Well, hello, everyone um - i am! This is caleb with hvac school, i'm here with kevin hart at haven ieq. Actually, i want to um, let you introduce yourself and then sort of like talk a little bit about what haven is because i think, there's a little bit of confusion on what there was you guys went by a different name. Yes yeah we did. We used to be called zoa, so first of all, i'm kevin hart, i'm the ceo of haven.

We have rebranded completely to haven, and i've been doing this for eight years. Prior to that, i was a journeyman red seal electrician in the trades, mostly in construction, and saw an opportunity to protect workers, health, and so actually there was a third name. We started out as clad, which was a protective sheathing that would protect workers from air quality issues, crystalline silica dust and that evolved gradually into zoa, which was a personal wearable. Air quality monitor and then finally haven was the ability to protect ourselves inside of our homes and buildings and so haven, literally the meaning of it.

If you, google, it is a place of safety or refuge, and so we really think about our vision as being in the future. This world, where every building is healthy, safe, comfortable and increasingly it needs to be resilient, and that's really the vision that we have for the company yeah. That's awesome so like how what's your approach on then how to do that? How to create that safe haven. The mission yeah so um peter drucker, you know, would typically say repeatedly that you can't manage what you can't measure and so what we've realized, especially with air quality, as well as heating and cooling, is that there are invisible parameters in the air that we need to Control, and in order to do that, we need to know what those parameters are.

You can't see small particles in the air, you can't see chemicals in the air and often even humidity levels are not known to us, and so our approach first of all, is we need data in order to be able to manage the health and safety and comfort Inside of homes - and we have thermostats but thermostats are not quite expansive enough right. Just that sensible temperature on the wall has absolutely nothing to do with how we actually feel yes right or the health of the air yeah. I mean the ring the the mean radiant temperature is important, even the surfaces of your window. Do you have a single pane? Do you have a triple pin window? I mean these are important things to understand when it comes to comfort, holistically um, and so really our mission is and there's two two trains of thought here and we've been pioneering a second train of thought um.

But the first train of thought is that if we need sensors to be able to detect air quality, heating and cooling, we need lots of. Sensors everywhere needs to be decentralized, every room needs to have a bunch of sensors, and so that's been kind of the prevailing thought about how this will play out. Yeah we've been pioneering when it comes to monitoring a completely different approach, which is actually you only need a central way to monitor through a set of sensors that are in the central system of our heating and cooling equipment. And so that's a very different approach.

And it's it's really unfamiliar to a lot of people, but if you can fundamentally measure everything one air handler one zone and often that covers the entire home, that is actually a much better way to know what is happening holistically without getting a lot of false positives. Of oh i'm cooking, i'm cleaning, i'm breathing too close to the sensor, and so that right the co2 is high and we need to turn equipment on. We need to bring out doran yeah. Those are those are false, positives that can be avoided absolutely and for context.

Uh for those listening, um breathing too close to the sensor and stuff we're referencing like counter top monitors, which is probably what most people are used to right. But you guys have approached things like you said holistically, so walk us through a little bit about what that's like and um, and because it's really difficult, because people don't have a reference point for that. You know their only reference point is something that they stick on their counter and then they leave it alone, or maybe it flashes a couple different lights, um. So what what have you guys done to approach things holistically, yeah yeah? What we've done so there are.

These desktop countertop devices and i would consider them to be consumer devices. They have fans inside, they move the air, they detect the air, but you need to know where to place it, and then you need to plug it in and really you can get these off best buy or amazon. These are available to consumers at a low cost and what we see is they typically don't last more than three six twelve months because they get just like a filter, clogged full of dust and then they no longer operate properly. And so the approach we've taken more holistically, if you can imagine installing a uv bulb inside of a ducted system on the evaporator coil or if you could imagine a humanist being inside of the duct measuring humidity.

This is very similar in that there's a hole. There's a probe that gets inserted into the duct and then there are a fusion of different sensors around nine different sensors that are detecting air velocity that are detecting the temperature pressure, uh, the chemicals and particles and in the air in real time. And so, as your system kicks on, you can imagine that your returns throughout your home are pulling air from multiple different areas. Your living room, your kitchen, your bedroom and you're, getting to see that sort of holistic picture of what's happening, um, and so this.

This is the approach that we've been pioneering in the industry. Yeah, that's great and i've had the good fortune and privilege of installing several of these types of devices in multiple applications, and it is it's it's really interesting. If you're not familiar with it, you it's like you said you drill a hole into the duct, it's it's an invasive procedure, but then, once it's there, you know you had talked about. You know the lifespan of a lot of these consumer devices, um they're, fairly short, because they have internal fans that collect dust they generate heat, which then alters the properties of the sensors themselves, and you guys have done away with all of those things because you're utilizing The fan that's already in existence inside the hvac system, so it's a passive it's a passive unit.

Yes yeah, we say solid state passive, yes, there's no moving parts and what that means is when it comes to heating and cooling. You want things to last. For years. Multiple years, five years, 10 years, maybe 15 years - and so we're trying to take an approach that can be extended, because if we install this and it's professionally installed, it's not a consumer device.

We do want to be able to detect and control. Eventually we'll. We can talk about the control side of things, but we do want to be able to have a piece essentially of the system that can then modulate the system, and that can't be something that only lasts for 12. Months has to ideally last for five years.

10 years and and to be able to eventually detect issues, happening issues happen seasonally they happen diurnally, and so it can't be this 30 minute spot check anymore. It has to be this ongoing detection, exactly yeah, and so the way you guys have approached this entire problem. You know of of creating a haven inside of people's homes. You you mentioned.

How can you manage what you can't, what you're not measuring right or somewhere, i paraphrased yep, but you guys started with the measurement and that's i can't i can't stress to our listeners how important that is, because, if you're, if you're, not measuring you're just guessing - and That's a large part of what people are doing these days, they're they're, throwing box products at problems that are supposed to solve. You know into air quality or allergies. Things like that, and people aren't really understanding that this every environment, people don't live in their homes. The same way that their neighbor does so it's all custom, so you have to be able to have this constant monitoring to really then move into how you customize your controls and from what i understand you guys have now launched recently in this past, like this october.

Right in 2021, um a control, a controller yeah talk a little bit about that yeah. So we did we launched it in october and you know i think it's a pretty logical progression of thoughts when you have a lot of data and you're. Looking at this data - and you see okay, there are a lot of chemicals off-gassing in this home or maybe there's a party being thrown in that home and they need more outdoor air and you start seeing. Oh, if i were uh that homeowner i'd probably want to be boosting my erv to get more air changes.

The thing is that most homeowners, even if you tell them to do it, they're not going to walk upstairs and and flip the switch into boost. We can't remember to put the bath fan on when we're taking a shower exactly, and so what you know. What we've realized is it's great to have information. That really is the first step, but if we can't actually enact a change on behalf of a homeowner, then it's probably not going to improve and really we're focused on improving the indoor environment, um and - and we've been thinking lately, that we really don't want people to Change their lives to have a healthy home, we want to change their air and not their lifestyle, and so that that's really one of our philosophies, and so this controller is, if you think, about commercial, they have demand controlled ventilation, and this, in a sense, is if You have ventilation equipment.

We can turn on that piece of equipment into a higher speed mode to get more outdoor air to get more air changes based on that controller being able to toggle it with a relay and so really simply it's just a couple of dry contact relays. Just like a thermostat, and it can turn the central air handler on with the g, just the fan, which surprisingly consumes a very small amount of power overall about a couple light bulbs and that can really change the indoor environment. Mixing the air - and this is one of the key things that that we have learned with this controller - is some homes and because we're detecting air, airflow and air velocity some homes could be stagnant. There could be no air moving for hours, yeah and in some cases, weeks or even months, because their set point is satisfied due to being in a moderate climate, yeah, absolutely and and another thing that it's doing is it's pushing that air through those filters and filtering The air making sure that it's you're getting more passes through um, but i do want real quick before we move on to the next thing, um for those listening homeowners who are just now tuning in to to really and getting to know what haven is um.

You guys, from my understanding, are still not pushing this as a box product. You can't just install this and then leave it alone. It's constantly interactive because you could install it into a system. That's not very airtight.

The the ductwork is is not airtight and so you're going to get a lot of. They might bring on the the fan, with the g call, but you're going to have a lot of bypass through the filter, because your your your ducts aren't sealed. But there are ways that that that your monitor is going to be able to talk to us and we can extrapolate some of that data, especially with your hvac professional, to then make decisions on okay. How do we then further our uh our system to be the most effective? It can be exactly yeah, so there's kind of three points of what we do the first is we identify those issues and opportunities through what we call diagnostics of the indoor air quality number.

Two is we want to be able to control, we want to be able to automate improvements to the best of our ability to try to troubleshoot, what's happening and try to fix what's happening, but that third point you just mentioned is we want to make data-driven recommendations And keep the homeowner on the same page and that's important. It's what we've been focused on and - and i have struggled through parts of the rebrand to balance. How do we straddle this line between homeowners and contractors? Because really we want to build trust between them yeah and we want to be able to use the data to almost be a bridge to say. Oh, the homeowner has the same information that that the technician or contractor has to be able to now say.

Yes, you do have this filtration problem that you just pointed out. Now both parties have the same information, it's easier to make a decision to move forward. I think that's an incredible step forward, because there is this, this massive gap between the technician and the homeowner they're. They, you know we're looked at as scum of the earth.

Basically we're always trying to you know and there's a lot of it out there. Trying to you know con the the homeowner into buying something that they don't need or upselling a product. That's you know, may or may not work to begin with, so consumer education is a big thing in our industry and what you guys have basically done is you've, packaged it up and said here we want to empower you guys we're not trying to hide anything from You we want you to see what we're seeing and help us. You know collaborate with us to to make the best decision for your home and for your health yeah, exactly yeah, um and uh, so yeah.

The homeowner is an important piece of this, and, through the rebrand we really tried with haven to be able to bridge the gap between the two and uh. What what you'll see more from us in the future is being able to send reports to the homeowner being able for the professional to download reports and what we're seeing is that almost uh every year there's one issue: there's one opportunity that comes up. There's we're seeing right now is humidity because it's winter, because it's dry we're seeing that there are homes where and we've actually made mistakes with this there's this sort of dogma around 50 relative humidity and so there's a lot of humidistats that are set to 50 during The winter during the winter, oh yeah you'll get that window condensation because again the homeowner you know, should change it. Theoretically, where somebody should be changing if there's a service contract, they should be changing that, because you have those now cold surfaces and you've got high humidity.

You're going to have condensation on those surfaces and then you could have mold growth or other problems, and so we we're seeing that with our controls. It has to be adaptive, adaptive being seasonal changes or outdoor uh weather based changes to the control scheme, and it has to be personalized because, like you pointed out, every home is different, every family is different, somebody has single, pin, windows and, and maybe their insulation is Not as tight the building envelope is not as tight as another home right and so one home could maintain a higher humidity without issues due to that, so yeah controls need to be adaptive and personalized. This is a this is a question you know sort of like more from me like on the geeky side um so like is there a future where haven could possibly then interact with the outside air quality reports that are localized in the area and then do comparative Analysis and also then also communicate with weather satellites to then drop in that sort of information so that it's not it's not necessarily a generalized. You know climate season sort of thing that it's it's actually taking in information in real time, uh based on where you live.

Yes, yes, we so we already have the outdoor weather data and we just need to pull it in through our software to be able to we're building a rules. Engine automation system, within our back end of our software, to be able to pull that type of information and then look at, for example, dewpoint and then be able to make smart controls decisions and or say there's a forest fire outside and or there's some sort of Outdoor air quality event that we need to now modulate the controls based on that, and so really, if you think about the future - and we have climate change and we have all these natural disasters that are happening, we need to be able to turn the controls from This fixed sort of manual switch to something that is intelligent. That can now ensure, because again it's the comfort, the health, the safety and we saw heat domes in vancouver where hundreds of people died, because they didn't have working air conditioning and then resilience, because these events are just gon na keep occurring every single year yeah. No, i like what you just said there with the on and off switch because for a long time, and even still a lot of people's hvac is operating as an on and off switch.

That's what your thermostat is. It's just an on and off switch um, and so that's when you you get into the evolution of hvac technology. Where you have. You know inverter technology and you know vrf mitsubishi.

You know uh mini splits and things like that. But and so then it sort of modulates, it goes with the load and what you guys are doing is you know the vision is to then because the house and the home the building, it's a system of systems, and you want to basically orchestrate all of these Systems together, modularly and and in this great big orchestra piece so that they're working together and it's not just an on and off switch, so you're, getting hot cold, hot, cold or humid. You know arid humid, arid yep and, and our company is looking for the expertise and some of the audience listening right now has some of the expertise on controls and operations. There's not surprisingly, not a lot of people who know how to operate a system, especially holistically.

As the the home as a system, and so we've luckily through this audience, met people like jim bergman or allison, bales or other people that have told us here are some secrets: the controls, here's let's go into the building science and, let's really understand, what's happening, and, Let's build some intelligent controls, and so i would also just say if anyone's listening and they have a lot of knowledge about controls. We would love to talk to you as well awesome. So, what's next, what's next for haven, i understand that there is a and you're expanding into remote. Hvac diagnostics.

Yes yeah! This is actually the first time we've announced this um. We are realizing uh. Two two things really first is that indoor air quality is still seen even despite covet. It's really still seen as this luxury accessory and it's sort of seen as an afterthought to what people do as their core business, which is heating and cooling, and we've also seen secondarily, that comfort and health really are intrinsically linked.

They're, not mutually exclusive. So if you have a comfortable home, it probably has better indoor air quality, because the mixing of the air is going to be fundamentally better. The building envelope, all the components of getting a comfortable home, end up being really important for the air quality in the home, and that may sound counterintuitive. And it did for me for a while.

But i started seeing over time in the data that a well-built, heating and cooling system and building envelope would better control indoor air quality. They really are linked and you can throw the best filter in a home. You can put some of the best. You know air cleaning technology in a home, but fundamentally, if that heating and cooling system, you know if the duct system isn't put together properly, if building envelopes, not sealed, you are still going to have issues regardless exactly and so because of that we are branching out Into having this heating and cooling temperature data give us insights into what is happening in the home and so there's a comfort in the home that we are now tracking and we're going to be launching features over the next few months and throughout this whole year.

That look at the homeowners comfort, what is normally comfortable for them, which is relatively subjective, and so we're going to be looking at that and then looking for deviations in comfort and being able to inform the heating and cooling technician and ask the homeowner. If there is an issue with the heating and cooling system, fundamentally, that's one part of it. The second part of it. With our controllers, we've realized we can actually put the w or the y of heating and cooling into our controller as a diagnostic and so to do remote, troubleshooting we're able to look at the slew rate or the slope of the temperature increasing or decreasing.

When we know, there's heating or cooling call, and we can look at the velocity of a heating or cooling call, which is different than a fan call or when the system is off, and so we now have the data and the control means to be able to Understand if somebody's heating and cooling system potentially has a problem, that's relevant to do a service call. Oh, that's fascinating. I would love to uh to pick your brain a little bit more like maybe on another one, where we can get a little bit more in depth and whenever you guys are, are able to release some more information on that that'd be good yeah, we'll geek out On that, so so what are some um some predictions? You know how will high tech capabilities you know, shape the hvac industry as a whole yeah. This is something we think about a lot.

There are oems now equipment manufacturers that make heating and cooling equipment and they're starting to put these heating and cooling diagnostics into the equipment into this brand new high-end communicating systems. It will tell you if there's an issue and it will try to help diagnose that issue and then there's a dealer dashboard, where dealers are now able to see that the this heating and cooling issue exists within their customer base and that's great and it's only relevant To a subset of new installs that are the high-end systems right and then we also know that contractors, they typically have more than one brand of equipment that they install and so now you're thinking about. Only a small subset of my uh customers are going to have a dashboard with this data in it. And if i have two brands now, i have to have two dashboards exactly for two subsets that are only a small fraction of my customers and so what we're? Really trying to do is create a retrofittable agnostic platform, so any brand any piece of equipment could be used, so they can roll this out throughout their entire customer base, not just with a subset, and so what we see in the future is that oems will continue To come out with these hvac diagnostics, and what we expect will eventually happen is this: will kind of culminate into one platform that is able to uh be relevant across your entire customer base, because, if you're an hvac contractor, you really want to be able to manage Your customers, in an entirely different way, i mean this is the future.

This is what i get excited about, is let's manage our homeowners and and even eventually, commercial customers completely differently using this data, yeah there's a lot of remote diagnostics. That can you know, that's! That's the future. I mean we're already seeing a little bit of that today. Um i i'm excited about it.

I think that i think that haven is on the cutting edge of that and i'm excited to see where it goes yeah if there's any oems as well, that want to work with us we're open to doing that. Awesome, cool thanks, kevin thanks. So much yeah.