I spent years inside buildings. I watched the same problem happen on every one of them.

The letter

I didn’t start Harmelo because I wanted to build a software company.

I started it because I spent years around mechanical systems inside homes and buildings and saw the same problems happen over and over again.

People spend thousands of dollars on furnaces, heat pumps, hot water systems, and other mechanical equipment that quietly runs their homes for years. But when something goes wrong, nobody actually knows the history of the system.

Was it installed properly?
Was it maintained?
Was the warranty even registered?

Too often the answer is no one really knows.

Contractors change.
Companies go out of business.
Paperwork disappears.
Warranty registrations never get filed.

I’ve seen homeowners move into a house and have to replace a furnace or mechanical system three to six months later because there was no record of work completed on it. Home inspectors do their best, but they aren’t HVAC technicians, and without documentation it’s nearly impossible to understand the true condition or history of the equipment.

What should be a planned expense turns into a stressful and expensive surprise.

The problem becomes even bigger at scale.

Housing providers, municipalities, and portfolio operators are responsible for thousands of building systems across their buildings. These systems age, require maintenance, and eventually need replacement. But when lifecycle records are fragmented across contractors, software platforms, and ownership changes, infrastructure decisions become reactive instead of planned.

That lack of continuity creates uncertainty everywhere, for homeowners, for operators, and for the institutions responsible for housing infrastructure.

Harmelo was created to address that gap.

The idea is simple: the systems themselves should carry their history.

As contractors change, software platforms evolve, and buildings move through ownership cycles, the system’s history stays intact.

For homeowners, this means clearer visibility into the infrastructure inside their homes and fewer costly surprises.

For housing providers, property managers and operators, it gives capital planning and day-to-day work the same record to stand on.

Where this is going. Over time, we want a continuing record to be ordinary for the systems people depend on, so it can support better oversight, better-informed capital planning and stronger protection for the people and organizations responsible for them. That is our direction, not something we claim today.

At its core, Harmelo exists to restore three things that should never disappear from the infrastructure we rely on every day:

Continuity.
Clarity.
Control.

Because the systems that keep our homes and buildings running should never lose the history required to manage them responsibly.

Brad Pettes
Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Harmelo Corp.