Modern Home Performance Technology Firmly Rooted in Historic Values

AlabamaWISE is a community economic development effort to grow jobs in Home Performance contracting by raising community awareness of the innovative “whole-house” approach for home improvement, comfort and environmental health solutions.

Home Performance is a technological innovation that uses building science to understand the complex “whole-house” interactions of the structure and mechanical systems.

We visited AlabamaWISE participating contractor, H.C. Blake Co., a family owned company, now run by the sixth generation owner, Jim Batson, to learn how the company successfully managed adopting new technology over the years. Batson has a vision for leading the company and keeping up with the latest technology to meet customer demand. Lately, more and more people want to reduce energy waste and save money, and H. C. Blake is at the forefront of companies offering energy services in north Alabama.

Walk into H. C. Blake’s business office in downtown Huntsville for a history lesson in building systems technology, the Blake family tree, and the history of Huntsville. B. W. Blake, born in Galway, Ireland, emigrated to the United States in 1840 and made his home in Huntsville, where he married Sara Hall in the 1850s. Alabama in those days was still America’s western frontier, and settlers like Blake had the skills to do any job required. Blake built the gaslight system on courthouse square, became superintendent of streets, and served as alderman.

Jim Batson’s sister, Sara Fair, is coordinating the company’s Home Performance and energy services initiatives and holds a Ph.D from the University of Alabama in Huntsville. We asked Sara how H. C. Blake has managed technological change from indoor plumbing and gaslight, to electric light, to mechanical heating, then air conditioning, ventilation, and now, Home Performance, the science-based, integrated approach to all of the above. The simple answer is doing whatever is required to meet the customer’s needs. She pointed out a newspaper article on the wall, circa 1888, about the business and second generation Blake brothers and their business values.

The faded and torn news clipping now preserved under glass documents the formula this family company has followed to achieve 129 years of success — simply an old-fashioned mindset – a commitment to quality work, customer service and satisfaction. This strategy encompasses all of the tactics needed to adapt with changing technology and markets. Sara Fair noted keeping up with technological change is simply the way to meet the customer’s needs. A transcript of the article follows:

TWO RISING YOUNG MEN.
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What Blake Bros Have Accomplished by Individual Effort.
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NOW COUNTED AS SUBSTANTIAL CITIZENS.

 It would seem in Huntsville that the men of the older generation who are fast passing away are not to leave their works in inexperienced hands if the efforts of J.W. and H. C. Blake are to be taken as criterion. Not in the business circles of this prosperous city can there be found two young men who have achieved more or who give greater promise of developing into live and active power in the opportunity than they. They have given such evidence of this as to make already a reputation that counts them in the first rank of the strong men of Huntsville.

Both are young men. Both have been raised here, and count this as the place of their future home. Both are of high character and undisputed financial standing. Both have risen by the stress of their individual efforts. Both reflect the highest credit upon the city of their nativity, and stand as living evidences to the fact that any young man who has the proper determination can overcome all obstacles and drive himself on to success from a start based on the smallest capital.

Four years ago they opened up a small plumbing establishment. Their capital was meager, but they were..[loyal]…to their work, their contracts were strictly lived up to and it was but a few months before the firm of Blake Bros., was one of the best known and most trusted in Huntsville.

They opened business to give value received. They knew their business and recognizing that the only permanent success they might have would come only after they had proven themselves worthy of the confidence of the public, set out to make that the basis for their future work. How well they have succeeded needs no superfluous mention at this time.

They believe in the home that gave them birth and talk the interests of the city at every opportunity. They have fitted up their establishment with the highest class of goods and carry a stock that enables them to meet all calls and to fill all demand made upon their  skill at the shortest possible notice.. They are not only practical plumbers themselves, but will employ and send out no man from their place to fill and order who is not a skilled workman. They have met with success, but it came only after they had proven that they were worthy of it.

The senior member of the firm is Mr. J. W. Blake, who has charge proper of the business end of the establishment. Mr. Blake is not quite 26 years old, but he is with all that able to give many and older and more experienced man several laps and beat him in a game where shrewd business is the stake.

When a youth he assisted his father, B.W. Blake, who for several years was city street superintendent. Deciding upon a commercial course he went to Birmingham and entered a college where he took diplomas both in bookkeeping and telegraphy, and there are mighty few operators holding down keys today who can sling electricity more artistically than can this successful young son of Huntsville.

He may be said to be an all  around…

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…the internal affairs of his house, he watches carefully over the conduct of a big farm 7 miles northwest of Huntsville and the same skill in management displayed in his town property is evidenced by the success he has met with the difficult task of raising corn, cotton and cattle.

Mr. Blake, like his brother, is essentially a self-made man. Whatever success he has met with has been of his own making. He has risen from the bottom to where he now commands the respect of the strongest business men of the community. He is a man of congenial nature, always ready to assist a friend, possesses a happy and engaging personality, and has not an enemy on earth. His heart is still free and many a pretty girl in the city has cast longing glances in his direction.

But it is to the helpful knowledge and experience of Mr. H. C. Blake that the practical affairs of the firm has met with so much success. He it is who directs all the filling of contracts. It is [out of] his volume [of] experience that customers of the [firm] are made to feel that they have had the best work possible to be done for them in the plumbing line. It is this big tall, broad shouldered young fellow who draws up plans and sees to their execution with a skill that marks the artist.

For many years he was the trusted representative of the leading plumbing firm in this section. By the time he ad barely entered his teens he was the sole man in charge of the large repair interest of the concern, and when he had reached the age of 18 – a time when most young men are thinking more about a “swell” time than business – he had formed a co partnership with his brother, J. W. Blake, and branched out from the position of an employee to that of an man who was an employer.