One of the questions we asked was for the names of wholesalers who contractors considered the best at supplying product in their respective areas. We interviewed some of the wholesalers about how they helped contractors market radiant heat.
David Schmitt, sales associate, Plimpton & Hills, Hartford, Conn.
“We have formed a local group with some contractors who do radiant heat and some sales reps. We call ourselves the Comfort Group. We’ll do home shows together every spring and fall, splitting up the time and the leads. We have found it generates a lot of leads from people who are doing custom homes. We’ll bring in floor panels and warm the floors using a six-gallon electric heater. We invite the people to take off their shoes and feel the floor. We try to sell them on the idea of comfort vs. price. It is an expensive product.
“We offer training to contractors about every three months. In June we hosted 150 people for dinner and a radiant seminar that also included discussion of domestic plumbing pipe. We worked with Stadler on this.
“I have done seminars with home builders. We hope to create some pull-through business by approaching the builders, so they can ask the plumbers about radiant. In January I spoke to the local chapter of the Home Builders Association. I invited one of my good contractors and a wood flooring distributor and we talked about how the builders don’t have to worry about hardwood floors and radiant. We said you can heat through hardwood floors. Builders worry about how their flooring material will be affected by radiant heat. We had about 25 homebuilders from the Hartford area. We provided the food and held the event in our facility.
“When we do a seminar, we are not trying to sell a specific product. We do a generic radiant presentation. Too many people in the trade are afraid to do radiant and they are walking away from nice margins.”
Rick Mayo, regional hydronics manager, Familian Northwest,Sandy, Utah
“FNW, as a company, has offered design assistance to our contractors for about 15 years, with the Washington and Alaska branches among the first to jump into the radiant scene. We took on the Wirsbo line when nobody knew what a ‘Wirsbo’ was and followed their lead in emphasizing training. We knew if we were going to sell this stuff we were all going to have to know more about it, so we sent our employees and customers back to their factory for intensive training. FNW still does this today.
“This industry is a moving target, and in order to keep up with it, we are continually giving and receiving training, especially in the ‘control’ end of the business.
“At times, the general contractor puts up a barrier around the end-users. For one reason or another, they do not see the value in the ‘up sell’ of hydronic products in their houses. Occasionally, the owner will solicit directly to the plumbing or mechanical contractor, and we will make ourselves available for consultation in those situations. We also get some opportunities to speak with mechanical engineers and architects, and provide them with some basic training.”
Brad Rutherford, heating manager, Supply North Central/D&C Supply, Ann Arbor, Mich.
“The installation approach is very important because contractors are comfortable with selling what they can install properly. That is what we saw as the biggest need: getting the contractors to the point where they feel comfortable with what they are installing.
“As a result, we provide training. Sometimes this involves taking the contractors to a manufacturer’s facility. For example, Viessmann has an outstanding training facility and it’s not too far a drive from us.
“We also do in-house training seminars. We may schedule the training for one Saturday morning per month for four consecutive months or do it all in one day. Typically we will cover installation methods for in-floor radiant heat, the different ways to pipe up a mechanical room with radiant.
“We try to address all the different facets someone might be faced with, whether it be cement or a dry floor (sub-floor). There are many different ways radiant tube can be installed.
“At least 90 percent of what we do in the heating department is radiant. We started carving out a niche in that about 12 years ago. We lag behind the East Coast by about five years. In the late 1980s and early 1990s people started asking for radiant or the contractor would suggest it. In today’s market probably 50 percent of the sales are initiated by the homeowner.
“Five or six years ago you had a hard time finding an architect willing to talk about radiant. Today we have architects who ask for radiant on a regular basis. They are aware of radiant installations that have been running in homes for the last three years.
“Approaches to radiant continue to improve. It is still a work in progress. I don’t think we will be doing the same things in a few years as we do today. We seem to add some nuance every year.”
Marc Brodt, president, Longmont Winnelson, Longmont, Colo.
“The systems can be complex and the design is critical. We spend a lot of time working on heat-loss calculations and designing a system to meet the heat load. Then we make sure that our customer understands the design and the fine points of the installation. If that means going to the jobsite and laying out the job, we do it.
“A lot of jobs end up with different combinations of heat sources and heat distribution units. These could be radiant, finned-tube baseboard, European-type radiant panels and others, all requiring different water temperatures and flow rates. It can get fairly complex.
“We are training people all the time. Formal training is usually done with a manufacturer. We’ll meet in a hotel conference room or restaurant and go over all of the basics. Generally we try to do small size classes, with 20 people or less.”
