Keen Climate Change Heating & Air Conditioning

Posted on 17. Feb, 2010 by admin in Companies

Owners: Carl and Lisa Keen

Startup date: Oct. 14, 2009

Phone: 509-784-5336

by Yvette Davis

ENTIAT — Keen Climate Change Heating & Air Conditioning owner Carl Keen said he and his wife, Lisa Keen, are comfortable working from home and not planning to change that any time soon.

Besides, Carl Keen said, all his work is done on site at the client’s location, so he doesn’t need a big office. And the lower he can keep his overhead, the lower he can keep prices.

“The customer only wants to know two things, how much and how long,” he said. “But when you’re all done you better have it up and running, and it had better be more comfortable for them than when you got there.”

Keen has 20 years of experience in the Valley working for other heating, ventilating and air conditioning companies. He started with a company in Spokane right out of college, and took care of the Verizon buildings, some school district buildings and bank buildings. He later wrote the utility computer code program for the science building on the Wenatchee Valley College campus in Wenatchee that reduced the cost of the utility bills by 57 percent. He worked on that system and in Omak from 1995-2003, and also taught some classes and did an on-the-job training for the students in the HVAC program at the college.

But after 20 years working for someone else he wanted to own his own business. It opened Oct. 14.

Lisa Keen got an inheritance and helped him financially. It cost $20,000 to set up the business, get his electrical license, hire an attorney to incorporate, hire an accountant, and get the design work done for the cards and the graphics on the truck, he said.

All those costs were paid up front, Keen said, which also helps keeps their prices low since they don’t have a business loan.

Lisa Keen also does the scheduling, bookkeeping, advertising and paperwork for the business as well as run her own in-home nursing business in Entiat.

Right now, it’s just the two of them in the business, but Carl Keen said he envisions growth down the road — more employees and two more trucks — partly because of the lagging economy.

“In the service field this is actually a great time to start a business because running out and buying new equipment has come to a screeching halt,” Keen said. “An average new system is around $6,000, but at the end of the day a furnace is just a box with a bunch of parts in it. You can rebuild it most of the time and that saves people money.”

Keen works on both commercial and residential units, whether boilers, gas-fired, radiant or electric heat, and does refrigeration work and programs controls. He does installation work as well and covers an area from Wenatchee to Plain and up the Highway 97 corridor to Okanogan and points beyond.

Read more about: Business birth, featured