Keefer and Dorian Rader refer to their firm as “The Boiler Experts,” but they could easily change their motto to “The Home Improvement Experts.”

Take my word for it, if you haven’t yet been to AHR Expo, then go! Take your significant other, and if you can, make arrangements to reward a good technician with the experience.

My thinking was something like this: It costs a lot, may not be all it’s claimed to be, and looks to be pretty involved (learning curve), so maybe the thing to do is to sit on the sidelines for a while to see how it does. Soon, there was broad use of technology we weren’t familiar with, and I began to sense that some of our competitors had an advantage.

Here in the Santa Fe, New Mexico, area — and all across the nation, it seems — everyone wants to be “green.”

I live and work in the Santa Fe, New Mexico, area. So, it takes something special to pull me from my home and work to willingly travel to Chicago in the midst of winter. This year, that special something was the AHR Expo.

In 2008, my wife, Dorian, and I moved to Albuquerque from Colorado to establish Outlaw Mechanical. Colorado taught me a few things about the need for tough, durable HVAC systems, so, today, about 40 percent of Outlaw’s work is hydronic.