Heating professionals business impact from one year of pandemic

Sal Santamaura

One year later, as a non-contractor I'm interested to hear how the heating professionals who visit The Wall experienced this pandemic. Have your businesses been hurt, helped or not been impacted in terms of volume? Have you and your employees become sickened or worse? Your customers?

My wife and I are fortunate to be retired, so have essentially been hermits since March 2020. During that time, we've left our home/yard only once every two weeks for food/medication shopping trips and kept two medical appointments (couldn't get prescriptions renewed otherwise). Today marks two weeks since we received our second doses of the Moderna vaccine, so we'll now somewhat relax our hermit lifestyle.

Until a substantial percentage of the population is vaccinated, our "relaxing" will consist of still wearing masks when in public, indoor spaces; no longer ensuring Trader Joe's visits are limited to between 8:00 and 9:00 AM every other Wednesday (the seniors-only hour); feeling less paranoid about covidiots in our vicinity (the death toll in this city has risen markedly over the last month) and finally visiting our dentist for those cleaning appointments we cancelled last June.

In a now-deleted thread that became too political, I estimated there would be between one and two million COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. Others felt such a toll was unlikely and that numbers so high were scare mongering. They thought 100,000 to 200,000 would be the total. As of today, 540,000 people have perished in this country, with the latest estimate for a final toll at 670,000 when a sufficient number of vaccinations have been administered to confer herd immunity. This is certainly one case where I'd have much rather been closer to wrong than right.

Robert O'Brien

A valid question if you stopped at the first paragraph. How are your experiences and beliefs germane to the question?

EdTheHeaterMan

Robert O'Brien said:

A valid question if you stopped at the first paragraph. How are your experiences and beliefs germane to the question?

Do we really need to know?   

I’m hoping this Is a rhetorical question.

Sal Santamaura

EdTheHeaterMan said:

...I’m hoping this Is a rhetorical question...>

Nope. A serious question.

EdTheHeaterMan

I was I was referring to @Robert O'Brien query 

I retired in 2019 and don’t have any helpful insight to @Sal Santamaura’s query. Sorry Sal. 

hot_rod

within my network of friends and business acquaintances I have not seen any lack of work or slowdown, on the contrary.
Some of the companies I am familiar did have employees come down with Covid and lost several weeks of work, some became quite ill, no deaths thankfully in my circle of friends and businesses.

Most all the companies I know did file for and receive PPP or other assistance to ride out lost employee hours.
As of today everyone in my family and extended family from 21- 91 has, received a vaccine.
If you really want a shot, they can be found by getting in the loop, checking all the various websites and be willing to drive an hour in some cases. At least in Utah that is.

Sal Santamaura

EdTheHeaterMan said:

I was I was referring to @Robert O'Brien query 

I retired in 2019 and don’t have any helpful insight to @Sal Santamaura’s query. Sorry Sal. 

No, Ed, I'm sorry for misinterpreting your post. Thanks for clarifying.

Thanks to you too, Bob, for replying. It's good to hear that no one in your circle succumbed. May those who did contract the disease avoid its "long COVID" effects.

hot_rod

Sal Santamaura said:

EdTheHeaterMan said:

I was I was referring to @Robert O'Brien query 

I retired in 2019 and don’t have any helpful insight to @Sal Santamaura’s query. Sorry Sal. 

No, Ed, I'm sorry for misinterpreting your post. Thanks for clarifying.

Thanks to you too, Bob, for replying. It's good to hear that no one in your circle succumbed. May those who did contract the disease avoid its "long COVID" effects.

Still a lot to research and learn about "long haulers" People still suffering headaches, dizziness, loss of breath. It seems to have lingering effects in some of those that contacted it early when treatment was maybe not quite correct. Maybe some of the early drug cocktails caused some long lasting harm.

I like to think the blue collar workers and especially the tradesfolk dealt with the pandemic better than most.
Troubleshooting, triage, get er done, is a mindset, and it crosses out of the mechanical arts when a crisis arises.

Least we forget the seeming lost concept of "common" sense.

delta T

Its been interesting to say the least. I would say I have been affected by it....but only in a round about sort of way. Certainly no drop in business. I am booked out for at least six weeks at the moment, but I am a one man shop so that would represent much less time for a 5 or 10 man shop.

What did happen, is that the motor on my truck died at 132k miles. Dealership quoted me a remanufactured motor at what was a reasonable price and initially said a motor would be available in a week or so. I approved the work and then got a call two days later saying that it turns out that the motor they found for me had already been sold and it was now backordered for another 4 weeks. Timing turned out well as my father was going on a vacation for a month and would not need his work truck. The thing is, as nice as it was for him to let me use his truck, it has 330k on it, and is not really a great truck for heavy miles anymore. So I cut back my schedule, tried to be gentle to the truck, and made it through the 4 weeks. My father gets back, takes his truck back, and I borrow another truck which a contractor friend was kind enough to lend me. This is a large box truck without 4x4. Tons of room, nice setup, but its a bear in the wind, and of course as soon as I get it, we get a string of record breaking snow storms and I end up with several times being unable to work that day due to the roads not being passable enough for that truck. It has now been almost 8 weeks and I still don't have my truck back. Supposedly the motor will arrive on Monday and will be ready by Thursday next week. We'll see. What's really crazy to me is that the dealership told me that their more recent orders for that motor and others are slated to be completed in November at the earliest!! Their explanation? Covid. Oh and by the way.....The truck manufacturer does not sell new motors for that truck. My truck situation has definitely affected my bottom line this quarter.

Aside from the truck saga, I have noticed weird supply chain issues. I did a small bathroom remodel and midway through the process a design change occurred that necessitated swapping the tub. I had ordered the tub about a week before. It was a popular Kohler apron front 32x 60 tub, nothing special, and my wholesaler had no problem getting a left handed tub in a week. Called them up, told them I now needed a right handed tub. Well.....they were on backorder. For another 6 weeks. From the factory. I started calling around, (surly someone must have one of these tubs in stock somewhere....) and no one within 200 miles of me had this tub. Turns out that once people started checking their orders, no orders for this tub had been filled for the last three weeks. I found something similar for more money, sold it to my customer at cost to split the difference in price.

I fear we are going into an extended period of shortages and backlogs in the supply chain that will affect all of us profoundly. I hope I'm wrong....

As to sickness, my wife's grandparents both contracted the disease, both made a swift recovery and had very mild symptoms. I know of no one else in my sphere that has gotten infected thankfully, I have my first dose of the vaccine, and will get my second in 10 days. I live in a very rural area and our case count was very low generally with something like 80% being concentrated in outbreaks within the local jail system, so I have not really been exposed to it as compared with a more urban setting.

GW

Our small company had the best year ever in 20. Latter half of March was dead, April wasn’t good. Then we took off. 21 is looking better