By Chance Chamberlain
Rhodes Heating and Cooling in Harrisonville is under new ownership after 17 years of serving the community because owner Lester Rhodes retired.
New owner Brad Chirnside said, “We want to honor the legacy that Lester leaves behind. We want to protect him by honoring his name and that is why we decided to honor all the 10/10 warranties that he gave his customers. We have had a lot of calls about that and we want people to know that their warranties will be honored.
“We really want to keep the Rhodes name healthy because he put 17 years of hard work into making a successful business for himself,” he said.
Chirnside said he got in contact with a mutual salesman which led to the purchase of the business.
“Lester was looking for a buyer that he trusted for his business and a salesman that we both know reached out to us about the business. We work in this area a lot, so it made sense for us to buy here and grow this area,” he said. “We are actually going to maintain the ‘Rhodes Heating and Cooling’ name as well because a lot of people don’t want a big city guy so we decided to keep the name to let people know that we care about honoring the name and that we want to be trusted in this area for years to come.”
Although there will be many new faces at Rhodes Heating and Cooling, Chirnside said he is keeping the original staff at the office.
“Of course, we are adding a few new faces to the company and myself, Ray Wyatt and Jim Cox will be working the area every day, but we are keeping everybody on that was previously employed by Lester. Cory Kinney will still be here running service and taking care of the customer base and their 10/10 warranties,” he said.
Alongside their efforts to maintain the reputation that Rhodes has built, Ray Wyatt, the new operations manager said the company is focused on quality control and keeping homes up to code.
“We are really focused on quality control and making everything up to code and up to quality. We want to do things the right way. There are a lot of older homes in Harrisonville that have had bad work done to them and our goal is to change that for our customers,” he said. “I am a BPI certified energy auditor and a licensed home inspector, so when I go into a home I am grading the efficiency of the house by looking at the age and by doing thermal scans and checking for leaks.”
Chirnside said the older homes do not scare him and that he built the foundation of his career working on the oldest homes in Kansas City.
“We cut our teeth on the oldest homes in Kansas City, so we have experience working on older homes. We fit right in here in Harrisonville. When we worked up in the city, we also faced tighter restrictions and government code from the city, so we will always do our work in Harrisonville up to code to make the community a safer place,” he said.
“We will be pulling permits from the city as well to ensure we are doing things the right way. This generates revenue for the city and promotes city growth. We want to become a member of this community and Ray is even moving his family into town because he wants his kids to go to a good school, so we are fully invested from the top down,” Chirnside added.
The mission at Rhodes is to provide customers with quality work with a sense of urgency, according to Chirnside. He said the key to serving customers the proper way is to do the work with high standards.
“We are going to do the right thing for our customers no matter what because that is the only way to build a good business. We bring a sense of urgency to our work because it can be frustrating to be without a furnace for more than a few hours, especially as the weather gets colder,” he said. “Just last week we helped an elderly couple with an issue where their seven-year-old HVAC unit burned up early. We shut off their furnace and had the new HVAC installed in a couple of hours. It is really about serving the customer in a timely manner because that is what they will remember.”
Chirnside added, “Right now, we are looking for a bigger building in Harrisonville with a big garage to operate out of, but our service will not stop during our search. Call us anytime and we will answer your calls. We want to serve our customer base to the best of our ability.”
Rhodes Heating and Cooling offers 24-hour emergency service and the company’s telephone number is 816-726-5972 or they can be reached by email at Schedule@RhodesHeatingandCooling.com.