The ACHR NEWS sat down with Randy Roberts, vice president of residential business development at Rheem’s AC division, to talk about the event and also trends in the industry.

ACHR NEWS: Rheem recently held its Pro Partner event. What does the company hope to accomplish at these events?

Randy Roberts, vice president of residential business development at Rheem’s AC division.

Roberts: With our brands Rheem, Ruud, and Friedrich, we have a program called Pro Partner that goes back 20 years. It really evolved into what it is today in about 2014, and that's our elite dealer program. These are our biggest and largest customers and some of our best contractors from across the country. This is a conference that we hold for them and we try to do it about every three years or so. We don't guarantee the exact time frame, but we do it about every three years. 

It's a chance to get everybody together and really have a big celebration. The event is also an opportunity to make sure they're up to speed on everything going on within Rheem, the industry, and where the market is going.

ACHR NEWS: Now, this was the first time you invited plumbers to join the HVAC folks. What was the thought process behind that?

Roberts: I think what we've really seen over the last five-plus years, probably longer, is contractors really wanting to own the whole home. They want all the mechanical jobs and for the homeowner to be able to tie it all back together. Whether it is a plumbing, HVAC, or electrical issue, they want the homeowner to trust their company to do the work.

I think we've seen contractors really embrace that, especially some of the biggest and largest contractors in the Metro markets. For a manufacturer that just happens to build HVAC and water heaters and has a very large presence in both spaces, we love this trend. We would love to tie together the products we build and really encourage that behavior for an HVAC-only contractor. When you're in that mechanical room, take a look at the water heater. We would love to tie those products together through technology, as well as incentivize those contractors in our pro partner program to install both.

ACHR NEWS: At the event, I also noticed how much talk was around heat pump water heaters. Talk about the growth you see in that area.

Roberts: We are seeing heat pumps on the air conditioning side that are now 40-plus percent of the installs in the market and really growing. It has a lot to do with the NAECA 4 ruling, which is the new energy efficiency standard on water. It's really going to push electric water heaters into heat pump water heaters. And a heat pump water heater is really pretty much a heat pump. It's an air conditioning unit on top of a water heater that really gets that added benefit of using that ambient air and converting it into hot water - giving you a much higher efficiency as far as producing that hot water. 

I would tell you that we're on our fifth generation of heat pump water heater. We've been at it for a while, and it would make sense that Rheem was one of the early developers and leaders in this space. And really, the product we're building today is such a nice product and an easy-to-install product.

I would tell you that we absolutely see it displacing a lot of the electric water heater demand that's out there. And that's going to be driven a lot by regulations and utilities really wanting to push to lower that load on their grid.

The heat pump water heater really does allow that to happen with the storage. It also has the ability to go back to electric, just like a heat pump HVAC system does. 

ACHR NEWS: Moving it back to the HVAC side. Do you see heat pumps being dependent on the incentives, or can they stand on their own?

Roberts: Heating and air conditioning the whole house really kind of follows the automobile industry in a lot of ways with technology. When the all-electric cars came out, everybody was all in. But what we're seeing is more and more folks going back to hybrids because they're easier. I think what you're going to see is that HVAC is going to go down the same path. The products have improved so much when you compare the heat pumps we're building today versus what we were even building five or ten years ago. 

We have so much more flexibility with heat pumps to be able to go back into retrofit applications using a 110-volt air handler. I absolutely see that dual fuel is really a fantastic way to go for markets that have primarily been a straight cool and a gas heat market. Why would you not install a heat pump and then allow that consumer to still have the choice, right? They can use gas heat for backup, but why would you not go down that path? My answer to really that I don't see heat pumps slowing down. I continue to see the HVAC adoption for more and more heat pumps.

ACHR NEWS: I know they are changing every day, but how do you feel the tariffs will affect HVAC prices and the supply chain?

Robert: I think every day you answer the question, and tomorrow it could be a different answer. They're absolutely going to have an impact on the entire supply chain. When you look at it, obviously, there's a whole lot of steel and a whole lot of aluminum that go into building an HVAC unit. That kind of started early with the steel and aluminum tariff of 25%. It didn't matter if it's domestic or foreign, you're buying steel off of those indexes. 

That obviously has a major impact on our entire industry. It doesn't matter motors, compressors, or HVAC equipment, there's a whole lot of metal and steel that go into our products. So obviously a big impact there. 

All the international tariffs that you see, you know, there are so many electronics that come from all over the world. There's absolutely going to be price movement. 

I think we've already seen manufacturers out there putting price increases into the marketplace. And truly, they're just trying to cover the increased costs that we're seeing for these parts and these components and everything else that goes into it. I won't get into the political side of it, but obviously there's a strategy here. We'll see how long some of these things last and how things could come back and change. But yeah, tariffs are definitely going to impact the price of equipment in the marketplace. 

ACHR NEWS Editorial Director Kyle Gargaro attended the Rheem Pro Partners Conference, where he sat down with Rheem’s Randy Roberts to talk about both the conference and other pressing HVAC issues.