Cool Talk with Hartzell's | Your HVAC Questions, Answered!

Give Use A Shout HOST A: I want to walk into this one with the conversation that happens on probably forty percent of service calls. Homeowner's water heater is leaking, or it is twelve years old and on borrowed time, and they ask me, what should I replace it with. They have read a couple of articles online. They have heard tankless is the new thing. They have heard heat pump water heaters ar...

Give Use A Shout HOST A: It is June 18 in Kingfisher. 96 degrees outside. A homeowner calls Hartzell's wanting to book the $229 tune-up they saw advertised in the spring. Dave tells them no, book it for October or wait until March next year. The homeowner is irritated. They are willing to pay. Why is Dave turning down work? HOST B: Because what they are asking me to do, I cannot do correctly...

Give Use A Shout HOST A: It is the first week of July in Kingfisher. The temperature has been over 100 degrees for 8 days straight. A homeowner in a 2200 square foot ranch on a slab opens their OG&E bill. 340 dollars. Their neighbor across the street, same builder, same square footage, same year built, opens their bill. 165 dollars. Same weather. Same house. Same family of four. The difference...

Give Use A Shout HOST A: It is the first week of June in Kingfisher. A homeowner calls Hartzell's. Their 12-year-old AC is running but warm air is coming out of the vents. Dave diagnoses a failed compressor. The quote to repair is 1800 dollars. The quote to replace the whole outdoor unit and the indoor coil is around 8500 dollars. The homeowner says, "Dave, what would you do?" HOST...

Give Use A Shout The number on your thermostat screen is probably wrong. Not broken wrong. Strategy wrong. The Department of Energy quietly rewrote its thermostat guidance and the old set it and forget it rule no longer matches how modern variable speed equipment runs. In this episode I walk through the new DOE setpoint advice, why the old 8 degree setback rule hurts efficiency on a two-stage or v...

Give Use A Shout About forty percent of my service calls end with a water heater question. The unit is leaking or it is twelve years old, and the homeowner asks what they should replace it with. They have read a couple articles. They have heard tankless is the new thing. They have heard heat pump water heaters are super efficient. They are confused. In this episode I break down the three legitimat...

Give Use A Shout Every June I get calls from homeowners wanting to book the 229 dollar tune-up the same week the first 95 degree day hits in Kingfisher. I turn most of them down and tell them to book October or wait until March next year. They think I am being difficult. I am not. A tune-up on a 95 degree day is not a tune-up. It is a service call dressed up in a tune-up wrapper, and the homeowner...

Give Use A Shout Every June somebody asks me if geothermal is actually worth it. The brochure numbers from manufacturers are fine. The numbers that matter are what my real customers pay OG&E and CKenergy in July versus what their conventional neighbor with the same square footage pays. I have those numbers from Kingfisher, Canadian, and Garfield county installs. This episode lays out the actua...

Give Use A Shout Every May and June I have the same conversation across kitchen tables in Kingfisher and Canadian County. The AC is 12 years old, the compressor is making noise, the repair quote is around 1800 dollars, and the homeowner asks me what I would actually do. Here is the math I use in the field. I walk through the real cost of repair, the real cost of replace, the age and refrigerant fa...

Give Use A Shout Department of Energy says the average house loses 20 to 30 percent of the air moving through its ducts to leaks, mostly in the attic. That is cooled air you paid for, vented straight into a 130 degree attic where it does nothing for the people in the bedrooms below. Most central Oklahoma homes I see have ductwork that was sealed once at install with cloth tape that turned to dust...

Give Use A Shout Severe storm rolls through Oklahoma. Some water gets in the basement or under the back door. Most homeowners spend the next two days calling insurance and taking pictures. Meanwhile, the EPA's own clock is ticking. You have 24 to 48 hours before mold starts colonizing. And the most powerful drying tool in the house is sitting in the utility room, ignored. Your central air, by...

Give Use A Shout HOST A: Here is a frame I want to put on the table at the top, because it changes how a homeowner should think about geothermal. When you write a check for a geothermal system, you are actually buying two completely different things that have been bundled together by the industry and sold as one unit. HOST B: Two things. Lay them out. I'm Dave Hartzell at Hartzell's Heat...

Give Use A Shout HOST A: Here is the conversation nobody wants to have out loud at the kitchen table. You hear the word geothermal and your gut does two things at the same time. First gut reaction, oh that sounds fancy and efficient. Second gut reaction, that sounds like it costs a hundred thousand dollars and I am never doing that. HOST B: Right, and the truth lives somewhere between those two re...

Give Use A Shout DAVE: I had a customer last week who told me her sister-in-law was waiting until 2026 to install a new heat pump because she wanted that big federal tax credit. I had to break it to her. The credit is gone. Expired December 31, 2025. So if you are planning a 2026 install around that math, you need new math. Today I want to walk through what is actually still on the table in Oklaho...

Give Use A Shout HOST A: For about twenty years, the standard advice in the HVAC business has been, if your system is over ten years old and you need a major repair, just replace it. New equipment is more efficient, the warranty starts over, you are throwing good money after bad. Replace. HOST B: That was the playbook. Every contractor said it, every consumer guide said it, every HGTV segment said...

Give Use A Shout HOST A: Pop quiz. How much do you think the average American homeowner spends on maintenance and repairs over the lifetime of owning their house? HOST B: I would guess somewhere around a hundred thousand dollars over thirty years. That feels right. I'm Dave Hartzell at Hartzell's Heat & Air in Kingfisher, Oklahoma. 45 years in the trade, Master HVAC license. On Cool...

Give Use A Shout HOST A: Quick pop quiz. If I asked you how a contractor figured out what size air conditioner to put in your house, what would you guess? HOST B: Honestly, I would guess they look at the square footage and divide by something. Like four hundred square feet per ton, or whatever the rule of thumb is. I'm Dave Hartzell at Hartzell's Heat & Air in Kingfisher, Oklahoma. 4...

Give Use A Shout HOST A: Here is the part nobody tells you when they sell you a brand new air conditioner. You can buy the most efficient unit on the market, the highest SEER2 rating, all the bells and whistles, and still lose almost a third of your cooling before it ever reaches your bedroom. HOST B: A third. That is a number that should make people sit up, because we are talking about real dolla...

Give Use A Shout HOST A: Question. Severe storm rolls through Oklahoma. Rain dumps three inches in two hours. Some water gets in the basement, or the laundry room, or under the back door. What's the first thing most homeowners do? HOST B: Call the insurance company. I'm Dave Hartzell at Hartzell's Heat & Air in Kingfisher, Oklahoma. 45 years in the trade, Master HVAC license. On...

Give Use A Shout Smoke rolls into Kingfisher from a panhandle grass fire or a controlled burn three counties over, and your HVAC is either pulling that poison into your house or keeping it out. Depends on three settings most homeowners have never touched. This episode covers what to do at the thermostat when the air goes brown, which filter actually catches PM2.5, and the one move I see homeowners...

Give Use A Shout I see a lot of new builds in central Oklahoma where the house is so tight the air inside ends up worse than the air outside. Sealed envelopes, taped seams, every gap caulked. Great for energy bills. Bad for what your family is breathing. If your house was built after about 2010 and you have not added mechanical ventilation, this episode is for you. I cover what an ERV does, what a...

Give Use A Shout I get asked about HSPF2 ratings all the time, and the national brochures never give you the real answer for Oklahoma. Too low and you waste money on the power bill for 15 years. Too high and you overpay on the install and never see the payback. For most Central Oklahoma homes, the sweet spot is 8.5 to 9.5 HSPF2 with a two-stage or variable speed unit sized to a Manual J load calc....

Give Use A Shout Heat pump or gas furnace in 2026. I get this question every single week. The honest answer is not what most contractors will tell you, because it depends on your utility, your gas situation, how long you plan to live in the house, and how you like your heat to feel. I break down where heat pumps win, where a furnace still makes more sense, real install pricing for a Kingfisher hom...

Give Use A Shout When that February cold snap hit Kingfisher last year and we dropped into single digits, the phones lit up. Half the calls were old furnaces that quit. The other half were heat pump owners convinced their system had failed. Most of those heat pumps were doing exactly what they should. I cover why modern cold-climate heat pumps handle Oklahoma winters, what COP actually means, why...

Give Use A Shout Somebody called me last week wanting me to come top off the Freon. I had to tell him those days are basically over. The EPA tightened the rules in October 2024 under the AIM Act, and it changes how a real service call should work in 2026. I walk through what actually changed, why a leak search matters more than a refill, current R-410A and R-22 pricing, and when replacement is the...