Fortunately for the hydronics industry, and Taco, thousands have come to know Holdorf as Taco’s Eastern Region Product and Application Instructor.

“He may be smiling half the time you’re talking to him, but you’re sure to get some of the best [hydronic] expertise on tap that can be found,” said Keefer Rader, owner of Albuquerque-based Outlaw Mechanical. “With Dave, humor and information live side by side. I really, really enjoy learning from him.”

Holdorf and instructional cohort John Barba, Taco’s Training Director, have made a lifestyle of blending humor with training – mingling technical topics with laughter for many years. Industry-wide, they’ve conspired to take humor mainstream, finding the perfect balance of technical information and comic relief.

 

Learning Together

Fortunately for Holdorf, having fun at his own expense happened early. He recalls his first time leading a training session. “The first couple of classes were just off-the-charts scary. There were friends of mine who remember those classes. They were in the audience,” he said. “And they saw how rattled I was, nervous as could be.

“I was so uncomfortable, feeling inept, and somehow – out of that – a flair for humor grew. The discovery was that I could replace discomfort with fun,” added Holdorf. “Oddly enough, I found that class attendees were engaged, and enjoyed the experience. Miraculously, we were learning and laughing together.

“I love what I do – and the best of it happens when I’m among a group of trade professionals. We laugh, swap stories, and learn. What could be better?” asked Holdorf.

As a residential trainer for Taco who leads dozens of training sessions each year, Holdorf is now part of a six-person, full-time training team at Taco focused on helping customers learn about hydronic systems, large and small.

In addition to his duties as a trainer for the Eastern region, he’s a regular on “Taco After Dark” and “Taco Tuesday” webinars. In a typical month, Holdorf also adds custom classes for wholesalers and rep firms, and will spend several days at Taco’s HQ in Cranston, RI where he and other trainers hold larger, scheduled classes followed by factory tours.

An installer at AHR Expo this year, standing in Taco’s booth, told another customer that, after his “five-star” training sessions with Barba and Holdorf at Taco’s state-of-the-art Innovation & Development Center (IDC), he and other students “went out on the town with Taco escorts to eat and drink like Vikings.” Learning and having fun go together well.

 

Foley: A Best-of-Best Installer

High-profile installer, Dan Foley, owner of Foley Mechanical, Inc., based in Lorton, VA, says that his training experiences at Taco – and more importantly, the experiences of his installers – are “worth every moment.”

Foley added that “Time is our most precious commodity. I’ve learned to focus our efforts on those things with the greatest personal or professional reward. Training with Taco, and specifically with Dave Holdorf and John Barba, among others, are right up there among the best-of-best experiences.”

Holdorf started working in the trades as a teenager when he worked in his family’s machine shop. When he reached his early 20s, Holdorf worked part-time while earning an Associate’s Degree. He enjoyed math and figured engineering would be a good career to pursue, so he enrolled in SUNY Maritime College in New York City.

Four years later, in 1996, he achieved a Bachelor’s Degree in Engineering and also earned a third assistant engineer’s license in the US Coast Guard – allowing him to work on all sizes of diesel- or steam-powered ships – opening the door to a career in hydronics.

After deciding that a career as an engineer, or a life at sea weren’t for him, Holdorf moved into the field full-time, drawing from his education and his machine-shop experience to land a job at SUNY Maritime – leading classes, and running the machine shop. One day a friend called from a business on Long Island who was looking for new college grads to design and support radiant hydronic systems.

“In the mid-'90s, in-floor radiant heat was relatively new here in the United States,” he said. A few years later, as the emergence of PEX tubing created a Renaissance for the hydronic industry, and with the birth of the Radiant Panel Association (now the Radiant Professionals Alliance), there was new energy and excitement in the industry – fertile ground for a young pro, inspired by hydronics.

As his skills grew, he also developed a fondness for training.

“I learned that – with all this information rattling around in my head – I was surprisingly capable of sharing it with others. It's not like I trained to be a trainer. It was just one of those things that came naturally to me, allowing me to get up in front of a room full of trade pros, helping them in ways I still find surprising today.”

These days, Holdorf draws on his practical experience as an engineer to teach students how to disassemble equipment, learn how the moving parts work together, and reassemble them.

“The bigger need is for trade pros to understand the working role of components as part of entire systems,” said Holdorf.

“Hydronics is marvelous in that way,” he added. “If trade professionals come away from my classes with an understanding of how water and steam behave, and know a thing or two about how the technology we build facilitates, improves, manages, and moves thermal energy from place to place – we all win.”

 

Advanced Hydronics at PPATEC

Holdorf has become a cult phenomenon and is now regarded as one of the nation’s best trainers of hydronic trade professionals.

At the Pennsylvania Petroleum Association (PPA), Holdorf has become a leading source of knowledge and training expertise for HVAC professionals throughout the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions.

He leads one of their most popular courses, Advanced Hydronics, and not only wrote the book used for the multi-day course, but also designed the laboratory there used for hands-on training.

His book, Advanced Hydronics, published by NORA (National Oilheat Research Alliance), is a favorite resource among hydronic system technicians.

“We love it when Dave comes to teach. He’s one of our most popular trainers,” said PPATEC’s Alan Mercurio. “He has a special way of keeping a classroom full of technicians engaged and eager to learn.”

According to Holdorf, anyone can put together a bunch of parts and call it a hydronic heating system. But are those parts and pieces selected properly and being used as they were intended? That’s the focus of the advanced hydronics course, intended to take attendees through the decision process, prior to system design.

“I’ve now learned from Dave [Holdorf] on a couple of occasions at PPATEC,” said Eric Love, a technician with HB Home Services, a division of H. B. McClure Company, based in Harrisburg. “He’s a terrific instructor, and very entertaining. He’s one of many reasons I now look forward to more training there.”

“You’ve gotta have fun,” added Holdorf. “We're doing education, but we're also entertaining at the same time, right? It’s the blend that we all enjoy – both the instructor and the class participants – wherever and however the training happens, online, at Taco’s IDC, at a wholesaler’s location, or at PPATEC.

Maybe there’s a lesson in life buried in there somewhere.”