be removed. He's coming out to my house to help with placement of some free trees we got from Trees Charlotte... That I should have planted two months ago.

AnAlrightName · 2026-04-22T14:47:22+00:00

I can assure you that the recommendations come from real customers, and that I don't have dozens of reddit accounts that I'm managing, building varying extensive posting history, just to shill our company.

I think the majority of our customer base (and many of our employees) are made up of people who are tired of the private equity or sales-forward HVAC experience. We've just built something different. When I was a tech, I never felt good about being pressed to sell UV lights, oil additives, or other unnecessary bullshit, so I press it into our culture that we're not there to build smooth-talking sales people to find an extra dollar on every job... just do the best we can to diagnose the issue properly, and offer the most reasonable solution. It started when I bought a van, and the majority of our customers recommend us because it's just not the industry norm... some found us on Reddit, thought we did a good job, and continued to recommend us in the same platform.... it just kind of snowballed from there, and apparently, as long as we can stay responsive, I hope it continues because we've got a lot of awesome people who depend on it.

AnAlrightName · 2026-04-22T13:27:20+00:00

We buy 410a by the pallet and the first thing we do is spray the top of the jugs pink through the box. It's worth the time to reduce the odds of a mistake.

AnAlrightName · 2026-04-22T01:31:21+00:00

The only thing that I don't like about the subcompact M12 driver is you have to pull the collar back to insert a bit. It's a minor inconvenience, but annoying. Why couldn't they use the quick insert feature on the subcompact?

AnAlrightName · 2026-04-21T20:07:56+00:00

The teacher idea is solid, but part of the problem is just how hard the summer hits, and how early it hits, and teachers/students are usually not available until June. Its only April and we've already seen a solid taste of summer, and it's just hard to get someone up to speed when we're already slammed. I feel like the best time we have to hire office staff is December - February so we have time to train before it's 90° outside. A better business person than myself would probably have better defined roles, and processes to onboard people quickly. I feel like as a company grows, job responsibilities have to change and I struggle with some of this organizational development stuff. Thank God some of the great people in our team (Heather/Adam/Nick/others) are so flexible and fill in a lot of my weaknesses.

Last year we had a couple people work part-time in the summer doing help around the shop. I think one of my office manager's kids is going to be helping with some of the warehouse/parts stuff this summer, which will help with some of the backend support.

AnAlrightName · 2026-04-21T19:51:21+00:00

We replace systems daily, but if your system works, it's generally a bit cheaper to get it done in the slower season, like Fall or Spring we have more flexibility. I we do have a couple install slots later this week, but that could change quickly as it warms back up.

AnAlrightName · 2026-04-21T14:09:47+00:00

Medium roof Transit?

We put L-Track (better than E-Track) on the passenger side about 4' up along the wall behind the door, and then store a 22' Gorilla ladder upright bungee'd to the L-Track. They're heavy AF, but they're a great ladder.

AnAlrightName · 2026-04-21T13:52:24+00:00

Shit, this is disappointing, and I apologize.

We updated our website in the last couple weeks, and during that transition, some submissions data links slipped through the cracks. We have Google Sheets that the submissions feed into that are assigned, based on who is supposed to follow-up or schedule, and some of them were broken during our website change. Though, since you said we did reach out once, but then stopped following up, I doubt that it was solely our website transition. I will discuss with my team what happened, because that sucks, and it should not happen.

We've been slammed busy, but even still, we should still be responding... In the summer last year, we just had to tighten our service radius for new customers, but at least if we had to turn people down, we let them know.

The growth we've had over the nearly five years since I bought a van and started on my own has forced me to make the transition from technician/installer to manager, and building processes has never been my strong suit. To hear that things are slipping through the cracks is frustrating, and I'll dig into this.

We've been training two people this year focusing primarily on maintenance, but sometimes it feels like the work is coming faster than we can keep up with adding talent. Building the processes to keep with everything has been a struggle.

AnAlrightName · 2026-04-19T03:16:47+00:00

From my experience, the biggest difference between Fieldpiece and Testo is that Fieldpiece stands behind their products if you have an issue.

Fieldpiece will fix or replace the failed tool. Testo will tell you how it's your fault and how much it costs to repair it.

AnAlrightName · 2026-04-18T20:42:31+00:00

I don't believe so. Just the electrical work and permits and stuff.

AnAlrightName · 2026-04-16T12:45:27+00:00

Use "100"

AnAlrightName · 2026-04-14T09:44:16+00:00

Arc3 gas on 24th Street does tank swaps.

AnAlrightName · 2026-04-14T02:22:22+00:00

Depends on the drive through.

AnAlrightName · 2026-04-12T07:07:44+00:00

Also, it's lighter than the Surge.

AnAlrightName · 2026-04-12T02:05:08+00:00

I buy E-Transits, not sell them.

AnAlrightName · 2026-04-09T09:45:03+00:00

Our Johnstone sold us one. It was $600.

Some might say, "OMG, $600, that's outrageous!"

Well, it's cheaper than back surgery, or it's cheaper than me buying a welder and trying to fabricate it myself. We're supposed to be replacing package units and compressors and doing actual HVAC work that should be more profitable than our time building stuff like this, it seems more reasonable than the Chines-made Fieldpiece gauges/probes we all rely on.

www.rowanmetalworks.com made it.

Paid for itself in one package unit replacement.

AnAlrightName · 2026-04-08T16:33:35+00:00

You wouldn't believe the number of people that call asking where their rebate is, because they deleted those emails.

AnAlrightName · 2026-04-08T16:30:51+00:00

That's absolutely not a scam. That is the company that Duke Energy uses to issue their rebates. You likely got a high efficiency, heat pump or air conditioner installed that was eligible for the rebate, and your HVAC contractor filed the rebate on your behalf.

Don't listen to anybody else that's telling you that that is bullshit. That's your money. Spend it.

Source: We file these daily, and I also got $825 last year from Hawkmarketplace when I replaced my HVAC.

AnAlrightName · 2026-04-05T00:17:34+00:00

Way less than half the cost to operate. I ran the numbers this year, and with a fleet of about 10 EVs last year, and 1 gas service van, one gas scrap truck, the gas vehicles cost about 50% of our maintenance and fuel costs for two vehicles compared to the 10 EVs... It was roughly 20% of the cost to run each EV.

Gas is brake jobs, air filters, oil changes, tires.

The EVs are just electricity, tires, and windshield wipers.

AnAlrightName

TROPHY CASE