About a year ago in Lynden, Barron Heating AC Electrical & Plumbing CEO Brad Barron crossed paths with Dave Marrs, a general contractor and half of the husband-and-wife duo that hosts Fixer to Fabulous, the hit HGTV home renovation show.
The two connected while filming a sustainability series on behalf of Daikin, Barron’s primary HVAC equipment provider. Dave and Brad chatted about solar projects Barron was installing locally and, eventually, about Dave and Jenny Marrs’ sustainability goals for their own home, which they share with their five children in Bentonville, Arkansas.
It all led to Brad Barron and Tim West, Barron’s lead solar design expert, flying to the Marrs farmstead in May to install a solar panel array and battery backup system that would meet the family’s complete electrical needs.
The Barron team spent around five days in Bentonville, completing both the 52-panel solar array on the family barn (chosen for optimal south-facing roof and solar access) and a 15-kWh battery backup generator for Arkansas power outages due to tornadoes and ice storms.
Another project (at a different property in Arkansas) completed by Barron will air this winter on a season 7 episode of Fixer to Fabulous, which averages viewership of about 30 million people per season.
Hands-on Sustainability
For Dave Marrs, the installation was a hands-on learning experience, as he aided the Barron team by climbing onto the barn roof to help, despite the unseasonably warm and humid late-May weather.
“I came from a place of not having done this before,” Marrs says. “I asked Tim, ‘What would you put on your own house if you were doing this?’”
Learning about Barron’s solar success was impressive to Marrs, and initially a surprise, given our area’s less-than-bountiful sunlight at certain times.
“I would have thought we would have been going to Arizona or California for solar,” Marrs says. “But to see that Barron is doing it in northern Washington, and doing it well, is a great testament to their company.”
While energy costs are not net-metered in Arkansas and are generally cheaper than in states like Washington, the Marrs family remains committed to living an environmentally sustainable lifestyle in their personal and professional construction endeavors.
“Jenny and I have really, over the last several years, aligned ourselves with other companies within the building industry that are doing the same thing,” he says. “It’s one of those ‘practice what you preach’ things. As a contractor, I won’t sell someone something until I’ve tried it myself.”
The Marrs’ new Barron-installed solar system generates as much energy as they use, essentially zeroing out their energy consumption. The backup battery, meanwhile, ensures their family has power for critical systems in their home during severe weather events.
Those events were something the Barron team experienced first-hand while in Bentonville.
“When we were down there, there were literally tornado sirens going off one of the nights,” Brad Barron says. “We definitely experienced first-hand that Arkansas has power outages.”
Fostering Stewardship
Providing their home with sustainable energy isn’t just about saving money for the Marrs family, but about the stewardship of caring for the earth and passing those values to their children.
For Barron, helping them in that journey also allowed the company to utilize trusted equipment manufacturers that guarantee their work with decades-long warranties.
The project’s solar panels were supplied by Silfab Solar, a Skagit County-headquartered solar panel company that manufactures its equipment in the United States. And the project’s battery backup generator came from FranklinWH, headquartered in San Francisco.
Even months after the project, Dave Marrs notes that Barron continues to monitor the performance of his now fully inspected equipment.
“They’ve been a great partner through all this,” he says.
Brad Barron, along with the rest of the Barron team, was also thrilled to be part of the project and looks forward to seeing it featured on HGTV this winter.
“It was fun,” says Brad Barron, of working with Dave Marrs. “One of the neatest things that came from this for me was getting to know him and his family, and seeing the alignment to how we live out our values and sustainability goals. They welcomed us like we were family.”
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