One section per industry group that has been evaluated against the database. Each section answers the same five questions: what the database already covers, what is worth adding, what died on screening and why, how big the market is, and where the industry sits in the taxonomy.
How to read the state marks. Every section and every sub-part carries one of two marks:
A section is only FINISHED when every sub-part under it is.
State: FINISHED — 26 August 2026 (run R004). Every open item raised on 26 August was closed the same day: two candidate rows were generated, screened and killed; the one existing row was re-screened and killed; the seam ledger was updated. Nothing remains open in this section. If Stage 1 evidence ever contradicts a kill below, reopen it here and in the Run Log.
Why this section exists. These eight trades were recommended to the operator as "not sexy" businesses — part of the ~35 million US small businesses that nobody is targeting with AI. The question was whether the database had already found anything in them, and whether it should.
Rank is the position among active rows on 26 August 2026 before the run.
| Industry | Direct rows | Indirect / adjacent rows | Coverage |
|---|---|---|---|
| HVAC | none | #1 Plan Takeoff & Material Estimate (91.8) — mechanical subs are a core buyer · #52 Certified Payroll & Prevailing Wage Audit (69.1) — public-works subs | Indirect only |
| Plumbing | none | #1 Takeoff (91.8) · #52 Certified Payroll (69.1) | Indirect only |
| Electrical | none | #1 Takeoff (91.8) — electrical is the most-outsourced trade takeoff · #52 Certified Payroll (69.1) | Indirect only |
| Roofing | #4 Xactimate Scope & Supplement Review (86.0, Tier 2) — buyer is the roofer | #42 Public Adjuster-Style Claim Packet (71.4) — homeowner side · Builder / Home Warranty Claim Packet (64.1, killed F1) | Covered — until R004, see 1.3 |
| Landscaping | EPA Pesticide Applicator Recordkeeping Audit — killed R001 (56.7, F5) | #49 Worker Misclassification 1099/W-2 Report (69.8) — landscaping is a heavy 1099 user | Not covered |
| Pest control | Same killed pesticide row (56.7) | none | Not covered |
| Garage door | none | none | Not covered |
| Pool service | none | none | Not covered |
Neither NAICS 238 (specialty trade contractors) nor NAICS 5617 (services to buildings and dwellings) had been mined in the R001 4-digit sweep. The seam was untouched.
The product shape is document in → paid report out. The only pattern that has survived the kill-filters so far is a document the buyer must produce per job and currently pays someone else to produce (Takeoff, WISP). So each trade was asked: is there such a document?
| Industry | Verdict | Reasoning |
|---|---|---|
| HVAC | Candidate generated: Manual J/S/D load report for permits | Required by IRC M1401.3 / IECC; contractors already pay $79–400 per report; explicit search intent |
| Electrical | Candidate generated: NEC 220 load calc + single-line for panel / EV / heat-pump permits | Same per-permit shape, riding electrification |
| Plumbing | No candidate | No per-job document beyond commercial riser diagrams. Sub-segment of Takeoff. |
| Roofing | Re-screen the existing row | Supplement companies were suspected of contingency pricing, which the row's notes did not mention |
| Landscaping | No candidate | Aerial takeoff is owned by Attentive.ai (Automeasure — the same company behind Beam AI) and SiteRecon: F4 on arrival. H-2B petitions are agent- and counsel-owned and brush F2. |
| Pest control | No candidate | NPMA-33 termite reports and state applicator licensing both fall to F1 (inspectors and extension services do it free) |
| Garage door | No candidate | Single-visit consumer repair, no document, order value too low for a report. The real problem in the category is lead-gen price gouging; the fix is a marketplace, not a report. |
| Pool service | No candidate | Routes have no document flow. Pool construction contract review was considered and not generated: attorneys offer free consults (F1) and the category is post-peak. |
All three rows died. Full evidence and sources are in the database rows themselves.
| Row | Score | Verdict | The finding |
|---|---|---|---|
| HVAC Manual J/S/D Load Calculation & Duct Design Report (new, id 334) | 64.1 | Killed — F1 | LennoxPros gives dealers a free ACCA-approved MJ8 report tool (white-labelled CoolCalc). CoolCalc is free with reports at $5–15. Done-for-you services already sit at the floor of the price band: ManualJs.com $79, ManualJCalculator.com $109, RescheckReview $125. Search intent is real and no PE stamp is needed — it dies purely on free. |
| NEC 220 Load Calculation & Single-Line Diagram Permit Package (new, id 335) | 50.0 | Killed — F1 + F4 | The optional-method calc is a one-page worksheet; free tools are everywhere and ChargeRight sells it done-for-you for $12.99. Many AHJs require their own form. Qmerit (ChargePoint's installer network) does the calc inside its workflow; GreenLancer and PermitDesign.com already sell EV / panel-upgrade plan sets at $250–300. |
| Xactimate Scope & Supplement Review (existing, id 66, was bench #4) | 86.0 | Killed — F1 contingency variant + F2 | The supplement category is priced at 8–15% of the recovered supplement with zero upfront cost — the same downstream-fee-earner mechanism that killed Property Tax Appeal and Utility Tariff Optimization in R003. Flat fees of $150–500 exist but are secondary. Separately, Florida, Texas and Oregon have extended unauthorized-practice-of-public-adjusting law to anyone "assisting with a claim", so the contractor-as-buyer positioning no longer shields the service in the three largest storm-claim states. |
Consequences. The bench fell from 9 to 8 (the target is 8). Xactimate held the fourth Stage 1 test slot; that slot passed to CAM Reconciliation Audit (83.1), the highest-scoring bench row not already listed or deferred — the same substitution rule R003 used when Merchant Fee Audit died. The Status page, Proforma and Summary were updated to match.
Net finding for the thesis. Of eight "unfocused" trades, the database now holds zero active rows and three evidenced kills. The trades are not unfocused: HVAC, plumbing and electrical are the most PE-consolidated and vertical-SaaS-saturated SMB segment in the country (ServiceTitan, Jobber, Housecall Pro; Avoca and Sameday for AI phone booking; Rilla for ride-along coaching). Where those tools are absent — the per-job compliance document — manufacturers, distributors and regulators give the document away to keep the contractor in their channel. That is filter 1 operating at the level of an entire industry, and it is why the seam is recorded closed below.
Web-sourced 26 August 2026. IBISWorld 2025 unless noted. IBISWorld "businesses" are enterprises including non-employers, so counts run far above Census employer counts and average revenue per business skews low, especially for landscaping and pool service. Cross-check against Census CBP before quoting externally.
| Industry | NAICS | Businesses | Revenue | Employees | Avg rev / biz | Consolidation |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| HVAC | 238220† | ~117k | $158B | ~616k | ~$1.35M | ~800 HVAC / plumbing / electrical firms bought by PE since 2022; 22 consolidator platforms |
| Plumbing | 238220† | ~129k | $170B | ~742k | ~$1.32M | Same PE wave, "midway through the cycle" |
| Electrical | 238210 | ~257k | $345B | ~1.27M | ~$1.34M | High, steady competition; included in trades roll-ups |
| Roofing | 238160 | ~103k | ~$92B (older cite $76B) | ~227k | ~$0.9M | Top 5 under 10% share; PE platforms 17 → 56 across 2023–24 |
| Landscaping | 561730 | ~693k | $189B | ~1.47M | ~$270k | Most fragmented; BrightView #1 at ~1.5% share; 90+ PE platforms |
| Pest control | 561710 | ~33k (NPMA: 16.6k firms) | $26B (NPMA: $13B structural only) | ~149k | ~$790k | Rollins and Rentokil dominate; 55 acquisitions in nine months of 2024 |
| Garage door | no clean code (238290 / 238350) | >15k independents = 90% of market (PitchBook) | ~$16B total, ~$9.6B service (FMI 2026) | not found | — | "PE hopes it is the new HVAC"; early stage |
| Pool service | 561790 (no clean code) | ~79k | $8.8B | ~104k | ~$110k (operators cite $180–350k) | No player over 5%; 20+ PE firms hunting |
| Pool construction, separately | 238990 | ~22k | $16.5B | ~69k | ~$750k | Construction volume halved from peak |
† NAICS 238220 combines plumbing and HVAC in Census and BLS data; the split is IBISWorld's estimate.
Combined: roughly 1.4 million businesses, about $1.0 trillion in revenue, about 4.6 million employees. Against the SBA's ~34.8 million total US small businesses that is ~4% by count, but a large share of employer "main street" revenue. Electrical alone is a third of the total; garage door and pool service are rounding errors that PE is chasing precisely because HVAC and plumbing are picked over.
Two NAICS umbrellas, three behavioural buckets.
Behaviourally, which matters more for a document-report product:
sources-mined.md as mined with a 100% kill rate. Do not generate into them again under the current product shape.rubric.json, not the filters, in the same way the Regulatory Burden Index row did (parked, 50.0).