HEAT EXCHANGE: FRUSTRATION AT THE COSTS OF HEATING AND COOLING HIS HOME PROMPTED HARRY BOODY'S LIFELONG CRUSADE TO REIN IN ENERGY BILLS.

• Author: Tosczak, Mark
• Position: NC TREND: Energy

Harry Boody didn't set out to disrupt the heating, ventilation and air-conditioning business. He was just ticked off that his new "energy-efficient" home in High Point was costing him four times as much in energy costs as predicted by his builder.

"This was in 1977," Boody says. "There was no definition of what energy-efficient meant." The monthly bills were more than he could afford. "It took that American dream right away from me. It made me so mad."

At the time, Boody was an engineer at the WGHP television station in High Point with an aspiration of becoming director of engineering for a major network. That dream didn't pan out, because Boody chose a different path. He spent two years teaching himself about home energy efficiency and tweaking his home's ductwork and air flow, resulting in an 80% cut in heating bills, he says. Soon, he was applying what he learned to friends' houses, including TV anchors who helped spread the word. He eventually left broadcasting to start Energy Innovations, which grew to 32 employees by 1988.

But Boody was miserable, his health failing. "I went from being this one-on-one tech geek to now being president of a company dealing with employees," he says. "It tore me up inside." He took a year off, then retooled his business as a small consultancy.

It stayed that way until two years ago, when a client, former High Point hosiery executive William Millis, asked about Boody's retirement plans. Millis' family controlled one of the state's largest hosiery companies before its sale to Sara Lee Corp. in the late '80s. Boody, who is in his 60s, didn't have a plan, which was a problem because he and his wife have a school-age daughter.

Millis' pitch was straightforward: Boody needed an exit plan, and countless frustrated homeowners needed Boody's expertise. Millis became CEO in the renamed Scientific Environmental Design, which launched in 2016 to take Boody's life work--reducing heating and air-conditioning costs--and scale it to thousands of homes a year. They recruited a handful of executives and set a goal of raising $1.5 million. As of January, they had collected about $750,000, much of it from Boody's former clients.

The company's value proposition is simple: Homeowners pay SED to design systems, ducting and insulation and then supervise installation by an HVAC company. Millis is seeking to patent a device that attaches to the system to manage air flow and dehumidification. After installation, SED guarantees a...