The Preferred Press

Mark Breier has been with Preferred Sales for about a year and works out of our Hermitage, PA corporate office. You may hear Mark's voice on the phone as part of a water heater troubleshooting call or see his smiling face on the road with our Bradford White product trailer. 

Our custom Bradford White trailer is a mobile showcase of Bradford White's newest water heating technology. Contractors and distirbutors can get hands-on training for heat pump water heaters, tankless water heaters, floor-standing boilers, and commercial water heaters. 

Mark brings a wealth of experience and knowledge to our company in all aspects of water heating from commercial water heaters to tankless units.

How long have you worked in the industry?

• 22 years. My Uncle owned a wholesaler in the Pitt area. They needed a warehouse guy, so I started there unloading trailers, doing inventory, and helping with deliveries. From there, I moved into inside sales doing quotes, parts, and some counter sales as well. I then got itnto troubleshotting and training: looking at jobs with contractors and consulting on installations to help them install product in the correct way.

Favorite thing about the trades?

• Every day is a new day and you don't see the same thing day to day. There's always something new and you learn something every day.

Best advice when it comes to water heating and hydronics?

• Best I've ever received is simple: Know your products. If you don't know it, you can't help your customer.
• My advice for my customers: Read the install guide. Pay attention when you're on jobs. There are still lots of old jobs and installs out there that a new product won't always fix. And if you dont understand how that new product works, it may never be a solution to you.

What types of skills do you bring to our customers in the field?

• I've had the unique opportunity to spend my career in a bridge between years of experience with the old-school systems and then transitioning into our current next-gen product. I'm a firm believer that you have to know how the old stuff worked to push and understand the new technologies. 
• I've also invested a ton of time in tankless water heating. Tankless is not for everybody or every job. I'm very excited to see where tankless is going in the commercial realm to and help contractors with those installs. 

What's your philosophy on training and learning new skills?

• You can never have enough training. Look at something like heat pump water heaters in the push for electrification. That's a technology that will keep growing. Everything comes back to training and understanding the product. I also believe social media can be a useful tool for quickly gaining knowledge. There is a great community of contractors on social who are sharign tons of useful knowledge.

Craziest troubleshoot you've ever had to do?

• We had a laundromat job that took out two commercial tank-type water heaters and put in three commercial tankless units. After that, the tankless units started sporadically throwing error codes. The venting was an  outside wall and none of use could figure this thing out. I spent hours on this job one day and eventually noticed there was an alley behind the building that would only get used during rush hour and accumulate exhaust fumes. Cars would idle in this alley with the rush hour traffic and infect the combustion air. We diverted all venting through the roof and candy-caned the terminations This solved all their issues! I had to spend all day on that job to identify that enironmental factor.