A year ago, plumbing and heating expert Richard Trethewey and his son Evan started renovating an old mill building. Their goal was to turn it into a state-of-the-art educational and showroom facility. Today, Ask This Old House host Kevin O’Connor will visit RST Thermal in Fall River, Massachusetts, to learn more about this unique location.
The Ultimate Training Center
Richard’s primary day job now is serving as an HVAC manufacturer representative. This often involves educating contractors, builders, architects, engineers, homeowners, and other folks on site. To make their job more efficient, Richard and his son Evan decided to build a state-of-the-art training center with all of their most popular products and systems on display.
The training center is housed in a 1904 mill building in the industrialized city of Fall River, Massachusetts. As Richard explained during a tour with Kevin O’Connor: “My son Evan and I saw this building and thought this could be a perfect place for a training center for the HVAC industry.” He described the renovation as “a labor of love over the past year or so,” transforming the historic mill into a comfortable, natural-lit learning space with modular displays that can be customized depending on the audience—whether that’s contractors, architects, or homeowners.
Pro Tip: What makes the showroom unique is that many of the systems on display are actively operational—they heat, cool, and provide hot water to the building itself. Richard noted that this hands-on approach is key: “They can see the operation. They can see what’s going on. So, it becomes much more user-friendly.” He pointed to a properly piped radiant system as an example, explaining that when contractors see it in person, their reaction is often: “Yeah, I could do that. Okay. Yeah.”
A Labor of Love
The RST Thermal Training Center has been a labor of love. It’s a former mill building built in 1904. Over the past year, Evan and Richard have overseen the renovation, creating one huge building with classrooms, system displays, and showrooms so companies, contractors, designers, and homeowners can see and touch the equipment and systems in real life.
Systems on Display
RST has many systems on display (some of which actually control the RST building). There are radiant floor manifolds, chilled water systems, heat pumps, air handlers, mini-duct systems, inverter heat pumps, geothermal systems, air-to-water systems, gas-fired condensing boilers, and other heating systems. There are also fresh air displays with ventilator systems and commercial equipment.
The Philosophy
There aren’t many other places like the RST showroom. It’s supposed to help demystify the mechanical world and provide the education people need to understand these systems and make better decisions. However, RST’s goal is to increase awareness for the entire industry, with the approach that a rising tide lifts all boats. It’s also a great opportunity to continue Richard’s legacy after he leaves the industry.
The philosophy behind the showroom is rooted in a family tradition. Richard recalls how his father ran the family business with the same spirit of generosity: “He was always the one trying to train the next generation. He would train people. He’d bring them in and adopt them.” When Richard questioned why they kept training people who eventually left to start their own businesses, his father’s response stuck with him: “It doesn’t matter. It’s going to help the whole industry.”
Pro Tip: Richard sees the showroom’s broader impact clearly: “We showed the world better stuff, and it helped the whole industry do a better system and made people more comfortable. And guess what? The mechanical contractors, they might have made more money. That’s okay, as long as the homeowners are happy, too. Who loses? Nobody loses.”
