Recently I’ve been pondering the continue convergence of plumbing and HVAC. You see it everywhere. Many plumbers have added, HVAC to their trucks, while a few HVAC guys have added some plumbing services. What got me going on this was a new product we’ve developed called the Bucket Descaler. It’s designed to clean tankless heaters. If your interested in it check it out.

But that’s not the point of this post. The real point is that the whole tankless market seems a bit lost. Who’s realm is it? The plumber, the HVAC guy or both? What about maintenance vs. installs? These things need annual maintenance flushes. Who’s taking care of that for the homeowner (and grabbing some PM revenue too?).

I recently posed the question on a LinkedIn group called HVAC professionals and the answers were interesting. A few said it was a plumbers domain because it’s domestic heat. Others said it was open territory. Still others said tankless wasn’t a worthy technology to even discuss. To me, many missed the point.

When you install a tankless, or tanked unit for that matter you do it once every X years. Install done. Revenue achieved. Bam, done. But as a service company, how could you maximize the revenue on the unit you just installed while delivering excellent customer service and customer piece of mind? Oh yes, offer a preventative maintenance (PM) program.

To the HVAC contractor this should be a piece of cake. Your company is built around PM, or at least a large part of it. Offering additional services like a tankless unit flush or tanked hot water heater purge is a no-brainer, plus you are generally at your customers place twice a year for HVAC PM. Wouldn’t you want to add an incremental service there? If your answer is yes, annual flushes of hot water heaters, more specifically tankless hot water heater annual maintenance is a gift. What are your thoughts?