Being Creative in a New and Challenging Sheet Metal Fabrication Environment

The shop has been busy the last few months and that has left little time for updating the blog and twitter on a regular basis. I figured I would update what's been going on in this micro world of business that we play around in daily. The overall business environment for us has improved since this time last year and I would expect that to continue into 2012. However, the environment that is improving is also changing, for the better and I hope this can continue into the future for us as a business.

Gone are the days of knowing a house foundation will be poured and ready in the month of May, the job scheduled for sometime there after and solid work locked in for a few months. That has changed to a more streamlined, get in, get out mentality for our tiny little company. One that has helped us change small things and set proper boundaries that may not have existed in the past.

We have done better this year as a sub-contractor rather than the company going out and landing the new house being built around the corner. We have gotten the word out to small plumbers and builders that we are a niche fabrication company that can come in, measure, fabricate and install a small residential change-out quickly and for a quality fee. This benefits us and them, along with keeping cost down for both and upping the potential job flow. We are finishing more jobs for a reasonable fee rather than a few home runs throughout the year.

Some are reluctant to give us a try and others seem to like the fact that they can let us do our job while they are setting up another job somewhere else. The new agreements, as stated earlier, have kept our cost down and our business up while being on each job for a shorter amount of time. We hope that this can continue into 2012 and maybe be our main focus through the next few years as our more niche clientele grows.

Most of our business to business customers are finicky and getting them on board with a new idea can be challenging. They want to keep as much in house as anyone else might, but the positives seem to be outweighing the negatives. We are finding that in the slower and pickier environment we find ourselves in these days, finding new and easier ways to do business are becoming the norm.

Creativity is key going forward...

Improving The Efficiency & Life of Your Forced Air Heating & Cooling System

Many homes in the United States with forced air heating and cooling have duct work that is old and in need of repair or replacement. Most of these homes have had new furnaces installed over the years, but not the duct work, which would improve the efficiency of new units and keep them running longer. Many houses have duct work that is either too small or too big, installed improperly or not to code and is eating into the efficiency of those new furnace and air conditioning systems.

Here are a few issues we have run into over the years when it comes to forced air heating and cooling systems. These are common installer mistakes or problems in regards to the duct work for heating and air conditioning systems in your home.

Heating and cooling runs off the end cap

When you go into your basement and look at the main trunk line of your duct system, are there heat runs coming off the end caps of your main trunk? If so, this is something that should be checked and more than likely changed.

When your trunk line is not properly capped off, you lose the necessary pressure to send the air flow throughout the rest of the home. If you have lower flows of air in certain rooms of your house, especially upstairs, this could be the reason for those issues. It is a common problem and can be changed by a duct professional who specializes in duct work and sizing your systems. Many times you don't need to replace the whole system because those few runs off the ends of the duct could be re-routed and the main duct capped off at a reduced cost.

Your forced air heat runs may be too small

Over the years the furnace has gone through many changes and so have the methods in which duct work has been installed. Most furnace installations require at least 6" round pipe runs off your main trunk and sometimes larger depending on the furnace unit and size of the home. However, some homes built in the1950's and 1960's were fitted with smaller systems and 4" or 5" heat runs. These runs coupled with today's furnace can present problems with efficiency and life of your new HVAC units.

Increasing those runs to a proper 6" run and checking to make sure your duct is sized properly can help to improve your furnace efficiency and life span. If you are in the process of getting a new heating unit you may want to get a quote for proper sizing and installation of new duct work.

Is the duct system undersized?

Going along with the above tip, some main duct systems are undersized from the start and should be completely replaced to help with efficiency of the furnace. These  systems were either not installed by a professional or the new unit was retrofitted to an already existing duct system that was rated for the previous furnace. The new furnace may either be too big or too small for the existing duct work and because of this, certain rooms in the house my be neglected of proper air flow. This means that you may notice a room is too cool in the winter or too warm in the summer or possibly multiple rooms end up having these same problems. It may be that your duct system needs to be re sized to the new heating or cooling unit you now have installed. Newer units are made to run very efficiently, but an undersized full ducting system can harm the life of your newly installed,  efficient and money saving furnace.

Conclusion

These are a few of the common problems we find when replacing furnaces  in older homes. We will often make note and offer a free quote to the customer for minor changes or complete replacement of their duct system.

Having a brand new efficient, cost cutting forced air heating and cooling unit installed is great for your new or existing home. Recognizing and making sure that your duct system is sized and installed properly can guarantee that your investment will run great for it's lifetime.

For a few examples of our installations click here

Markets Crushed Again Today

From Bloomberg.com

I follow the markets pretty close and buy and sell for my own accounts. The markets performance over the last few weeks has been dismal and unless the government gets their act together, it doesn't feel like it will be easing anytime soon. The only solace is the possible relief in the prices of gasoline and other commodities. A drop in our current metal prices could benefit us into the end of the year if business slows because of these moves in the major markets.

The Reality Is We Are a MICRO Sheet Metal Shop/Business

I stumbled on this video today and it reinforced the fact that we are a MICRO shop. The amount of duct that some companies can produce in such a short time is mind boggling. A straight section of trunk duct form beginning to end takes me roughly 8 to 10 minutes. I have heard that companies, like the one in the video, can produce that same section in under 10 seconds. It has become tougher and tougher to keep a shop like ours going because of this gap in production time and more importantly cost of production. Another problem is, most of the work available is commercial in nature and far too involved for a company like mine. Therefore, we are left to pick up the scraps of much smaller commercial work and of course, residential (our bread and butter). But residential and home owner projects seem to be fading more and more even though the housing market has "bottomed". 

Walking this line of keeping the shop smaller in size or taking out loans and making it bigger is a scary proposition. The lack of motivated workers and young people in the field is also something that can be worrisome. Shops like ours will always be needed, but if work can't at least sustain the owner and his family, then smaller shops will continue to fall and go out of business.

Getting Back into The Social Swing

As the summer continues to heat up, so does business and little time for keeping up on social media. However, I have come to realize that more and more businesses and people are migrating to many platforms and ways of communicating. K & E has had a twitter account and blog for a short time and keeping them up to date can be a challenge. So, that's why I have created a posterous account to try and get the word out over multiple platforms in one swing. I hope to post more pictures and musings, trying to get a quality foothold on social media in the business world, help us create more business and help customer relations. Below are the social media outlets we are currently using. Follow us!

• kemetal.blogspot.com
• twitter.com/KE_Metal
• kesheetmetal.tumblr.com
• kemetal.posterous.com

Photos of Some Recent Custom HVAC Fabrication

Here are a few photos of some recent fabrication that has left the shop. Business has been slower but not totally dead.

The first photo was an order for two 25 x 16 to 25 x 10 cold air boots (aka buffalo boots). These are as common as plenums and trunk duct when it comes to installing a forced air furnace. These are for a retro-fit change out in town.

The next photo is a basic plenum, customized with a flat top instead of a normal plenum style cap that would recess 1/2" down inside the top of the box. The customer needed a flattened top for this particular installation.

The last photo is a small order of trunk duct and some small fittings.

Nothing fancy, just a few photos showing the kind of work we do on a daily basis. All of these items are custom made and are what keeps the shop moving along. We concentrate on the residential market consisting of smaller HVAC companies and homeowners with some work coming from very small commercial clients.

Check us out at : www.kesheetmetal.com

Related articles

• When My Air Ducts Smell how do I Make Them Smell Better (brighthub.com)

Sheet Metal Prices Continue to Rise, Hurt Margins

Our input costs are quickly rising. The load of metal I received Friday afternoon was the highest metal has been in over three years and until oil and other commodities stop rising, I see no end. A 25% increase in our metal price since the end of the fourth quarter 2010 is a tough pill to swallow. This scenario is a killer for our business because
of how small we are and the type customers that we service. With business being steady to slow, the chances of just going out and getting more work is a fool's errand at this point because it just isn't there. Competition for jobs is tough and the bigger companies are cutting prices to keep their employees working and we just can't compete in the bidding process. We live on the scraps from these bigger jobs and the less of them there are, the less scraps to go around.

A main advantage of being a giant corporation is that you can lock in costs when the opportunity presents itself and even hedge those positions if possible. This advantage is magnified in scenarios of rising input costs. This doesn't mean that they are totally out of the woods when prices rise, but they definitely have a better chance of surviving than small businesses or micro businesses like ours.

As a micro business we can only afford to buy so much material at any given time, which can be challenging as it is. The most I may purchase in a given week is 40-60 sheets of metal, less when sales are slow. This is not near enough to lock in any type of pricing with supply houses who have order minimums and means that we are at the mercy of the current market. The fact is, we can only keep prices at certain levels for a small amount of time in these situations. These costs are passed on to the customer almost as soon as we see the prices start to tick upwards. As much as it hurts to do so and may hurt sales more, it's the only thing a micro business like ours can do to stay alive.

We try to keep our customers as informed as we can in these situations and most are very accepting of why prices may be rising. All we can do at this point is track our costs closely and see where we can save some money and keep the customers costs down. However, without sheets of metal we have no business, so cutting costs elsewhere is a must and its what we will do if necessary. On the flip side and even more important, if we have no customers to buy that metal we have no business.

The next few months entering the summer cooling season should be interesting.