I was talking with another regular about the aspect of water-chiller based cooling in consumer applications, and a notion crept up on me. Consumer awareness is at the behest of marketing, whether that be by word of mouth, television commercials and or DIY shows, magazine or Internet advertising, etc.
Like the saying, “if a tress falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it does it make any noise when it falls?” Or something like that. I am curious as to how many things in technology can cross the commercial-consumer borders but not be advertised that well, and as a result consumer awareness is excessively limited and interpreted as an unaccepting consumer market.
If it were not for shows like TOH, and channels like HGTV/DIY, and websites like FHB, I’d be a lot more ignorant about products and technology available to me as a consumer. But, I do not think I am a normal consumer in that most probably are not sitting down and chatting with FHB regulars or using TiVo to record TOH episodes.
Does the commercial market do enough to advertise its technologies that can be readily applicable to the consumer market?
Replies
Nuke,
your question has merit.. to answer, the problem is there is no one person who can afford to commercially market most stuff.
It doesn't matter if it's a new design for a boiler or paint or whatever!!
volumes usually are either too low or the competition is too great. In a market that's driven by low price bidding anybody who increases their costs thru marketing efforts stands to be driven out of the market by those who simply sell for less.
Most contractors are small and mass marketing is expensive.. select publications like Tauton press is about the only source for real information and yet not everybody reads Fine Homebuilding
SIP's for example are much more efficent at insulating than fiberglas is and yet fiberglas dominates the insulation market..
Only 1% of all houses built are built with SIP's mainly due to lack of proper marketing. Because only 1% of houses are built with SIP's there is a great deal of ignorance and inexperiance with them.. If they were as common as stick built houses they wouldn't need expensive marketing.
Right now contractors know they can command a premium building with SIP's and because they do the costs tend to be higher and the volume lower.
Per sq ft costs for material are the same or slightly lower and labor with an experianced crew is definately lower while framing time is a fraction of building with 2x4's. In addition the equipment thus far developed for SIP's is definately primative.It's like you asked your contractor to build you a house without using power tools..
Put SIP's on a level playing ground with equal demand and experiance and nobody would ever stick build a house again..
Got any examples?
The ones I am thinking of are somewhat not profitable for residential/ consumer use. Additional liabilities and consumer education comes up. Company can spend the bucks to educate one installer to do it right for every thousand applications or spend the bucks to educate a thousand consumers how to DIY the product. they would do the latter knowing full well that five or teen of them would screw up and blame the manufacturer.
A fact of modern life is thqat higher tech products require a more intelligent user base. Any half ape can stack rocks across the mouth of a cave and light a fire. But it takes some more brains to design, install, and make use of a high efficiency boiler with hydronic delivery system and computerized thermostats. And even more brains to realize that the mercury switch in the old thermostat that just got replaced is a toxic substance that requires proper disposal.
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SIP construction for one. Spray-on or expanded insulation as commercial means from the 1940's is one. I could walk down the street in my neighborhood and get 'SIP what?' before the first one says he has heard of it.
I find myself often looking at products/materials being installed in commercial applications and wondering about how to incorporate them into a residential application.
The problem is that commercially available items cost more. Residential consumers are not going to pay the initial cost plus any maintenance costs associated. It comes to a financial dead-end. Unfortunately, the masses want it cheap. Few are willing to pay for commercial grade products.
The second conclusion I've come to is that a residence is limited. You have a finite number of basic systems. A house is not as complex as buildings in the commercial world. Commercially you can have offices, stores, warehouses, schools, restaurants, hospitals, etc. Each with it's own set of design criteria and multiple methods of meeting that criteria. A house is a house. You won't need the bells and whistles that you would in a commercial building.
An example that I've thought of in the past is emergency lights. We've installed disappearing emergency lights in a few buildings I've done. They are a 16" square recessed housing with halogen bulbs. When not in use, they look like an access door. When power is lost, the door flips open and the lights swing out. I thought these would be great in the house. They are architecturally pleasing looking. A great idea to have for the stairways/hallways. They are also $575.00 each.
My brother is mechanical engineer in NYC, designing HVAC systems for the commercial world. I asked him about residential sized chilled-water systems. He stated that while they are available, they really can be best utilized in the McMasions. One would have to pay for a larger commercial HVAC contractor to install and service the units. Guys who you would normally hire to do the HVAC in a moderate sized house would most likely have never done a system like that before..
Another example is building management systems. We install these great computerized building system controls and software. They tie everything together. One central PC type computer shows you everything that's mechanically going on throughout the facility. How cool would it be to call up a screen that shows how thew heating/cooling system is running, adjust temps in certain rooms, turn on lights in different parts of the house, tie the smoke detectors into an exhaust fan, adjust boiler or furnace temp depending on outside conditions, monitor your fuel oil level, etc..But something like that would cost a small fortune and most homeowners aren't savvy enough to use it..
The commercial world has tons of stuff that would be awesome to install in a house. But a house is static. There just isn't a need to use some of this stuff..
Ehhh...who knows!!