Mostly HVAC with Dan Myers, CEO of Flair

June 13, 2024

Ian and Aaron are joined by Dan Myers, CEO of Flair, for a very special episode about Aaron's HVAC system, Ian's feelings about batteries, why people like "treats in the feed", and more. Sponsored by LaraJobs & Screencasting.com. Interested in sponsoring Mostly Technical? Head to https://mostlytechnical.com/sponsor to learn more.
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Transcript

Aaron
00:00:00 – 00:00:27
Alright. Welcome to a very special episode of, Mostly HVAC. We're renaming we're renaming the podcast to Mostly HVAC. So if you didn't listen, a few days ago, Ian and I got into one of our spirited debates where I was telling him I'd come up with this great plan to make my new house nice and evenly cooled, evenly heated. And Ian said, I'm insane.
Aaron
00:00:27 – 00:00:46
And so my plan hinges on a company called Flare. And after after needing to call in some backup, I looked up the Flare company, found the CEO, reached out to him on Twitter, and boom, here he is to take my side, hopefully. So welcome to the show. Yeah.
Dan
00:00:46 – 00:00:49
Thank you. Glad to be here. Yeah.
Aaron
00:00:49 – 00:00:53
So you wanna give us a little bit a little bit of background, and then we can dive into the debate?
Dan
00:00:54 – 00:01:10
Absolutely. So my name is Dan, Dan Myers. I'm one of the cofounders at Flare. I know your audience is somewhat technical, so I guess, what I my sort of overplayed joke is that I'm a recovering engineer. So, you know, I
Ian
00:01:10 – 00:01:10
can feel that.
Dan
00:01:10 – 00:01:40
But have done many things at this point. And we've been we've been building products for the HVAC space for about 10 years now. We kind of approached it from the tech side and then moved into the almost mechanical engineering world of HVAC, if you will. And we do a variety of things. I think some of the ones really relevant to what you guys, were talking about the other day and what we can get into as well as, dock you know, things of things for the central forced air market.
Dan
00:01:40 – 00:01:56
Right? But also ductless heat pumps. We support a lot of electrification programs across the country and, load flexibility. So integrating HVAC systems with the grid. So a pretty broad, set of focuses for the business.
Aaron
00:01:56 – 00:02:00
I don't know, Ian. Sounds like a pretty serious professional company to me.
Ian
00:02:00 – 00:02:08
No. No. That's fine. I mean, is that is that Flare, or is that other companies you have? Because the Flare website doesn't, you know, talk about any of that stuff as far as I saw.
Dan
00:02:08 – 00:02:19
Yeah. Yeah. No. So so Flare actually does all of it. We what you see on our website is primarily directed at a consumer funnel realistically.
Dan
00:02:19 – 00:02:32
Right? But we sell actually both through the consumer world. That was our sort of origins back when Kickstarter was all the rage. We didn't actually do a Kickstarter, but it was sort of the just bootstrap yourself world. Right?
Aaron
00:02:32 – 00:02:33
Mhmm.
Dan
00:02:34 – 00:02:48
And then as we've grown, we've moved into the professional HVAC channel. You know, when it comes to grid integration, things like that, I mean, usually, it's just an email conversation and having a consumer funnel makes the most sense for our sort of main home. Okay.
Ian
00:02:50 – 00:02:50
Alright.
Aaron
00:02:50 – 00:02:53
So alright. Yeah. Do you wanna do you wanna start or should I
Ian
00:02:53 – 00:03:02
jump in. Yeah. Let's jump in because we're we we want to keep this episode pretty focused on Aaron's house. Okay. I think this is, like, kind of the core the core thing.
Ian
00:03:02 – 00:03:20
So we're gonna go with a very specific use case. So, I think you watched, we we yeah. I don't wanna rehash the whole thing, but basically, Aaron has in you know, not level heating and cooling throughout his new home. How big is your house, Aaron? How many square feet?
Ian
00:03:20 – 00:03:21
35100? Oh, 4,000.
Aaron
00:03:21 – 00:03:31
I want to say 33,035 100, something like that. 2 stories, 3 bedrooms upstairs, 2 bedrooms downstairs. Plus associated
Ian
00:03:31 – 00:03:52
rooms and all that stuff. Right. So pretty good size house. So, you know, I guess there's a couple ways I feel like you could handle this. How I've handled this in my life is to have the HVAC guy install a damper system in the ductwork, and there's a second nest thermostat in another room and great.
Ian
00:03:52 – 00:04:13
Like, it goes to 2 directions. So, like, in our case where we have 2 zones, it's just upstairs. Like, the kids' room get their own stuff going on, and our bedroom gets our stuff going on and the damper turns on and off. How I don't know the exact even technical details of how it works. All I know is it dampens airflow at some way flaps presumably and closes things off.
Ian
00:04:13 – 00:04:14
It baffles things.
Aaron
00:04:14 – 00:04:15
Yeah.
Ian
00:04:15 – 00:04:25
I think they're actually called dampers. I was calling them baffles, but shoot, That's fine. But you install it once. It's hardwired in. I haven't thought about it in 15 years since we built our house.
Ian
00:04:26 – 00:04:52
Aaron has this idea of using the flare products, which are on the end of each output of every air duct in every room you put on this damper system, and they're individually Internet of things devices, and they have a you need a thermostat in the room, and you need they're back in power. Don't forget. A plug and play network adapter to run it all and all this stuff. So I guess
Aaron
00:04:54 – 00:05:06
Let let me let me let me let me recap the on the other side. So you got this big complicated system that requires probably installation while building or while remodeling. It doesn't sound like you can just No.
Ian
00:05:06 – 00:05:07
You can be it's just
Aaron
00:05:07 – 00:05:10
not complicated. It's one thing. It's literally
Ian
00:05:10 – 00:05:10
one thing.
Aaron
00:05:10 – 00:05:14
It's somewhere it's somewhere in that, in between floors or something like that.
Ian
00:05:14 – 00:05:15
That's true.
Aaron
00:05:15 – 00:05:38
And then you gotta get some second thermostat. So now you're running, like, you're running dual zones, but, like, some rooms are on certain zones, and maybe those are hot and cold rooms, but they're on the same zone because of the way that the HVAC is branched. And he's on about this battery thing, and I'm telling him I'm telling him the batteries I read on the website, Ian, and everything you read on websites is true that the batteries last for at least 3 years. And so
Ian
00:05:38 – 00:05:42
But you're gonna have 200 of them. See, that's the problem. You're gonna have
Aaron
00:05:42 – 00:05:48
200 of your batteries. Alright. Alright. He's caught up. Let let the unbiased arbitrage rule and tell me why.
Aaron
00:05:48 – 00:05:52
A little bit of a unbiased. But not the highly biased. But
Ian
00:05:52 – 00:05:56
knowledgeable. So, you know, the company is going to tell us what's going on.
Dan
00:05:56 – 00:06:00
Yeah. Yeah. Sir certainly have biases here. Happy to acknowledge that.
Ian
00:06:00 – 00:06:01
Right? Yeah.
Dan
00:06:02 – 00:06:18
Yeah. So I think there's, like, a lot of different things there. We could, maybe I'll start with a couple of them, that seem like the most straightforward and obvious. The first thing would be, the ease of putting in traditional zoning, which is sort of what Ian you've been describing. Right?
Dan
00:06:18 – 00:06:42
Mhmm. Varies a lot. Right? If you are in, say, the northeast and you've got a basement in an attic that's easily available or accessible, you can climb into the attic, put in dampers, run your 24 volt control lines back to a zone control board and figure all that out, without too much pain, great. Right?
Dan
00:06:42 – 00:06:56
Like, that is certainly an option that exists. When you talk to most HVAC professionals, what you'll find out is that they don't do a lot of zoning. They do some, you know, but they don't do a ton. And there's a couple of reasons. Right?
Dan
00:06:56 – 00:07:07
One is it tends to be pretty expensive. Satisfaction tends to be kind of modest. Right? And part of that is because it's not very granular. Right?
Dan
00:07:07 – 00:07:28
Which I think Aaron kind of alluded to a little bit. And then the other thing is it's pretty expensive. Right? I think, you know, you're splicing into ductwork if that's rigid, if that's flex, that really changes things. But one of the big ones in a retrofit context is actually that the, oftentimes the ducts are not particularly accessible.
Dan
00:07:29 – 00:07:48
So if you've got to go deal with drywall and finished spaces or hardwood floors or something to try and make a modification to how the ductwork performs, It's just really hard and really expensive, disruptive, that kind of thing. Right. So, you know, I will say this, like, I think there's a place for traditional zoning. Right? Like, I wouldn't rag on that.
Dan
00:07:48 – 00:08:10
I think that's super reasonable. When you're in a context where that's really hard, that's certainly one of the places where flare is a slam dunk. So, you know, I don't see us necessarily as saying traditional zoning is a is a bad thing or a bad concept in any way. In fact, on our product road map later this year, we'll probably release some damper controls. Right?
Dan
00:08:10 – 00:08:11
Because we're There
Aaron
00:08:11 – 00:08:11
we go.
Dan
00:08:11 – 00:08:12
You know, to give some
Aaron
00:08:12 – 00:08:16
context Gotcha. We won you over, Ian. You're a fan now.
Ian
00:08:16 – 00:08:17
There we go.
Dan
00:08:17 – 00:08:31
Yeah. I mean, so for context, right, the business is called Flare, but the platform behind all of it is called HVACOS. Right? And so our worldview is kind of like, we're really interested in just gluing together all the disparate pieces. Right?
Dan
00:08:31 – 00:08:56
And some homes are really simple. They just have one system. It's centralized, stat, and you're done. Other homes, particularly in places like the northeast with a lot of retrofit activity right now promoted or or sort of pushed along by electrification efforts are really varied. You've got a mix of ductless and boilers and some central on one floor and all these different things and and, you know, dampers and zoning and and you kind of add it all up and you're like, yeah.
Dan
00:08:56 – 00:09:23
Something needs to coordinate these in a way that's not, you know, a zone control board from 1980 and a bunch of relays that, like, you know, you can't really control any logic on, that kind of thing. So we we are definitely sort of, sometimes we like to say we're software wrapped in plastic in that way, which I think was another point you had pointed out, previously, maybe not today, but which is sort of, okay. Well, this is a connected product. Right? Mhmm.
Ian
00:09:23 – 00:09:23
Right.
Dan
00:09:23 – 00:09:40
And and I don't think that's a you know, the risk I think you highlighted was, alright. Well, if it relies on servers, you know, you run the risk of that, like, okay. Well, you know, what happens if a company disappears? And we've been around for a decade, but IoT companies have certainly failed. Right?
Dan
00:09:41 – 00:10:04
So I think it's a fair point. It's not unique to us per se, but it is a broad connected product concern. I I mean, I have a Internet connected robot lawnmower, a cat litter box, you know, all these crazy things that I'm like, yeah, it would suck if they just turned off their web services. Right? What I would say there is, along those lines, we we sort of understand and anticipate that.
Dan
00:10:04 – 00:10:25
We also have a lot of customers demanding offline support because they're in some cabin in the middle of nowhere or just their Internet connectivity is not great. So, actually, we released a product, I guess it was about a month ago, called the Bridge. Right? It's just this little, it's literally like a the least exciting product ever probably. Right?
Aaron
00:10:25 – 00:10:25
It's a box
Dan
00:10:25 – 00:10:47
for networking. And while it does not yet support an offline mode, that is essentially one of the things that we hope to release go on to it as an an over the over the air upgrade. So I think we we see that concern. We think it's a fair concern. We don't have the answer today, but it's one that we're planning for, which I just think is fair.
Dan
00:10:48 – 00:10:56
So, you know, I I think that you were right in pointing out that risk to a product that's connected. And then the other one oh, go ahead. Sorry. Yeah.
Aaron
00:10:56 – 00:11:11
Oh, I was just gonna pause there for a second and say, I think one thing that Ian and I didn't highlight yesterday or the day before, whenever it was, was the retrofit versus the do it from the beginning. Because, Ian, is this house you're in with the with the dampers, did y'all build this house?
Ian
00:11:11 – 00:11:28
We did build the house, but it was actually done retrofit. Like, after we lived there for, like, for 3 months or something, we were like, this this ain't working. And then they went in and retrofitted it. So it was a retrofit. And, yeah, we are in the northeast in our case, and it's like a house, and it wasn't whatever.
Ian
00:11:28 – 00:11:41
It wasn't too big a deal. I don't remember the exact details, but it was not crazy to get done. The guy went up in the attic and added the thing and whatever. It was no huge deal. So I think that is a good point of like, to me, it's like, sure.
Ian
00:11:41 – 00:11:53
If I live in an apartment building, right, and it's like, I can't get to anything. I'm not allowed to cut into anything. I can't get to anything. It's just this air comes out in crazy way. It's like, yeah, this product makes total sense.
Ian
00:11:53 – 00:12:07
Or even I have my own use case for it. I was like, you know what? This would be cool. Like, in our master bedroom, there's big lofted ceilings, and then there's the vents up there. But sometimes I'd like them to face different directions than they do or maybe even close one off or whatever.
Ian
00:12:07 – 00:12:27
But it's like, am I gonna get out 14 foot ladder to, like, go do that? Well, yeah, that would be cool. Right? To have this one room has a special need that maybe a product like this works even for a situation where you could, handle it other ways or whatever. Or even the traditional thing with the little slide, yeah, like, that works if I can get up there, but I can't get up there.
Ian
00:12:27 – 00:12:40
So let me have a way to automate it automate that. But, yeah, I guess that's just when you're doing every single event in your house, I guess that's the thing. And so would you say that Aaron should first go? So let's keep it on Aaron. Right?
Ian
00:12:40 – 00:12:43
Yep. Should Aaron first go?
Aaron
00:12:43 – 00:12:46
Alright. Let me explain what where the vents are and stuff, and then you can ask the question.
Ian
00:12:46 – 00:12:47
So I mean, they're
Aaron
00:12:47 – 00:13:11
they're all I'm focused I'm focused on the first floor. Most of the vents on the first floor are in the floor, and so they come out from from, you know, either very low in the wall or some are actually on the same plane as the floor. Weirdly, in the, kitchen living, I have 2 vents that are overhead. And so where are these ducks? I don't know.
Aaron
00:13:11 – 00:13:33
I'm not an HVAC scientist, but it seems like they're everywhere. Right? And so I've got these these rooms downstairs with maybe I think I counted maybe 10 vents, across the 2 bedrooms and, like, the dining living area. And then upstairs is an entirely different question. I think there is the vents upstairs are more accessible because, you know, above it is is some attic space.
Aaron
00:13:33 – 00:13:38
So that's kind of the system I've got. And so Ian's question is is what?
Ian
00:13:38 – 00:14:03
Well, yeah. Should does it make sense? And if you're in a big house and there's presumably, like, he's got the attic, he's got space, like, does it make sense to just go to HVAC guy first and do the traditional way if that's gonna be the most straightforward? And then, yes, if there's, like, a problem that makes sense for a product like this, or obviously, we can come up with other scenarios where this product makes total sense. So, you know, I'm not I'm not against the product.
Ian
00:14:03 – 00:14:16
I'm against maybe in Aaron's case, it just being the default first choice solution until there is much cooler. That, you know, there's not an easier, simpler way to do it. So I guess what what would you say about that?
Aaron
00:14:16 – 00:14:21
This is the simple way. Sorry. No. That you that question wasn't to me. That question wasn't to me.
Aaron
00:14:21 – 00:14:21
Alright. Dan.
Ian
00:14:21 – 00:14:24
The regular HVAC guy is going to be cheaper than this.
Aaron
00:14:25 – 00:14:26
No way. I think
Ian
00:14:26 – 00:14:27
it just they have
Dan
00:14:27 – 00:14:29
some assumptions there that I
Ian
00:14:29 – 00:14:30
Okay. We
Dan
00:14:30 – 00:14:31
could sort of jump on.
Ian
00:14:31 – 00:14:31
That's so cold.
Dan
00:14:31 – 00:14:46
So let me let me frame it a little bit. So zoom out, and then we can zoom in. Right? So first thing is it sounds like you don't have a multi zone system from the get go. Because ironically, we also sometimes get installed in a system that's already zoned because Interesting.
Dan
00:14:46 – 00:14:49
You know, your your zoning maybe east west or north south or
Aaron
00:14:49 – 00:14:49
Mhmm.
Dan
00:14:50 – 00:14:55
You know, upstairs downstairs. Right? And then you still have temperature issues.
Ian
00:14:56 – 00:14:58
It sounds like you have 2 zones, don't you, Aaron?
Aaron
00:14:58 – 00:14:59
You have an upstairs
Ian
00:14:59 – 00:15:00
and a downstairs zone.
Aaron
00:15:00 – 00:15:10
Yeah. I don't know if it's multizone. We have 2 outdoor units and 2 indoor thermostats, but I the 2 thermostats don't talk to each other. They're not aware of each other at all. It's just upstairs downstairs.
Dan
00:15:10 – 00:15:21
2 separate systems. Right. Yeah. So that makes a ton of sense. And then, you know, I guess let's just take your one floor, right, to start.
Dan
00:15:21 – 00:15:30
Right? Yep. So what is the unevenness there? Right? You have one side that gets hotter than the other during a certain time of day.
Dan
00:15:30 – 00:15:32
What is the thing that actually happens?
Aaron
00:15:33 – 00:15:58
Yep. So both bedrooms are on one side. So it's our master bedroom and then the bedroom for the youngest set of twins, and those rooms get quite warm. And then the living room so, like, living, dining, den, or entertainment or whatever you call it, that is that is all kind of open. It's not totally open floor plan, but it's kind of open, and that stays pretty comfortable, but the back two rooms get quite warm.
Ian
00:15:59 – 00:15:59
Gotcha.
Dan
00:16:00 – 00:16:14
So your choice and, I got in trouble with one of our integration partners, for making it this clear. Right? So you have, if you will, your sort of main living space. Mhmm. And I maybe I'll I'll flip it the other way.
Dan
00:16:14 – 00:16:25
You have your main living space because you're in Texas. Mhmm. And, it stays nice and cool. And then you've got these bedrooms that kind of run a little bit warmer the whole time. Right?
Aaron
00:16:25 – 00:16:25
Correct.
Dan
00:16:25 – 00:16:32
Yep. And your option to solve this would, of course, be just level shift that problem. Right? Like, without any mechanical intervention. Right?
Dan
00:16:32 – 00:16:44
Just run the system. Right? Yes. Now, what we would suggest is, okay, we're gonna go in and we're just gonna levelize that if you want, or even maybe bias it slightly the other way. Right?
Aaron
00:16:44 – 00:16:44
K.
Dan
00:16:45 – 00:17:01
And and that is fundamentally sort of what you get with mechanical actuation here. Right? As opposed to purely, just a remote sensor type strategy that you could buy with your ecobee or your Honeywell or something. Right?
Aaron
00:17:01 – 00:17:08
Okay. So remote sensor strategy just tells the main thermostat, hey. It's hot in there. Keep going. And a mechanical actuation says, hey.
Aaron
00:17:08 – 00:17:13
It's hot in there. Let's shut off some cold spots to direct some flow to the cold to the hot area.
Dan
00:17:13 – 00:17:22
Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, the remote sensor strategy for some people is actually maybe a better first step than any of the things that we've talked about. Right? To to Ian's point.
Dan
00:17:22 – 00:17:42
Right? Like, I I might even suggest starting there. In fact, most of our customers have already started there. Right? So rather than oftentimes rather than buying our little, like, you know, puck wireless thermostat, which is cool, but is admittedly pricey, right, compared to, like, a $40 ecobee remote sensor.
Dan
00:17:42 – 00:17:53
Right. You can at least see, am I satisfied enough with a remote sensor in this other room? Right? And maybe the amount of additional run time is incremental enough where you're just like, you know what? Great.
Dan
00:17:53 – 00:18:02
I don't actually need to do much more here. Right? So before I'd even call an HVAC guy, I think that would be my first DIY move, personally.
Aaron
00:18:02 – 00:18:05
Cool. That ever came up. Okay. That's a good strategy. Alright.
Ian
00:18:05 – 00:18:12
And that so I'll presumably make it even colder in the main areas. Right? But, like, maybe that's the the trade off that's worth it or whatever.
Dan
00:18:12 – 00:18:25
Yeah. Yeah. And so you're just gonna level shift and you might decide, Oh, actually it's good enough. And then if you decide, actually, I really hate the amount of cooling I'm sort of additionally putting into this other space.
Aaron
00:18:25 – 00:18:25
Yeah.
Dan
00:18:25 – 00:18:32
Well, that's where, you know, an actuator all of a sudden becomes a reasonable move. You know, because I wanna be
Aaron
00:18:32 – 00:18:39
eco friend or at least pretend on the Internet to be eco friendly. And so I need to not cool the other room and cool my room only.
Ian
00:18:39 – 00:18:50
So do you think though there's a education issue here in that, like, Aaron's plan, which is to go in and replace all the vents on the 1st floor? But maybe you don't need to replace all the vents on the 1st floor. Maybe you only need to replace certain vents
Aaron
00:18:51 – 00:18:51
on the
Dan
00:18:51 – 00:19:05
1st floor. Yes. And and so, I mean, this is actually, as a business, one of our biggest challenges is, like, I think we have a really neat little offering for a lot of people, but educating people on what we make is like pretty non trivial.
Aaron
00:19:06 – 00:19:06
Mhmm.
Dan
00:19:06 – 00:19:25
Yeah. So I will I will, you know, certainly admit to that, you know, any day. It's it's just not an easy thing to sell on some level because you really have to think about things. The other I'll add to that. Another thing is, you know, let's say you consistently don't get enough air in your twins room or rooms.
Aaron
00:19:25 – 00:19:25
Mhmm.
Dan
00:19:26 – 00:19:29
Well, why would you ever close a vent in that room?
Aaron
00:19:29 – 00:19:32
Correct. Great question. You just saved me a $119.
Dan
00:19:32 – 00:19:38
Or. Yeah. Or maybe more. Right. So now you might want a temperature sensor in that room to make sure it's running.
Aaron
00:19:39 – 00:19:42
You just saved me 90. Yeah. Yeah.
Dan
00:19:44 – 00:20:02
Shoot. But but, you know, the the point being that, like, typically the way that it makes the most sense for homeowners is the rooms that relatively speaking get more air are the candidate rooms for a smart mat. And the rooms that you care about a temperature in are the rooms where you want a sensor.
Aaron
00:20:02 – 00:20:03
Love that.
Ian
00:20:03 – 00:20:03
That's a
Aaron
00:20:03 – 00:20:04
great idea.
Dan
00:20:05 – 00:20:34
So that so, you know, to kind of address the way you're gonna have, you know, a semi truck's worth of batteries and you're gonna have a far exceed an HVAC contractor's cost. You know, more typically what we see is is people who buy just a small number of units that go into a key sort of strategic a couple of strategic rooms or places. And you can usually make a pretty big dent in the problem there. Right? And and people, admittedly, also have different motivations for our product.
Dan
00:20:34 – 00:20:51
Right? Some people buy it because they're like, I'm trying to solve the comfort problem. That's probably like the pain killer application. The vitamin application is I actually just want to kind of control rooms more independently on a central system, or I wanna run things a little bit less. Right?
Aaron
00:20:51 – 00:20:52
Mhmm.
Dan
00:20:52 – 00:21:05
The the hot room, cold room problem was honestly what got me started on the business. I grew up in South Florida. I lived in Chicago. You know, went to school in Chicago and lived there for a while. Experienced extremes on either end.
Dan
00:21:05 – 00:21:14
Yeah. I saw the stupidity of the sort of existing ductwork problems in American homes and said, okay. Somebody's gonna be dumb enough to try and fix this. Right? Mhmm.
Dan
00:21:15 – 00:21:23
Why not me? Yeah. Why literally. Right? So that was kind of the origins, and I think that problem is still around today.
Dan
00:21:23 – 00:21:25
Right? And that's what we go after. Yep.
Aaron
00:21:25 – 00:21:29
Alright, Ian. What's your ruling? I feel like that's pretty balanced. That's pretty measured response.
Ian
00:21:30 – 00:21:42
No. No. I think it's all been good. I actually think my 2¢ is, like, I I think you guys should totally change your website around that. Like, I feel like a lot of the stuff on the website I saw it didn't go through every page, but it was like, the example is vents in every room.
Ian
00:21:42 – 00:21:56
Right? And then I think you go and do that math and you're like, well, it's a puck in every room and 2 vents and blah blah and a 100 batteries and $3,000 and whatever. And you're like, I mean, this is just my take. Like, this is why I said to him. Right?
Ian
00:21:56 – 00:22:11
He's like, that seems crazy. But if it's like, oh, like, solve your hot room problem or whatever, it's our solve your cold room problem. And it's like, oh, yeah. Buy this for 2 rooms, and you can redirect the existing airflow correctly just by by doing this. That seems great.
Ian
00:22:11 – 00:22:21
It's like, oh, $500. Yeah. I could do that. And it's it's only 4 batteries instead of 25 or whatever. Like, that seems more reasonable for most people's application.
Ian
00:22:21 – 00:22:25
Like, obviously, we could come up with, like, yeah, you should do every event and all that stuff. But, yeah. And the other the other
Aaron
00:22:25 – 00:22:25
thing is
Ian
00:22:25 – 00:22:26
we got
Dan
00:22:26 – 00:22:26
a lot of
Ian
00:22:26 – 00:22:35
this feedback online was, like, if you use these everywhere, you existing system don't like back pressure.
Aaron
00:22:35 – 00:22:39
So once you have back pressure so much. Like, be careful about back pressure. And I'm like, yeah.
Ian
00:22:39 – 00:22:42
Your house could literally explode from the back pressure.
Dan
00:22:43 – 00:23:01
So Somewhere deep in Reddit is this hilarious post about, like, I think it was a must have been a customer, of ours who just wrote this, like, incredibly sarcastic, but very creative, article. It's Reddit. Yeah. You know, smart meds might destabilize the universe. Right?
Ian
00:23:02 – 00:23:02
And and it
Dan
00:23:02 – 00:23:06
was sort of a it was a great write up. I'll have to find it in here if
Aaron
00:23:06 – 00:23:06
I can.
Dan
00:23:06 – 00:23:25
That's great. The the back for sure concern, I think, is fair, but nuanced. Right? So the first thing is, and I'll try and spare you, like, the deep dive on HVAC, but, the world of HVAC lives on on what they call call logic. Right?
Dan
00:23:25 – 00:23:32
Call logic, meaning, do I need cooling? I'm calling. Do I need not need cooling? I'm not calling. Right?
Dan
00:23:34 – 00:23:50
And so your traditional zoning system will, in fact, kind of reduce down to as few of zones as calling as needed and close off other, you know, branches or whatever. Right? In
Aaron
00:23:50 – 00:23:51
the dark. We
Dan
00:23:52 – 00:24:01
don't work on traditional call logic. Right? And so there was this Lawrence Berkeley National Labs paper that said you know, that researched smart beds. Right? And this was Oh,
Aaron
00:24:01 – 00:24:02
hell yeah.
Dan
00:24:02 – 00:24:20
The mid 2000. And, they found, like, okay. If you close 60% of registers, and this was in California homes, so it can vary, certainly regionally. But in this case, in California homes, that's when you would start to see equipment complaining, Right? Mhmm.
Dan
00:24:20 – 00:24:29
And the equipment has what they call, like, high limit trips. You know, it has, all sorts of different features to make sure that it, you know, doesn't get too stressed. Right?
Aaron
00:24:30 – 00:24:31
So what we do is
Dan
00:24:31 – 00:24:51
we just let's apply a 100% safety margin on that, and we'll never close essentially more than a 3rd. We do have some, like, pressure sensors on board, but we've just found the 1 third rule is is both effective. Like, we've we're in tens of thousands of homes now, right, with no issues. It's also just easy to communicate to a user, which is a big deal. Right?
Dan
00:24:51 – 00:25:10
Like, we're offering a connected experience. Like, why is this event doing the thing it is? Well, actually, that's the thing that matters to a lot of users. And if you can articulate that cleanly, it's a big deal. So I would just say, like, I think most of the back pressure concerns comes from the I've got 9 rooms that have enough cooling.
Dan
00:25:10 – 00:25:14
I've got one room that doesn't. You're gonna close 90% of the airflow and, you know, choke
Aaron
00:25:15 – 00:25:17
the windows in the other room. Yeah.
Dan
00:25:17 – 00:25:24
Yeah. And we're like, no. You know, we did think about this for at least a hot second before we built the system. Right? And, like, did some homework.
Dan
00:25:25 – 00:25:26
There's a lot.
Ian
00:25:26 – 00:25:26
So if
Aaron
00:25:26 – 00:25:36
I read your fact correctly, that also you for that one third calculation, you take into account non smart vents because those are presumably left open all the time. Is that right?
Dan
00:25:36 – 00:25:43
Yes. Yeah, exactly. And and I will say the sort of exciting future of our business there too is
Aaron
00:25:43 – 00:25:44
You heard it here first.
Dan
00:25:44 – 00:25:56
Yeah. Yeah. The way that the industry is moving is not on and off type systems. Right? Where I'm just pushing, you know, however many CFM through the system or I'm not.
Dan
00:25:56 – 00:26:19
It's moving towards modulating systems. And so for us, actually, that's awesome because what it means is soon, you'll be able to say, I care about 20% of my square footage for these hours. Mhmm. And I'm gonna run the equipment 20%. And, actually, now you've really reengineered what your ductwork is able to deliver.
Dan
00:26:19 – 00:26:40
Right? On a on a granular level. So that's that's one. Like, we're working with some OEMs, things like that to kind of build that future right now, and that's becoming more of a reality in the market. In the meantime, when you're working with what they call fixed tonnage, you know, or sing single speed or maybe 2 stage or something, we just operate with conservative rules.
Dan
00:26:40 – 00:26:43
And generally speaking, that it's pretty effective. I I like that.
Aaron
00:26:43 – 00:26:45
That's a good answer to the back pressure question.
Ian
00:26:45 – 00:26:46
Yeah, that's good.
Dan
00:26:47 – 00:26:49
We've been working on. Yeah.
Aaron
00:26:49 – 00:26:54
I'm shocked that a bunch of HVAC they've actually thought it through. Yeah. That doesn't surprise me.
Ian
00:26:55 – 00:27:00
Alright. I think it's good. Maybe, Aaron, we could stick around for another minute just to wrap up. But Well, I have one more question.
Aaron
00:27:00 – 00:27:16
I have one more question before we do the post show. Do you have plans or is it already integrated into that, like, that open source home assistant thing that that, are you familiar with that, and is it integrated into that?
Dan
00:27:16 – 00:27:23
Yeah. We have, there's a guy, I think I'm gonna, like, totally butcher his name. Robert Dranovic, I think is his name.
Ian
00:27:23 – 00:27:24
Let's just
Dan
00:27:24 – 00:27:35
give him a shout out. He has been building diligently for years now this really excellent integration with Home Assistant. So and we have an open API. Oh, great. And
Aaron
00:27:35 – 00:27:37
so Individually addressable events?
Dan
00:27:37 – 00:27:45
Uh-huh. You can you can slap the system into manual and do what you could run your own algorithm. You get whatever you wanna do. Right? I mean, we See, well,
Aaron
00:27:45 – 00:27:46
this is what I'm talking about.
Ian
00:27:46 – 00:27:48
Wow. We could do a course on this.
Dan
00:27:48 – 00:28:04
Yeah. I'm hooked. So, yeah, that Home Assistant, plug in is is solid. I think in some ways, sometimes it makes me jealous because I think their UI like, what he's built is almost nicer than some of ours. Right?
Ian
00:28:04 – 00:28:08
Yeah. So one one guy pushing the boundaries like that.
Aaron
00:28:08 – 00:28:15
Yep. That's exactly right. Okay. That was my that was my final question. Dan, thank you.
Dan
00:28:15 – 00:28:16
Yeah, absolutely.
Aaron
00:28:16 – 00:28:28
Thank you for doing this. I know this was maybe the most random thing you've done this week, but this is this has been a delight. And tell tell the people where they can find you, where they can find Flair. Give give us your last pitch here.
Dan
00:28:28 – 00:28:40
Sure. You can learn more about our offerings, whether for smart vents on central systems and solving hot and cold rooms or ductless heat pump or mini split controls on flare.coflair.c0.
Ian
00:28:43 – 00:28:45
Perfect. Thanks so
Dan
00:28:45 – 00:28:46
much. Thank you. Alright.
Aaron
00:28:46 – 00:28:49
Thank you so much, Dan. It was nice to meet you, and thanks for doing this.
Dan
00:28:49 – 00:28:50
Likewise. Great to meet you guys. Have a good one.
Aaron
00:28:50 – 00:28:51
Alright. See you.
Ian
00:28:51 – 00:28:53
Thanks. Bye. Alright.
Aaron
00:28:53 – 00:28:55
Look at the How about that?
Ian
00:28:55 – 00:29:06
What a great guy. Yeah. Yeah. Again, Aaron Francis comes through with you could just do stuff and stuff happen. Just ask the CEO of the company to come on your podcast, and maybe they'll come on.
Aaron
00:29:06 – 00:29:17
What? I tweeted at him, and he didn't respond. And so I went to flare.co and looked up their media email and sent an email to media at flare.co you go. And gave him a little pitch that was like, listen. We're cool.
Aaron
00:29:17 – 00:29:22
We're funny. People are gonna love it. And then he responded and was like, sure. Let's do it.
Ian
00:29:22 – 00:29:26
Yeah. He didn't seem like a big Twitter guy. He only has, you know, a couple of 100 followers there.
Aaron
00:29:26 – 00:29:27
So surprised you with great audio,
Ian
00:29:27 – 00:29:31
but you you went you went the next layer. I went back to you.
Aaron
00:29:31 – 00:29:33
I also sent him a DM on LinkedIn, man.
Ian
00:29:33 – 00:29:34
Yeah.
Aaron
00:29:34 – 00:29:36
There's no there's no stopping me.
Ian
00:29:36 – 00:29:41
People, get out there and just do stuff. Okay? How many times do we have to tell you? Just do stuff.
Aaron
00:29:41 – 00:29:43
And and how delightful was it? What a
Ian
00:29:43 – 00:29:43
what a
Aaron
00:29:43 – 00:29:45
great segment. Great segment.
Ian
00:29:45 – 00:29:56
So he was great. I think, I think he was very fair too. I think he made some points about, like, you shouldn't just buy our solution and deck your whole house out with this because that would be ridiculous, he said. And nicer so many
Aaron
00:29:56 – 00:29:59
other places. Ridiculous. Yeah. Yeah. You said ridiculous.
Ian
00:29:59 – 00:30:09
But, yeah, it would be ridiculous. But, and in your case, you probably have access to the stuff. So HVAC guy could probably just come in and make zones, and you'd be fine.
Aaron
00:30:09 – 00:30:15
I am gonna have an HVAC guy come look to make sure that nothing is, like, mechanically broken or just
Ian
00:30:15 – 00:30:16
Could just be broken. That's true too. Yeah.
Aaron
00:30:17 – 00:30:21
The, you know, the whatever. The ducts to my room is is loose or whatever.
Ian
00:30:21 – 00:30:30
Right. So once you know that, you could get an estimate for what it would be to do it their way, and then you could compare. But the idea of maybe doing a couple of rooms and seeing if you can just yourself push it over.
Aaron
00:30:30 – 00:30:39
That was a great idea. That was very obvious when he said it. Like, you don't need to close off the hot rooms to Wi Fi Web. Like, I don't okay. That's a good point.
Ian
00:30:39 – 00:30:41
I like it. And it
Aaron
00:30:41 – 00:30:48
seems it seems like he's one of us. He's talking about he's talking about bootstrapping. He's talking about Reddit. Like, he's the man of the people.
Ian
00:30:48 – 00:31:14
I did have a little bit of a sour post that I deleted, but, because they are they're just they're not actually, like, their background that they claim on their website is that they're from Skype and, you know, Internet startup y companies. Right? Not necessarily HVAC people. But it seems like they've been around like they we didn't get into this. They raised like a series a, like, 2 years ago, so I don't know.
Ian
00:31:14 – 00:31:15
But he said they've been around longer.
Aaron
00:31:16 – 00:31:17
Yeah. We should've dug into the business a
Ian
00:31:17 – 00:31:20
little bit. We could dug into the business a little bit. That's right. He can come in.
Aaron
00:31:20 – 00:31:23
Although, being around for 10 years, pretty good sign.
Ian
00:31:23 – 00:31:27
That is. It's a little weird. They don't talk about their other stuff. I don't know. I I have questions.
Ian
00:31:27 – 00:31:28
Don't get me wrong. I have questions.
Aaron
00:31:28 – 00:31:31
Ian, you're looking for stuff now. You're looking.
Ian
00:31:31 – 00:31:41
But it seems fine. I mean, obviously, if you address the main thing, which is, like, we might be gone tomorrow, and you should factor that in. He was very honest with you. Control these things without us. Right?
Aaron
00:31:41 – 00:31:42
Which also is
Ian
00:31:42 – 00:31:45
a little weird to me. Yeah. Right now.
Aaron
00:31:45 – 00:31:48
They've got the bridge and they're going to do an OTA update at some point.
Ian
00:31:48 – 00:32:06
Right. It's not there yet. So that would be nice. I do think, like, to be totally you know, it's a little different than your vacuum or something like that, which, a, is just less critical, but also, b, I think probably still works. Like, it's not gonna get updates and things like that, but, like, it kinda sound like this system doesn't even work, if they were to go away.
Ian
00:32:06 – 00:32:08
So So that would be probably a problem.
Aaron
00:32:08 – 00:32:08
Like, going to
Ian
00:32:09 – 00:32:11
lock, closed, for open
Aaron
00:32:11 – 00:32:12
I think I read
Ian
00:32:12 – 00:32:13
on a
Aaron
00:32:13 – 00:32:18
on a power failure, like the batteries got, I think they lock open. I think that's their fail safe.
Ian
00:32:18 – 00:32:30
Now I don't know if that's the same as the code being like this Yeah. Connection with the server or whatever. But Yeah. Yes. But it sounds like they're gonna be around long enough at the very least to build their plug and play network bridge that runs in offline mode.
Ian
00:32:31 – 00:32:36
So that would be cool. Another thing to buy. Yeah. So yeah. But
Aaron
00:32:36 – 00:32:37
I'm confused.
Ian
00:32:37 – 00:32:55
I felt that there's a lot of thinking with it, which the other solution has no thing. I literally haven't thought about it in 15 years, and that's that's a lot to be said for that versus this thing. Like, I have an app and I got a thing and then I don't know. But, yes, it's a more reasonable solution, especially if it's a small number of rooms. I think they should change their name to HVACOS.
Ian
00:32:56 – 00:33:03
I think it's way better Cool. Name than flair. Like, yeah, I think that's just a way cooler, more interesting, more direct. Like
Aaron
00:33:03 – 00:33:07
It's not very consumer. HVAC OS is not very consumer.
Ian
00:33:07 – 00:33:11
I don't know, isn't it? I feel like people know what HVAC is. Feel like they know what HVAC is.
Aaron
00:33:11 – 00:33:11
I don't they
Ian
00:33:11 – 00:33:15
don't know what flare is. If I They don't know that. Flare to you, what is that?
Aaron
00:33:15 – 00:33:20
Why would I want an HVAC OS? I'm like, no. I got an ecobee. Yeah. I don't need an HVAC OS.
Ian
00:33:20 – 00:33:22
I don't know what an ecobee is.
Aaron
00:33:22 – 00:33:28
I I got a Nest, let's say. I got a Nest thermostat. I'm a consumer. I got a Nest thermostat. What's an HVAC OS?
Ian
00:33:28 – 00:33:34
No. But I think people are okay. It's like you got your macOS, your iPhone OS. People will hear these terms. Like, my HVAC OS.
Ian
00:33:34 – 00:33:36
This is the OS for my home HVAC.
Aaron
00:33:36 – 00:33:37
Like, that's cool.
Ian
00:33:38 – 00:33:42
Yeah. It's cool. I think they should do that. Hopefully, they're listening to this. Change change your name.
Aaron
00:33:42 – 00:33:48
Oh, you know he's listening because he now we were like, hey. Great. Okay. You can leave. We're gonna talk about you now.
Aaron
00:33:48 – 00:33:49
So, of course, he's listening.
Ian
00:33:49 – 00:33:51
Listen. Gonna bash you. No. We're not bashing.
Aaron
00:33:51 – 00:33:54
You're gonna bash you. I'm not gonna bash you. She's the hero. Yeah.
Ian
00:33:54 – 00:34:04
I didn't even bash. I think I think it was all all very good. So we're gonna release this as a special episode, so but it'll be a little treat in the feed. We'd love to give treats in the feed. That'll be fun.
Aaron
00:34:04 – 00:34:10
Love to give treats in the feed. If there's if there's one thing Ian and I love, it's giving treats in the feed.
Ian
00:34:12 – 00:34:18
Such a good show title. I don't think we can actually use it. It would be so off point, but treats in the feed is a great show.
Aaron
00:34:18 – 00:34:20
Treats in the feed is so deranged.
Ian
00:34:20 – 00:34:30
Maybe that's what we build. When we build our own podcast, like, somehow connected the podcast plat our little podcast ad network or something, treats in the feed. Yeah. I'll be our
Aaron
00:34:31 – 00:34:39
Justin Jackson, if you're listening, I need a checkbox on transistor that just says add treats in the feed. Yeah. Yeah. You can decide you can decide what it does. I just want treats in the feed.
Ian
00:34:39 – 00:34:45
Man. It's a damn good idea. I think we just came up with a business idea right here. No. Treats in the feed.
Aaron
00:34:45 – 00:34:47
Because, you know, you want the seed. It's nothing. No. It's a great
Ian
00:34:47 – 00:34:56
idea because, like, this thing about it. You hate when, like, people you listen to a podcast every week and you get the podcast and you listen to it right away. And then you have nothing to week. It's like, I gotta wait till next week. Yeah.
Ian
00:34:56 – 00:35:05
I do hate that. Don't you love it when 3 days in, there's a treat in the feed? There's, like, oh in the feed. There's a treat in the feed. Yeah.
Ian
00:35:05 – 00:35:06
The random show. Yeah.
Dan
00:35:06 – 00:35:06
Off
Aaron
00:35:06 – 00:35:08
schedule. You're right. You're right. Yeah. It's so good.
Ian
00:35:08 – 00:35:15
It can't be all fun. Then it's not a treat because then it's part of your schedule. Exactly. Once every month or 2. Boom.
Ian
00:35:15 – 00:35:16
Treating the feed.
Aaron
00:35:16 – 00:35:21
Is there any problem we can't solve? Is there any business we can't start? This is crazy.
Ian
00:35:21 – 00:35:21
Treats in
Aaron
00:35:21 – 00:35:22
the feed.
Ian
00:35:22 – 00:35:33
I wish we had the money. This is why I along with movie producer. Right. Investing would be fun too. Because just like, you know, we're just out there sprinkling money, solving problems, just some ideas.
Ian
00:35:33 – 00:35:38
Fun. Yeah. Just like then we go off and do whatever. We're not building solution. We're not talking to customers.
Ian
00:35:39 – 00:35:39
We're just
Aaron
00:35:39 – 00:35:42
get to get, like, claim credit for it whenever it works. I just want
Ian
00:35:42 – 00:35:44
the credit and the money. All I want. And without the Credit
Aaron
00:35:44 – 00:35:50
and the money. I'm a simple man. I just want the credit and the money, not the work for goodness sakes.
Ian
00:35:50 – 00:35:51
The work is terrible.
Aaron
00:35:51 – 00:35:55
Forget the work. Man. Alright. Mostly HVAC. What a good show.
Aaron
00:35:55 – 00:35:56
That was a great show.
Ian
00:35:56 – 00:36:02
It was a good one. Alright. See you all later. See you. Bye.
Me

Thanks for reading! My name is Aaron and I write, make videos, and generally try really hard.

If you ever have any questions or want to chat, I'm always on Twitter.

You can find me on YouTube on my personal channel or the Try Hard Studios channel.

If you love podcasts, I got you covered. You can listen to me on Mostly Technical.