Looking for Air Duct Cleaning In Las Vegas?
Getting to Know Alphonso Ernandez
Alphonso was born and raised in Mexico and has lived in Las Vegas for the past 8 years. He joined the Air-Care team over 6 years ago.
Alphonso is an expert at filter manufacturing, assembling both gold and silver frame flters. His favorite aspect of working at Air-Care is how well he and the other employees are taken care of.
When he’s not producing filters here at Air-Care, he enjoys playing soccer and spending time with his family.
Difference between our two online ordering systems
by Melanie Sands, Customer Service
We have received a few questions lately on the difference between our various websites and what they offer our customers. The two websites you may use are www.air-care.com and our online contractor price sheet. They both have different features and different uses.
We set up the ordering system on www.air-care.com as a website that only our customers can access through a secure log in. This is where you go to order all Electrostatic Air Filters, chemicals and a few other products such as solid odor kill, quiet breeze, and UV lights.
Air-Care.com is our main public website and anyone can see information on here about our business and what we offer, but the public does not have access to the ordering area; that is only reserved for our customers. We assign our customers a login and password at the time we set them up to order online.
Electrostatic air filters must be ordered online or via fax, but equipment, supplies, parts & accessories may be ordered online or via phone.
Air-Care.com is also where we keep a map of contractors that we currently do business with and refer homeowners to this site to locate someone in their area that can do the services for them.
Within the last year or so, we made a decision to save some money, and a few trees, and embraced the Internet by posting our entire product catalog on our online contractor price sheet. This is not just a site to view products; we took the extra step to make it possible for you to see detailed information about all our products and even order them online. This gives you the ability to order anything online at anytime.
Some products on the site require you to register for the site in order to see the prices. This protects you as the contractor from your potential or past customers seeing how much you paid for items that you re-sell to them.
After you register, we must authorize your account in order for you to gain access to the prices of those specific products you might resell to your customers. All other prices are visible without the need for registration.
Even if you don’t choose to order items via our online contractor price sheet, it is still useful in helping you see detailed information about our products including pictures. Additionally, there is a very useful search feature that allows you to find products by name, description and/or part number.
We encourage you to take some time and familiarize yourselves with both sites. You are more than welcome to contact us with any questions or suggestions; input from our customers is always appreciated.
The Possibility of Heavy Debris in Ducts of New Homes
by Nate Hollembaek, Service Manager
Have you ever been out on a service call and had a customer say, “This house was just built a couple years ago, I doubt there’s anything in the ducts.”?
I’ve been in the duct cleaning industry for ten years and I have lost count how many times I have heard that. That’s when you begin to explain the construction process to the customer and describe to them what goes on during that time.
You have to remind them that the duct system is one of the very first things to go in after the house has been framed. So while you’ve got a brand new duct system in a house, you’ve got drywall dust, texture, paint, carpet and wood floor sanding creating sawdust particles to contaminate the duct system.
Over the years I have been appalled as to what construction workers will throw down a duct. I’ve seen chewing tobacco thrown down into the boot of a duct, old cigarettes that someone smoked, put out and threw down the duct. And most commonly, a drywall worker that empties his texture gun down a duct. Now, this is not the case in every single new construction home, there are contractors that will make a very conscious effort to protect the duct system during construction.
Most commonly in higher end homes they do a fairly good job protecting the duct system. Tell your customers that for peace of mind, no matter how new their home is, it is always a good idea to clean their duct system. Then you’ll know, and they will know that there is nothing in their ducts that is contaminating their indoor air.
If you have complaints of a customer that tells you their house is new but they just can’t seem to get a white powder dust under control, it is most likely that they have sheet rock dust coated throughout their duct system. A thorough duct cleaning will take care of that problem and perhaps a higher quality air filter. Use new construction as an opportunity to create new business and create flyers to market to new construction developments to inform people of what could be in their duct systems.
Another way to generate business is to network with contractors in your area about what you do. Tell them you would like to clean the duct systems of every house they build so there are no problems in the future with people who purchase their homes that might be sensitive to contaminants in the air.
Multiple Residential Systems In One Location
by Wayne Tracy, Operations Manager
I hear over and over again from air duct cleaning contractors that commercial projects are too big or complicated to take on. I feel the bigger the better, and believe me it is very true. What would you rather retrieve from your mailbox: a $300.00 check or a $3,000.00 or even a $30,000.00 check? I’m sure the answer is obvious to everyone.
While there are more requirements and obstacles to overcome on a commercial project, you simply charge to overcome them. If larger or more duct cleaning equipment is needed the cost of this will usually be recovered from the profits of the job. If you do not have enough employees or you work alone, don’t worry about it – just contact a temporary employment agency.
Using a temp agency for employees is usually quick and easy. They’ll provide laborers to help you with the job at costs in the $11.00 to $15.00 an hour range. These costs include the workers pay, payroll taxes, and workers comp insurance. You just pay the flat hourly rate with no payroll responsibilities. To save a few dollars, have the workers meet you at the job site so you don’t have to pay traveling time from your office to the job site.
If you’re concerned about your abilities and level of knowledge in doing a large job, don’t let that be an obstacle. We have been providing commercial service in the Las Vegas Market for almost 30 years. If you purchased or are purchasing equipment from us we’ll walk you through the quoting and steps of the job from beginning to end. We’ve done commercial work valued at $300 to almost $300,000 over the years, and never blink an eye at how large a project may be. As I mentioned earlier, the bigger the job the better.
In many cases large commercial jobs can be as simple as a lot of residential style systems under one roof. When a large office building has multiple air handling systems they usually are as easy to do as a residential job. It just means that you may have 5, 10, 20 or more residential systems all under one roof. It’s a lot easier to drive to one location and do a multi-system building than drive all over the city to get 5 or 10 residential jobs.
Larger commercial buildings such as hospitals, schools, hotels, etc. may not hire you to do the whole building at one time. But, they do need contractors to take care of parts of the building as problems arise. Some may only contact you once a year or so to provide duct-cleaning services, but you want to be their contractor of choice. If you’re not, someone else will be. Be sure you contact and stay in touch with the building engineering department so they know you exist.
Don’t forget – our support is only a phone call away.
We’ve Got Some Exciting Webinars Coming Up
by Mary Dziak, Marketing Manager
Part of what sets us apart from other air duct cleaning manufacturers is our level of commitment to education and training.
In order to continue this important aspect of our business, we have developed a webinar schedule and would like to invite you to participate.
The webinars will usually last about 30 minutes and focus on how to get started in the air duct cleaning business. Each webinar will focus on a particular industry such as carpet cleaners or HVAC technicans and will be followed by a live Q&A session so you can ask questions. All you need is a computer with a connection to the Internet and speakers or headphones so you can hear the audio.
View the webinar schedule on our website and be sure to let us know if there is a particular topic you would like us to cover. We are always open to suggestions from our customers because our goal is to make you more successful.
New Energy Saving Products and Services Coming Soon
by Richard Papaleo, President
Well it won’t be long and the kids will be back in school, the summer vacations will be over and then you can look forward to the fall which typically brings an increase in business.
This is the time to contact your existing customers and introduce the pre-winter cleaning of their air systems and advertize for new customers. So go get them and push hard to make this a good year.
I try to share with all of you any new products we are developing and getting ready to release. We have been working for months on some very exciting new products and services related to energy savings which every consumer has a vested interest in. This is just a teaser to let you know what we are working on.
We are developing products and services to address energy loss in residential and commercial buildings. This will allow you an additional profit center and increase your sales. There are three areas we plan to cover.
We are still developing the marketing approach for these new services and training. When we get closer to launching these you will be advised.
Like with all of our other products, we are committed to making these new products affordable and maintain a high margin of profit for you. I told you this was a teaser and I hope it gets you thinking about the potential this can give us all. I will keep you up to date as we get closer to the release date.
Thanks for you support.
