All-Electric HVAC, Reddit Leads & AI Search with Derek Aarstad of DNA Heating and Cooling

The moment that stopped the whole room: Derek estimates three to four of his clients each month come straight from Reddit - and he doesn't post, comment, or manage any of it. He lets it grow organically while homeowners in local HVAC subreddits talk about their experiences with him.

What makes these leads different is how prepared they arrive. By the time a Reddit client calls, they've read the threads, checked his Google reviews, and looked at his website. They already know what they want and they're looking to confirm he checks the boxes. Derek describes the Reddit client as predictable in the best way - if it says Reddit, he knows it's going to be a good experience for both sides, because the homeowner did their homework first.

The mechanism underneath it is reputation depth. When you consistently give people something worth talking about, they talk - and in a local subreddit, one good story compounds fast across a community that's all in the same market. Derek's take is that this is the same dynamic that makes local Facebook groups powerful: a single strong recommendation inside a tight local community can travel a long way.

Here's where it gets forward-looking. Derek noticed Gemini started surfacing his business - and the likely reason is Reddit, since Gemini leans on Reddit content. He's also landed jobs traced back to ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity. All of these tools pull from the same well of community discussion and reviews.

Mark connected the dots on-air: Reddit has become a major data source for AI systems, so having your name circulating across Reddit threads and local Facebook groups isn't just social proof anymore - it's feeding the engines people now use to search. Willie added the community angle from his own market: when someone posts an HVAC question in a local group, he gets tagged by past customers who vouch for him, and that same activity ends up reinforcing his visibility everywhere else.

The practical instruction for owners: you don't control the algorithm, but you control the inputs. Do work worth talking about, accumulate real reviews, and get named in the local communities where your customers already hang out. That's what compounds into both word-of-mouth and AI visibility.

DNA Heating and Cooling is all-electric, and Derek doesn't soften it. He proposes a heat pump replacement for every gas furnace he encounters, and he's upfront that he doesn't want combustion in your house. His website makes the position clear so nobody's surprised - you know exactly what you're dealing with before he shows up. He's also active in electrification networking through the Better HVAC group and Rewire America, which he credits with sending him solid jobs.

A few things make this stance practical rather than preachy in his climate. His flagship cold-climate unit (he cites the Midea Evox G3) holds 100% capacity down to 5°F outdoor ambient in his zone, where winter averages sit around 20°F - enough, in his experience, that it doesn't need a backup heat kit. His entry-level cold-climate models still ship with a heat kit. He'll option systems at 120V or 240V depending on the home and client. If a customer refuses to let go of gas, the only combustion product he's willing to put back is a Navien tankless hydronic setup, which he considers far safer on the carbon-monoxide and corrosion front. And he'll still service, repair, and maintain existing combustion equipment - he just won't install new gas.

Then there's the aspirational end of the catalog: water-source heat pumps. Derek is genuinely excited about above-ground water-source systems (he mentions Space Pack's version and an Italian-made product), describing units that modulate and can heat and cool separate rooms. The catch is cost - he pegs his own cost on a four-ton multi-head water-source system around $16,000, so it takes a special client. His dream job is the one-of-a-kind historic home where he can rip out an old radiator and drop in something outlandishly capable without touching the protected exterior.

If all-electric is the philosophy, combustion analysis is the safety half of it. Derek credits an NCI class taught by David Richardson as one of the biggest gifts of his career - the message being that you shouldn't enter a home with combustion appliances and skip testing them.

His first call after committing to that practice made the point permanently. A homeowner - a friend of his - had a DIY Mr. Cool install cut straight out of the back of the furnace. Derek put his analyzer in and hit 5,000 parts per million right out of the gate, on a system that hadn't even been run yet. He shut it down on the spot. That was the moment he decided he'd never skip combustion testing again.

He's since upgraded to a Novo analyzer with a cracked-heat-exchanger test mode (previously running a CAT 85), and his observation from the field is sobering: 90%+ of the homes he visits have a furnace ten years or older that never had a combustion analysis performed from the day it was installed. Mark backed this up from the other side - in 15 years in the field, he checked for carbon monoxide but never ran a true combustion analysis, and hadn't even heard the term until later.

Derek uses the word boutique deliberately. To him it means a franchise-level consistency of experience - same red-carpet treatment for every client regardless of the home or situation. He arrives with a plan, and the moment he's inside he's reading the environment: thermostat placement, filters, return grills, ready to educate once he's learned the space.

That identity got sharpened at NCI. Flying to Texas for training, he became a member by day two, and for the first time felt like he'd found his people - the room helped him realize he was a high-performance contractor, not just another install shop. He walked out refusing to present himself as anything less.

Staying small is a choice he made the hard way. Derek admits he once had a vision to grow a five-to-ten-person crew and got aggressive about it - and it cost him. He estimates he lost close to $80,000 employing people who didn't take it seriously, some of whom later came after him for unemployment or injury claims. One hire went through a ceiling in his first week after clear instructions, then blamed Derek. The lesson landed: he'd rather stay lean and excellent than big and bleeding.

Willie and Mark pushed the healthy counterpoint - ideally you grow enough that taking a day off doesn't hit the bottom line. On new construction, the panel was unanimous: it's a race to the bottom with no margin, worth it only on custom homes where a builder is putting serious money into the system.

A chat question about losing a bid to a competitor's 10-year labor warranty opened this one up. The panel's answer: get your own. Derek offers either 10-year or 12-year parts-and-labor on everything, and his framing is that price shopping is really a symptom - it means the value of your business didn't get communicated. When a homeowner thinks every company is the same, that's on the presentation, not the customer.

His best illustration is the capacitor objection. A Reddit client's wife had done her homework and came loaded for bear: capacitors are only $30 online, so what's the labor charge? Derek's rebuttal reframed the part entirely - what she researched was the standard, Chinese-made capacitor with a one-year warranty at best, while what he installs carries a five-year replacement warranty, higher voltage capability, and better system performance. She told him to put it in.

For the record, Derek runs Amrad capacitors, and his reasoning is practical as much as quality-driven: he's not carrying 50 capacitors on the van, especially now that he's expected to haul nine different cans of refrigerant. On warranties, he's evolved from one-year labor to three-year to a non-negotiable plan he now pays for himself and doesn't even bill to the client - using JB Warranties for non-Champion products and in-house plans for Champion/Bosch equipment.

Asked for his favorite equipment brand, Derek gave the honest, non-brand-loyal answer. He started on Goodman and doesn't hate the product - his view is that it became a victim of its own accessibility, and that in his area (post-Daikin) it's gotten expensive. He moved to Rheem/Ruud, then had a rough run with Toshiba's Platinum series, reporting coils that looked aged ten years within six months and three systems he had to warranty before Toshiba exited the 410A line. After shaking hands with the Midea team at the AHR Expo, he became a fan, describing their newer products as genuinely service-minded and serviceable.

But the panel's real conclusion - echoing a sharp chat comment from a viewer named John - is that the best brand is properly designed, installed, commissioned, and maintained. Derek put it plainly: he's not married to any brand and would switch tomorrow if it meant treating his clients and himself better. Willie and Mark reinforced that the best brand is effectively geographic - if your distributor is great, the brand matters less; if your distributor is terrible, no badge saves you.

On the manufacturer side, Derek was blunt about Carrier and Trane in his market - citing poor communication, expensive OEM parts, and painful warranty processes. Two things actually separate good shops from bad ones: install by the book (quality is non-negotiable), and own your callbacks - shops that vanish for two or three weeks on a warranty claim are the ones that lose trust.

CRM: Derek has run House Call Pro since day one and calls it one of his best moves. He's clear he doesn't want to grow into Service Titan territory - partly on values, partly on cost (he pegs Titan at roughly 10x House Call Pro's price), and partly because he's heard how hard it is to leave once the hooks are in. The panel's shared frustration: the constant flood of DMs and emails from people pitching a new game-changing HVAC CRM or AI answering service.

Warranties: JB Warranties for non-Champion products; Champion/Bosch in-house plans for their equipment, which Derek says are aggressively priced and honored well. He praised JB's turnaround on a unit swap - replacement air handler fast, client down only a couple hours, paid within about a week.

Field gear: A Novo combustion analyzer (with cracked-heat-exchanger test mode) that ships in a heavy-duty foam-cutout case, Amrad capacitors, and MeasureQuick for keeping his apprentice dialed in. He keeps a system so anyone behind him can duplicate the work - open line of communication, FaceTime and inspection-camera check-ins, and training videos sent to keep techs sharp without making them feel judged.

The most human stretch of the episode - and worth reading if you're carrying the weight of a one-person shop.

A year before this taping, Derek broke his foot at the end of June. As a one-man operation, he panicked about losing clients and the business grinding to a halt. Instead, that July became one of his strongest months ever - without him setting foot in the field. It was the eye-opener that proved the business could stand on its support system, and it reset how he thinks about his role.

He was candid about the mental-health side. Coming from an anti-medicine mindset, Derek had to get vulnerable and accept that he needed help for a stretch - using it as a temporary tool to stop stacking every problem on top of each other until it imploded. He credits local men's groups (he'd drive one to two hours to sit with like-minded people) and a broader principle the whole panel kept returning to: you become the sum of the people around you, so surround yourself with people who build you up, not antagonizers who drain you. Or, as the recurring line in HVAC IS LIFE goes - go where you're celebrated, not where you're tolerated.

Mark named the business stakes directly: when you're burned out and skip your own maintenance, it spills into every customer interaction - you get short, you snap over something small, and you start burning the business you broke yourself to build.