Variety of groundwork keeps Ohio contractor busy

Even when the gravity of an economic downturn is pulling them in the opposite direction, this Ohio contracting firm is on the rise. They’re early adopters, on the edge technologically and ahead of the eight ball.

Since its beginning in 1975, the business model for Lakes Heating and Air Conditioning Inc. in Akron, Ohio, has been to stay on the cutting edge of emerging technology.

“Dad has always been eager to try new things,” said Brian Cuthbert Jr. of his father. The firm has grown to 25 employees, with a focus on residential and light commercial HVAC work. Named after the Portage Lakes region where it’s located, the company is still family owned and employs all three of Brian Sr.’s children.

Though they’re getting into solar work, geothermal installations have been a steady source of business for 20 years. Most of the ground-source work Lakes does is for high end residential jobs, with about half the exchange fields being horizontal trenching, and the other vertical bore holes. The local soil types vary greatly, so they’ve had plenty of experience with varying types of geoexchange.

“Regardless of tax credits, sticker shock is an issue with many potential geothermal clients,” said Brian, service manager for the company. “But once homeowners see how quickly the systems pay for themselves, greatly reducing the need for fossil fuels or electricity, it’s not a difficult sell.”

Awareness of geothermal technology has grown considerably within their territory over the past few years. The majority of Lakes’ ground-source jobs come through customer referral. “I don’t think we’ve bid a mechanical system on a single custom home in the past five years where the homeowner didn’t at least consider geo.”

High-end residential systems; lots of geo

A lake near Clinton, Ohio, is the site of several shoreline homes. Homeowner Scott Johnston was tired of paying for fuel oil and, before doubling the size of his home with an addition, he wanted to find a solution. After doing some research, he decided on a geothermal system and called Lakes.

“We completed the Johnston project in two stages,” said Brian Jr. “Once his addition was framed, we roughed in the ductwork, installed the two-ton heat pump for the existing portion of the home and had the drilling sub put in the exchange field.” Because of beams and partitions, the addition couldn’t be connected to the home with one set of ducts.

About a month later, when Johnston had burned up his remaining oil, and the addition was complete, a Lakes installation crew returned to tear out the old boiler and install a three-ton unit for the addition. The new living room has high, vaulted ceilings and large windows looking out over the lake.

“This system has more that cut my utility costs in half,” said Johnston. “I’m paying a lot less for utilities now, with double the square footage. I didn’t have AC before, and I’m still paying less!”

The ClimateMaster systems that Lakes installed in Johnston’s home have all the bells and whistles. Both have desuperheaters and are connected to two 80-gallon Bradford White electric water heaters. They also incorporated ClimateMaster’s ClimaDry dehumidification system. Because the home is completely surrounded by hardwood forest, indoor humidity is a key concern.

“No other ground-source heat pump manufacturer has anything like the ClimaDry system,” said Brian Jr. It’s hot gas generated reheat, which uses one of the biggest advantages of a water source heat pump, the transfer of energy through the water piping system. ClimaDry diverts condenser water through a water-to-air coil placed after the evaporator coil. If condenser water isn’t warm enough, the internal “run-around” loop increases the water temperature with each pass through the condenser coil.

The exchange field consisted of four bore holes. The larger unit uses two; one is 225 feet and the other is 235. The smaller unit is connected to a 150-foot hole and a 160-foot hole.

“Yoder Geothermal, out of Sugarcreek, Ohio, is our drilling sub,” said Brian Jr. Depending on the application, Yoder trenches or drills the exchange field and fuses the piping back into the house. For vertical installations, all bore holes are filled with bentonite grout.

“We’ve used ClimateMaster heat pumps exclusively for the past 10 years. Dave Meadows is our inside sales manager at Virginia Air Distributors. He introduced us to the systems and has been great to deal with ever since. We also work with Mike Murphy, ClimateMaster’s southeast sales rep. He’s a wealth of information too. Together, they’ve enabled us to tackle some challenging installations.”

Light commercial, with a twist

In the past year, Lakes technicians have taken on two unique light commercial projects, each with a very different set of challenges.

Mushroom Shack, a startup company in Akron, Ohio, asked Lakes for help with the climate control system for their “grow room” or mushroom house. Although the building was only 550 square feet, the control requirements were daunting. To grow mushrooms, indoor humidity would need to be exactly 95 percent, 100 percent of the time.

The owner didn’t want to spend the money for an ERV system but demanded nearly two air changes per hour. A high-performance HEPA filter was needed to make sure that there was no risk of contamination from the fresh air. To simulate night and day, temperature would need to fluctuate from 68 to 85 degrees. Otherwise, the fungi won’t fruit.

“We installed a two-ton split system with an electric heat strip for the building,” said Lakes sales manager Brad Miller. “Cooling and ventilation are the main needs, since mushrooms produce heat and carbon dioxide through their metabolic process.”

The heat strip serves as back-up heat for the dead of winter and is still unused. A 33-gallon-per-hour steam humidifier was installed to keep the building moisture-rich. This, of course, created another challenge. “We needed to use poly duct because of the risk of rust,” said Miller. The collars were all coated with a waterproof paint, and the registers are aluminum.

On the opposite end of the dew-point spectrum, when Canton Seed Company needed to expand their seed storage capacity, Lakes was hired to keep indoor air quality conditions at optimal levels. Inside an existing warehouse, a super-insulated structure was built as a seed vault. The walls were two-by-eight construction with a heavy rubber vapor barrier.

“At any given time, there’s a million dollars worth of seeds in the vault,” said Miller, “and they’re extremely sensitive to atmospheric conditions.”

Canton Seed insists that at no point should the humidity and temperature combined ever reach 100. For example, if the room is at 70 degrees, the humidity can’t exceed 30%. A 2.5 ton air-source heat pump was installed to maintain optimal temperature, while a dehumidifier keeps the dew point in check. Special controls with remote sensors were also needed.

Custom work

“Besides specializing in geothermal, we do other work that many residential HVAC contractors aren’t interested in,” said Brian Jr. Since he was old enough to reach the shop tables, Brian has helped his father in their duct fabrication shop. He got his feet wet bending Z-irons to hold up ductwork.

Not only does Lakes build ductwork from scratch for all of their own jobs, they also serve as ductwork subs for other contracting firms. “Jim Craiglow runs the fab shop,” said Brian Jr., “and he’s top notch; we’re all very proud of the work he does.”

Once installed, the bright, perfectly fitted ductwork can’t be confused with factory stock; that’s often the first comment from anyone that looks at an installation by Lakes. Their custom ductwork not only looks better, but it’s more stable, tighter and, because of the care taken during fabrication, more efficient.
For the past decade, Lakes has also served the area as Bradford White’s service rep. In 1990, Akron-based Famous Supply, a distributer of Bradford White water heaters, needed a nearby service and installation firm with an excellent reputation. Lakes was chosen because they have an established service division, long experience with water heaters, and the ability to troubleshoot gas valves and other water heater components. According to Brian Jr., their technicians respond to a handful of service calls each month to fix and fine-tune water heater operations.

The family’s own pressure relief valve

“I joined the company full-time after graduating from college 11 years ago,” said Brian Jr. Summer breaks throughout his time at John Carroll University were also full of Lakes work. Brian’s sisters, Jennifer Pinion and Julie Hill, do the company’s accounting, financing and payroll.

“We love the work, but we also enjoy getting away as a family too,” said Brian Jr. Years ago, Brian Sr. and his wife bought a 40-acre farm in rural Ohio. The property has a five-acre lake full of trout, bass and walleye.

“Camping, fishing, swimming and taking the John Deer Gator rides has become a great outlet for all of us,” said Brian Jr.