Frank Carmona Talks About Safety and Energy Features of the IntelliFlo® Pool Pump (interview by Leon Rawitz).

www.allfloridapool.com
Topics include:

• Safety and energy features of the IntelliFlo® pool pump
• How an upcoming change in Florida State Laws will affect consumers and pool industry professionals
• Changes Carmona has observed in pool consumer / customer buying behavior over last 15 years

- -  Please see below for a text version of this audio file. - -

Leon Rawitz:       

Well welcome to the Innovation Lab. Today our guest is Frank Carmona. Frank is the general manager of All Florida Pools in North Miami Beach, Florida. All Florida Pools has been in business for 40 years. And Frank, tell me how long have you been in the industry?

Frank Carmona:   

I’ve been in the pool and spa industry for 25 – 28 years; somewhere.

Leon Rawitz:       

Tell me a little bit about what All Florida Pools does.

Frank Carmona:   

We’re located in Miami; North Miami Beach precisely. We’re a large service company. We’ve been around for 40 years, like I said. We specialize in commercial and residential service, repair and renovation. We have a large retail facility for our commercial customers to shop as well as our residential customers. Plus we also have a large showroom for hot tubs and spas, as we sell a lot of those as well.

Leon Rawitz:       

You have an interesting fact you were telling me. I know with the economy having hit Florida relatively – pretty hard, you’re actually have increased your service business, isn’t that right?

Frank Carmona:   

That’s correct. And it’s interesting to see. I guess there’s a, yes, like everywhere else there’s a lot of foreclosures and whatnot, but there’s a lot of people buying up these homes and getting them ready and making them pretty and we see a lot of that in our area. So there’s money leaving but there’s, you know, coming back.

Leon Rawitz:       

What do you see happening on your renovation side of the business?

Frank Carmona:   

Well as these people are buying these homes and they have – I mean this a pretty older, established market. So you have easily 40-year-old pools out there. So they’re renovating them; putting in additional skimmers, more return lines, main drains. Putting in sun shelves. Making the pools more user friendly. Diamond Brites, obviously, coping, tile; just changing the look completely. And we’re doing a lot of that.

Leon Rawitz:       

Now you were telling me before we started on the call that there’s going to be some changes in the Florida laws as it relates to swimming pool pumps. What can you tell our viewers about that?

Frank Carmona:   

That’s correct. Well, everybody’s becoming more energy conscious, and from what I understand FP&L, Florida Power and Light, and the University of Miami; they did a study on IntelliFlo Pumps by Pentair. And, you know, they were studying it for a long time because they need to lower the cost of the pool pump consumption. So we’ve been selling those pumps for a while—actually quite a bit of them—that were able to drop the homeowner’s energy bills for the pool by maybe 60%, which really adds up over the years. So if you’re saving somebody, you know, $800 a year on their energy bill, you know, that’s a lot of money you can put in the bank.

Leon Rawitz:       

What would be important for listeners out there to know about the variable speed pumps?

Frank Carmona:   

We originally started, there was a law passed about a year or two ago where in the commercial application they said that you need to be putting some type of a safety vacuum release system on commercial pools that don’t have surge tanks. And basically it’s a lot of mumbo jumbo, but what that means is you have to have some type of an anti entrapment device so people, kids, hair does not get stuck on main drains. So this law went into effect, like, about two years ago and all the older pools in our area which don’t have surge tanks were required by law to have type of a device.

Well the IntelliFlo, the model that we use, had the safety vacuum release built into the pump. So as an added feature, not only (is) the commercial property saving on their electric bill, but they’re also meeting the codes that require to have a safety vacuum release. So now you’re getting two benefits with one pump. You’re saving energy and you’re potentially saving a life because if something clogs a main drain it’s automatically going to shut the pump, which, you know, we want to save lives here. With that pump we’re able to kill two birds with one stone since we save money and save lives. It’s a win-win.

Leon Rawitz:       

Tell me, you’ve been in the industry now for, you said earlier I think, 25 to 28 years. How have you seen customer tastes change over the years? And particularly it would be interesting, I guess now with the economy being so different and tight, what have you observed in terms of swimming pool owners and what they were like maybe 25 years ago when you started and what’s different today?

Frank Carmona:   

I remember starting out a long time ago. The big – the thought was “Oh bigger is better. You need to have a bigger pump,” blah, blah, blah. You need to have a bigger this; bigger that. And that’s not true. I think a lot of consumers are a lot smarter now than they were 20 years ago. They’re going more toward energy efficient products, where back in the day we didn’t – nobody knew about this stuff. We didn’t care. We just were consumers and we consumed. Now you can really build or renovate a pool and make it very energy efficient. LED lights, for example, okay. You’ve got a 300 watt light that’s consuming some serious watts. Now you can go to LED and minimize that dramatically.

Same thing with your pump. Back in the day they were using a lot of DE filters and I think – and I can’t say we’re all across the country, but here in our market we tend to see more cartridge filters; people who can, you know, take it apart, clean them, put them back in. They’re not backwashing any water, losing any chemicals, you know, keeping everything pretty much in check that way. I think they’re just getting smarter.

Leon Rawitz:       

I know obviously the Internet has probably changed a lot in terms of where they’re getting their information from. Obviously I’m going to guess that they’re coming to you a lot more aware of what’s out there and kind of doing their homework in advance. Would that be a fair statement?

Frank Carmona:   

Yes, I would agree. There’s a lot of people doing – being on the Internet. And the fact that they’re doing or being on the Internet on their phones so they can actually do it on the counter it’s kind of interesting to see. The technology’s {laughs} changed a lot.

Leon Rawitz:       

And your retail business, in light of the economy, how has that changed? Service has certainly been up. What about your aftermarket in the retail store?

Frank Carmona:   

I would say that in our industry, and again I’m speaking for myself, the first part of the year was a little light, but we picked up a lot of steam and we’re actually making the numbers for the projection for the year for the store. But the first quarter was kind of brutal for I think everybody. We’re doing pretty good in the store. We have a very knowledgeable staff; guys who’ve been around the industry for many years. It’s rare to find some – a customer come in and stump one of us because we’ve been around so long.

Leon Rawitz:       

And I understand you’re a pretty large organization in terms of the particularly service side of your business.

Frank Carmona:   

Right.

Leon Rawitz:       

How many trucks do you have out there?

Frank Carmona:   

We’re running about 50 trucks, 70 employees. We’re a rather large payroll. {Laughs} But we do service a lot of customers. We do see 1,800-2,000 pools a week. We’re busy.

Leon Rawitz:       

Well 40 years in business, you’re obviously doing a whole lot of things right, so that’s terrific. I want to commend you guys for that. Frank, thanks so much for being part of the Innovation Lab. It’s been great speaking with you. And if somebody wants to get a hold of All Florida Pools, what’s the best way to reach them?

Frank Carmona:   

(305) 893-4036 is the phone number. You know, we’re always here. Or service@allfloridapool.com .

Leon Rawitz:       

Great. Frank, thanks again. It’s been a pleasure talking with you.

Frank Carmona:   

Thanks for having me.

Leon Rawitz: 

Okay, bye now.