In this podcast episode, John Maher speaks with Brian Sadler from Solaris Renewables and Eddie Yaracz from Revise. They discuss the services Revise offers, including HVAC solutions and home energy assessments through the MassSave program. Eddie explains the partnership’s origins and the benefits of energy efficiency measures like insulation, air sealing, and ductless mini-split systems. Brian highlights his positive experience as a customer and the value of integrating solar power with energy-saving upgrades. They emphasize the significant savings and environmental benefits available through these comprehensive energy solutions.
John Maher: Hi, I am John Maher and I’m here today with Brian Sadler, vice president at Solaris Renewables, a solar company in Massachusetts, providing premium solar and storage technologies with exceptional customer service. And designing, installing and servicing solar systems in Massachusetts, Southern New Hampshire and Maine. Welcome, Brian.
Brian Sadler: Hey John. Thanks for having us today.
John: Sure. And our special guest today is Eddie Yaracz, home energy manager and HVAC sales manager with Revise. Welcome Eddie.
Eddie Yaracz: Thanks John. Appreciate you guys having me on.
What Types of Services Does Revise Offer?
John: Sure. Eddie, tell me a little bit about Revise and their story and what types of services you offer?
Eddie: Revise has been around for about eight years. Former to that we were part of DiPietro Heating and Cooling, a third generation HVAC company. It’s actually Joe’s grandfather that started in HVAC, had his own company, learned the trade within HVAC and passed that knowledge on to his grandson who then started his own business. At the time when Revise started, one of the larger premium companies in MassSave had gone out of business for financial reasons and actually Revise was born out of the ashes of that.
We pretty much gathered up all the best people, put them in a room and said, hey, we’re going to make this work. We have over 50 years of experience in MassSave right here in this room. And considering MassSave’s heritage, that’s quite a bit, how do we go about starting our own MassSave partnership and company? Since then there were originally five energy advisors from that day, and then over the past eight years we’ve developed and changed and grew. And from that manager or HEA position that I started, we then became the manager for all the advisors and then the manager for the HVAC sales team and that’s where we’re at now, here today.
Brian: Awesome.
How did the Partnership Between Revise and Solaris Renewables Begin?
John: And then Brian, how did you encounter Revise and how did this partnership between Solaris Renewables and Revise grow?
Brian: Well, I started out as a customer, frankly. I was looking for the Mass Save Home Energy assessment for our home in order to not only learn more about our home and what energy efficiency measures we could take, also about the rebates and other incentives and things that are out there as well and how all these pieces come together. And just was frankly Googling and searching around for a reputable company. Found that Revise was either the highest or one of the most highly rated companies online and that’s narrowed my search down.
I reached out, they were super responsive and came out and did an awesome job on our own energy assessment. And then I’ve been working on the solar side of things, for us, had been looking for a partner honestly for eight years. And I’ve been going to several companies and trying to find a partner that does the home energy assessments and does it well in weatherization and also does HVAC solutions as well. And been trying to find a partner and really found out one of Revise’s leaders is a customer of ours. And through a conversation said, “Hey, how can we figure out we can work together?” And they moved quickly and efficiently and we’ve aligned on a program that we can help each other out and each other’s customers to leverage energy efficiency and energy solutions. It’s been a great start and we know that Revise does an excellent job, so we entrust them with our customers and are erring to do the same with theirs.
What is the MassSave Program?
John: Eddie, tell me a little bit about, you mentioned MassSave and you said that you’re a MassSave partner. Tell me a little bit about MassSave and what that is and how residents can qualify for MassSave?
Eddie: MassSave is a collaboration of utility companies. You have your Eversource, you have your national grid, you have what used to be Columbia Gas, Unitil, all the different energy utility companies that band together to form the overarching program. When you call MassSave, you’re really not calling a certain entity, you are actually going back to utility companies. And then we partner with that program, with those utilities, to bring all the different rebates and accessibility options to all the different residents of Massachusetts.
The whole point of MassSave is to help residents save money, be more comfortable, and overall be more environmentally friendly. That’s pretty much a program in a nutshell. With that, we really have a focus on insulation, which includes weatherization. When we’re insulating the attics, the garages, basement ceilings or perimeters, anything that you would expect to have insulation in the exterior walls as well as air ceiling at the home. And that’s really tying up the home.
When we think about insulation, we generally think about just the physical sweaters that we wear in the winter, but the problem with a sweater on its own is that as soon as that wind blows, it cuts right through it and you end up chilled to the bone. And so that’s why we have winter jackets or windbreakers that go over your sweater or we layer up to stop the airflow and let the insulation do its job. And so that’s one of the bread and butters of MassSave where we focus as a company and that’s really where our heritage started about eight years ago. And then beyond that, MassSave also does additional rebates for things like heating and cooling, ductless mini splits or central heat pumps as well. That’s the forefront of where we’re at today. In addition to that, we partner with solar companies like Solaris in particular, where we can maximize that energy that we are using for heating and cooling and take care of that bill at the same time. So it really is the best of both worlds there.
And then beyond that, we’re also looking at things like windows and other partnerships to finalize that thermal envelope and make it a whole home approach to the individual home. As far as getting approved for the program and making sure you’re eligible, essentially everyone in Massachusetts already pays a charge on your utility bill. If you pull it out, your electric bill or your gas bill, typically on the electric you’re going to see what’s called the energy efficiency charge if you’re National Grid. Or if you’re Eversource, it’ll be called the Energy Conservation Charge.
Those charges are literally in the line items there. And you can see probably about five years ago you were paying a dollar or two per month into it and now you might be at five, 10, $15 depending on how much electricity you use. With that funding in place, you’ve been paying that charge since back around 1979 or so and that is what funds the MassSave program. Now, if you’re in a one to four family home or you have a small commercial building, you can actually contact us. We can come out, do a whole home energy assessment where we evaluate the needs for any of those different items and then we schedule you and figure out which segment of MassSave you go under from there. Does that make sense?
What is the Process of Scheduling and Completing a MassSave Home Energy Assessment Like?
John: Yeah. Tell me a little bit more about that and the process of scheduling and completing a MassSave home energy assessment? Do I call MassSave first or do I go directly to Revise?
Eddie: Sure. The easiest way is just come directly to Revise. As Brian already mentioned, we have five stars on Better Business Bureau. We’re an A plus company. We’re probably the highest rated specifically on Better Business Bureau, which is one of the best websites for legitimacy. What you would do is you can go to callrevise.com, hit the Contact Us button in the top right. That’ll give you a link to put in your information, your utility companies, and then we run the approval for you to make sure that we get you in the best program with the best rebates for you. You can also go ahead and reach out to our 1800 number. 1800885728. Option one goes right to our phone office to schedule those appointments where we can get you in often within the next day or at least the same week or next week.
Brian: And then with all of our customers as well, or potential customers as well, we are offering to get a home energy assessment with Revise and talk to Revise. We have our customers as an expectation to round out their energy solution is to look at the whole home and learn the health and safety of their heating system. Like Eddie was talking about, what the condition of their envelope and conditioning for their home and comfort level as well as other energy saving measures, and I’m sure that Eddie will speak more about.
But it’s really an outstanding program. And we just include them as the expectation that we want to set all of our customers up to speak to Revise and get that again, program that they have already been paying for some time on their energy bill and be able to take advantage of those pieces. And then it’s also you get a lot of information for future things. Appliance rebates, heat pump, your domestic hot water rebates, things like that. And you get a lot of information to learn really what’s going on with the home. And that really meshes with what we’re trying to do to create energy solutions and manage energy solutions. It allows the impact that we’re making to go even further by working with a company like Revise.
How Much Does a Home Energy Assessment Cost?
John: Then again, is there any charge to the homeowner for getting an energy assessment done or is that just paid for by that charge on their energy bill like you were talking about?
Eddie: It’s already fully funded by the energy bill, so the whole home energy assessment is no cost to every homeowner, no matter which program they’re in. We come out, we assess the home from there. That assessment does take about two to three hours. And as part of that, as Brian mentioned, we’re actually doing diagnostic testing on the heating system, making sure it’s safer, checking out all the insulation levels throughout the home and looking at every facet from there.
Are Homeowners Required to Purchase Anything After the Assessment?
John: And there’s no requirement for the homeowner that when you make some recommendations, you need to replace your windows and add insulation and do this, this and this, the homeowners not required to get all of those things done?
Eddie: Nope, not at all. At the end of the day, we’re going to generate a whole home report. We go into the specifics when it comes to the installation. If you have a great roof for solar, we’re going to put you right in touch with Solaris, let their specialists handle the whole details of that. And we get everything set up and give you an overarching goal of those other projects outside of the insulation.
What are Common Home Energy Savings Upgrades?
John: Based on what you typically find with homes here in Massachusetts, what are some of the most common places in the home that really need those energy saving upgrades?
Eddie: There’s, like I said, a couple of different divisions. There’s your heating and cooling, there’s your insulation, there’s your windows, and then your solar or your renewals. Those are your main facets that you can bucket any home into. And oftentimes homes can take advantage of multiple ones together. Now, specifically within the weatherization, which is the insulation air ceiling component we mentioned earlier. That component is going to be the basement seal plate or room joist. So if you’re thinking about being down in your basement and you’re looking up at the ceiling, typically around the perimeter of the home, you can see a piece of wood, all the floor joists hitting that perimeter, that perimeter joist-
Brian: Sometimes you can even see outside if it’s a brick foundation or whatnot?
Eddie: What’s that?
Brian: You can sometimes even see right outside?
Eddie: Right. When there’s enough holes in it, that’s for sure. Right where that room joist is, that seal plate where the ceiling joists are meeting the floor joists of the perimeter joist, we’d like to seal around that with expandable spray foam and then put in some fiberglass or some rigid board above it to make sure that we’re separating the inside from the outside of that basement. That would be an example of how we air-seal and insulate the basement rim joist around that perimeter. In addition, after that, the next place is always the exterior walls. If your home is built pre 1970, you don’t have three inches of insulation in your walls because they physically didn’t make it. It’s one of those things that it’s just like cell phones in the eighties. If you said, “Oh yeah, I had my cell phone in 1990,” I would say, “Bullshit.”
Am I allowed to say that by the way? Is that okay? At that point, we’re checking all of the walls to make sure that they are fully insulated with up to four inches or more of a dense back cellulose or fiberglass batting or whatever might be used at the time. A lot of times in the 1940s you’d actually find some rockwool insulation with some balsam wool or yellowish, now dirty yellow, types in there, or even tinfoil back in the fifties was very common. We check out the exterior walls, we see if we can insulate those. If we want to do that, we actually do it from the outside most of the time. Take off some siding, blow in cellulose in the wall cavity itself to fill it up nice and tight. This way it becomes like little Ralphie from A Christmas story.
He’s got all his sweaters on, he can’t even move his arms. That’s how we’re trying to insulate those walls. And then we put the siding back on so you never know it was done. And then lastly, of course, up in the attic, that’s where a lot of people think of insulation. Your heat’s going to rise so we want to seal where that hot air goes through. Anywhere where there’s a light fixture, a wall plate, a bath fan, anything in the ceiling above us, there’s a little hole and a small wire or a gap around it. So we seal those gaps with expandable spray foam when we’re air sealing in the attics. Again, you look at your basement walls, attics, those are pretty much the main components of every home. Different styles like caves might have front attics or crawl spaces, things like that we can also treat. Garage ceilings are very common. All the different areas that you can think of improving the thermal boundary.
About how much will a Homeowner Save After Work is Done?
John: Do you have any estimates in terms of what a homeowner might expect to save on their energy bills after the assessment and then all of this installation work is done?
Eddie: It really depends on your fuel type. If you’re on natural gas, you might see $200 to $500 of savings in a year, depending on how much work we do. If you’re on oil, that could be more like 500 to 1500. Because in general, oil is just much more expensive than natural gas. Propane is a little bit higher too. Five to 700 a year is pretty common. If you were on electric resistance heat, you’re talking big savings, thousand plus dollars per year because it’s just so expensive to run those fuel sources. If you run something like mini splits, they’d be a little bit cheaper because they’re much more efficient, much more similar to the natural gas range of 250 to 500.
Brian: Then, in terms of the actual weatherization work that you guys are just speaking about, there’s also an instant rebate for that work as a cost to the homer as well? It might be $2,000 worth of work you need to do, but they’re going to pay significantly less if that still stands, correct?
Eddie: Correct. The great thing about MassSave is that not only are we making a whole home report for you and giving you those recommendations, but anything in the weatherization installation and air ceiling category is going to be 75% or more off that work. If there was $2,000 worth of work, say to insulate an attic, you’re going to be paying 500 or less on 90% of those jobs. Some programs are actually a hundred percent covered altogether. It just depends on the actual programs in MassSave you fall into.
Brian: That’s unbelievable. It’s not much you can get 75% discount on?
Eddie: No.
Brian: Especially if it’s going to save you additional monies by doing that work in terms of your heating and cooling costs.
Eddie: Yep, exactly. And you’re really getting the clearance rack items, but you’re getting the cream of the crop instead of the out of stock things.
Brian: That’s awesome.
What Other MassSave Programs Are Available?
John: Beyond the insulation, and you mentioned the air ceiling and ductless systems, obviously solar panels with Solaris, are there other MassSave programs or recommendations that you might suggest to homeowners in Massachusetts that are considering trying to improve their overall efficiency of their house?
Eddie: I would always suggest starting with the whole home assessment because every case is a little different. I’ve gone into home owner’s homes who they’re telling me they’re selling in the spring and it’s February. And in that case, we might recommend things that A, the inspector is going to point out so that you can get a discount on it now and it’s cheaper to fix through MassSave than not. Other things that we do when we go into those homes is you automatically get a couple freebies, you get some power strips, you might get some water saving devices, high pressure, low flow devices on sinks or showers. We of course leave all the old ones in case anyone doesn’t like it. Now, you might also get Wi-Fi thermostats at discounted prices. If you want to buy a Nest thermostat, for example, you can go to Home Depot and you can pay $250 or you can come to MassSave, get it for $235, and we can install it as part of that. It’s like, which one’s the better value?
Probably the one where we’re going to install it and warranty it for that season change to make sure everything’s working. There’s a bunch of different intrinsic things that are more onsite. When we’re there doing the assessment we offer them to you and you can take them or leave them. And then there’s deeper rebates besides the 75% off plus installation. Such as in Massachusetts, there’s a whole home, $10,000 heat pump rebate. If you put any type of heat pump in your home, displacing your old system and it’s throughout 100% of the home and meets the needs of heating the home, you can get a $10,000 rebate to take care of that as well. And then again, beyond that, it goes even farther. Single pane windows qualify for rebates and 0% loans. Obviously there’s a ton of solar credits throughout the state. I’m sure you guys are the experts on that so I’ll leave it there for Brian.
Brian: Right on. We’re seeing more and more movement on energy efficiency in general. The state and even federal government are pushing for grid monetization and electrification. And certainly key pumps and ductless mini slits fit the bill there and give folks a lot of control and comfort and energy savings to be able to take advantage of those. Certainly we’ve heard that. We hear a lot of customers are asking us about that, and that’s why we want to partner with a company like Revise, who are the experts in energy efficiency and in HVAC that we can hook our customers up with to help.
Eddie: And I’d say it’s also worth mentioning too, it’s one thing to be an expert on energy efficiency, which is phenomenal and can be a challenge because every home is different, but it’s another thing to be an expert in navigating energy efficiency through the eyes of MassSave. And I say that because a lot of things in energy efficiency might not make sense to do from a financial perspective without the rebates. But once you keep in mind what MassSave is incentivizing and what those goals are and where they’re putting their money and where they’re willing to give assistance, that’s where, as a homeowner you can really take advantage of it and make out the best. Because that’s what we do every day is navigate a combination of what’s best for your home, what’s best for the environment, and what’s best for your wallet through all these rebates and programs.
John: Nice. Well, that’s really great information. Brian and Eddie, great to talk to you today.
Brian: Thanks, John. Appreciate it.
Eddie: Thank you.
Information About Solaris Renewables
John: For more information about Solaris Renewables, you can visit their website at solarisrenewables.com or call 7812706555. And Eddie, why don’t you tell everybody how people can reach you at Revise?
Eddie: The best ways are either going to our website at callrevise.com, hit that contact us and we’ll just give you a call. We can set up that whole home assessment with one of my guys that I manage. Secondly, by all means, reach out at 1-800-885-7283. If you ever need me directly, you can just ask for Eddie. I’m the only one in the company, and they’ll know exactly who you’re talking about.
John: Great. And again, the number for Solaris Renewables is 781-270-6555.