Furnace ductwork is a lot like a giant hamster Habitrail; it consists of lots of tunnels that wind around, down, and through.  In fact, if you had a five-year-old mind, you might pop the grill off one of those vent openings in the floor and let your pet hamster enjoy this ready-made toy.  

Unfortunately, your five-year-old mind isn’t aware that instead of tumbling out into a safe plastic cage at the end of the run, the hamster is going to find himself falling into a fiery inferno.  When your parents find out what you’ve done, they might call the 911 equivalent for furnaces: Graber Heating & Air.

“I get the call,” Barry Graber says, “and I listen, listen, listen.  It was at the bottom of an old octopus furnace.  I cut a hole, he was in there, and he was fine.”

Saving hamster lives is all in a day’s work for the third-generation owner of Graber Heating & Air, who today runs the business alongside the fourth generation, sons Shawn and Shane.  Barry’s dad Lynn, the second generation, still works part-time for the company.  As you might imagine, the work they share makes for entertaining conversation at family dinners.

“We love to tell stories,” Shawn Graber confirms.  “It’s almost like our career fuels all of these wonderful and wild experiences.”

That storytelling ability may be the heart of what endears the business to its customers.  

“If you know the Grabers at all, we are a family of talkers,” Shane Graber explains. “I know we get it from my grandfather [Lynn], the art of storytelling.  In our work, we really find a joy in explaining what we’re doing and explaining how [a homeowner’s] system works or the differences in the systems you can purchase.  We really enjoy and get pleasure in educating and sharing the information that we have with the client or customer.”

“Some of these systems are a mystery to the homeowner.  They either work or they don’t,” Shawn says.  “If we come along and we can explain a few things, I’ve heard so much appreciation for [that].”

In a society in which most of us sustain careers as specialists in our chosen field, we depend on others to help us out in most other areas of our lives.  We’re generally comfortable not knowing everything, but we do want to understand enough to be able to make wise decisions.  Making the mechanisms behind complex equipment understandable to a non-specialist takes time and patience, an effort that not every business is willing to expend.

But the Grabers are different.

“I started as a teenager working with my dad, and I saw how interested the customer was in watching this new furnace being put in,” Shane explains.  “I thought, you know what, we do this every day, but to them it’s once in 20 years.  It’s a big deal.”

“That was where I learned, if they want to watch or if they want to ask questions, embrace it,” he says.  “It’s 10 more minutes for me, but it’s once in a lifetime for them.”

That empathy and respect for the customer may have trickled down from first generation and founder Dan Graber, who, together with son Lynn, insisted on treating customers like family.  They do this in many ways, including showing customers options for equipment that would work best for them and letting them make their own choice; providing fair cost estimates and sticking to them; and by hiring employees that share and express these same values.

“Oftentimes, when we walk into a house, [we think], if this was my own home, and I was going to live here and enjoy the comfort of this home, how would I do it?” Shawn says.

Not every job is easy.  Some homes have design flaws that are so fundamental to the structure that they cannot be completely rectified.  No one wants to be told their dream home is doomed.

“Your home is more than just a building,” Shawn understands.  “It’s part of your family, it’s part of your identity.  You have dreams that involve your house.”

No matter the situation, the Grabers always aim to make sure their customers feel taken care of, and by all indications, they do.  Fast, courteous, professional, knowledgeable, friendly, kind, helpful, skilled, excellent, top quality, timely, honest, sincere, and impressive are the words customers of Graber Heating & Air have used to describe them online.

Not every family business has willing heirs, and the Grabers have been fortunate in this regard.  When asked about how to cultivate a successor, Barry explains that of the four children in his family, he was the only one to commit to the business.  

“My dad encouraged us all to try something different,” he says.  “He said, ‘You’ll never know if working for Dad as your boss was the right way to go unless you’ve tried something else.’  I appreciated that flexibility.  I tried to give that to my sons.”

Barry also had four sons, two of which find working for Graber Heating & Air “very rewarding.”  

 “As a boy, I loved going to work, because first of all, we were going on an adventure to save a homeowner from either a hot or a freezing cold house.  We got to see firsthand the joy in their face when we were able to save the day.  I was also able to learn just by holding the flashlight or whatever I was doing, and it definitely piqued my interest,” Shane says.

Shawn agrees; he says in talking with other tradesmen, they often say they couldn’t imagine working for their dads.  

“It takes a very special work relationship to make that happen,” he says.  “[Barry has] been very generous and kind to us.  He’s taken good care of us, and he’s made work fun to go to.  He’s made work interesting, and that makes all the difference.”

Looking forward, both Shawn and Shane hope to inspire a love for their work in their own children.  

“If they’d love to work with us, we would be so pleased,” Shawn says.

Having arrived at their 85th year in business, the team at Graber Heating & Air has much to celebrate, and they hope you’ll join them.  On Saturday, August 5, they will hold an open house at 1302 Angle Rd. SW, Kalona, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., where they will serve hot dogs and burgers and have a bouncy castle and yard games.  They’ll also have a sale on filters, as well as an informative presentation on how to choose effective filters that aren’t so restrictive that they prevent your equipment from working.

“Our goal is just to have an excuse to invite the community out here, and to say thank you to all the people who have allowed us to be here for 85 years.  It’s a big deal to us,” Shane says.  “We love the Kalona community and the overall feeling of family that this town represents.”