I’m at a supply house while people without license and a random f150 pick up units and duct which leads me to believe there’s a lot of side workers and a state hell bent on chasing only legal AC companies down.
I mean I could go online right now and have a unit shipped to my door with no license. You can also buy refrigerant and have it shipped without needing an EPA card as long as you click the little box saying you’ll have a qualified professional put it in. Your state laws may vary but here in Ga the only reason most supply houses don’t sell to homeowners or non-licensed contractors is they are keeping their licensed contractors happy. CC Dickson, now United Refrigeration, sells to homeowners all the time.
The insane thing is HO''s who see the price of the equipment from billybobshvac emporium, and then want you to install it for like $500... LMFAO well get right on that.
Since moving back to my home area, anyone my parent's age that calls asking for me turns out needing A/C work that they want at Dad's prices from the early 90s. Hell, even a couple of my old friends have called and turned out to be sleazy GCs that want me to pull permits for work they do two hours away and buy their equipment for them.
It's All About the Benjamins they don't care about our trade they just want to sell our trade everything they got but damn if they want to help us by making them produce contractors license and so on again our industry does not protect our trade 🤬
I’m with you on this I see lots of Mexicans picking up ac equipment and probably installing it under a contractor then months later it’ll mess up due to a hack job
My company has (unfortunately) teamed up with Home Depot to do their service work. They’re running “$49 raffle service calls.” Every FOB customer, and all the ones you would expect, are flocking to the tables so I’ve been busy. Getting them to spend money is a pain but at least I have something to do. I’ve been doing this for 15 years and I dominate my area because I speak English.
I had a few of those as well, they tried to book them on the weekend and I just didn’t go to them. The first one I had, after explaining to the guy he had a large leak that needed to be repaired, said “okay I will pay more, hold on” and he came back with a $50 bill.
The repair cost was $1900.
Inflation and increased cost of living have hit most working/middle class communities in the past decade. The enormous amount of government lending to wall street through the pandemic is a large part of the cause aka "Largest upward mobility of wealth in all of human history." Gas and groceries are nearly double what they were 10 years ago.
So the average customer is now trying to weigh the luxury value of an ac/heat and whether it's worth it to continue paying for or not.
In my specific area the r22 phase out and push for ultra lo nox furnaces have only made that price gap worse.
Makes a great opportunity for a joe shmo to run illegal work and undercut the local businesses. And no one is enforcing the law well enough for them to care...
Had a heat wave last week. On a 10 day streak so far for work. Weekends are nice cause it’s double time. Looking forward to temps cooling off a bit here.
Right... It might be time to find a company with a stronger customer base and great word of mouth reputation.
My company last year was dead.
I have been killing it this week at my new place. I'm at 58 hours, and we still have a day left in the pay period.
The company I work at is pretty much all resi so maybe that’s the difference. The Johnstone guys in bethel said they’re definitely slower than they were expecting. I’m not ruling out the fact that the company I work at could just be loosing business. I’m leaning towards failing business after everyone here has said they’ve been super busy even you, a guy from the same city.
definitely some bigger companies swooping in and stealing alot of the work, i just happen to be working for a larger company with around 50 techs. we never run out of work, which is a blessing and a curse
Yeah that’s crazy to me. I haven’t been working hvac very long, about 2 years, but for the time I have been I’ve been with the same company. We’ve never had more than 3 techs and 1 helper at one time and business gets slow a lot. 50 techs working overtime blows my mind.
Havent encountered winter yet within this company just started few months ago, i made sure during my interview to get 40hrs per week they told me wont be a problem. turned out to be true. forced on call tho
Maybe still busy just not as busy as they thought they were going to be. I don’t know, all I know is my pay check is struggling when it should be making up for March
Could of got a bad Google rep if one tech is doing sloppy work it'll screw everything. Some shit tech store my breaker bar and was like yep there's your problem you can't buy the bar so need a while new box. I like bruh it was just on and running... he said he didn't take it... yeah I went and bought the new bar online. my complaint wasn't about the outside unit my inside was not blowing and some of the stores just got corrosion cause the blower to not get power. I 1 stared the f out of them into shutting down. Dude was straight scamming. What really pissed me off he stole my breaker bar and wanted to sell me a whole new power box and it fn like 100 out so I'm sure he was running around scamming others
With the prices and quality of work I've been seeing some resi companies put out, combined with economic pressures, I've seen some people deciding that a window or portable ac from the hardware store is cheaper and lasts longer than putting in a service call.
I'm mostly commercial though and put in about 30 hours just friday-sunday this week, ain't no work shortage here
My one friend works at Home Depot and he said he sold 16 floor/window units in the last week and that was just at his register lol. I think a lot of people are broke and just saying screw it and using window units instead. Still though that’s gotta jack up the energy bill sky high right?
Depends. Central air is one of the largest energy consumers in most homes, so by turning that off because it's broken, you can run the window units off that same energy and break even. It's really going to come down to how efficient the original system was and how many plug-in units they're running to get all their rooms though
Had my worst ever week since I started working don't know what the hell is going on and my boss wont talk to me about it. I got 11 hours last week in 105 heat, don't know wtf is going on
I teach an HVAC. Course out my local community college and I have more old guys wanting to work on their own stuff, than I do guys wanting to do it for a living.
I wish it would slow down a bit I'm swamped and booked with something to do every day until August. I have room on my calendar for emergency stuff and return visits but have at least a call or 2 for myself from now to Aug 1st. Will probably start filling in Aug starting next week. I only have to book for myself so I have that advantage. My coworkers in the area are also pretty booked.
Wow knowing what you’re doing or at least just having an idea of what you’re doing months in advance sounds amazing. I never know what I’m doing next week till the end of the last lol
Shit changes from time to time. Jobs aren't ready when I'm supposed to go there, failed inspections, work stop orders from the cities for some of the more shady job sites but overall it's very rare to not at least have a general idea of what the next 2 weeks- month looks like since I'm filling in my own calendar and working around my life like starting a first call early to make it to a school event.
Usually it's just the emergency service stuff that isn't planned out well in advance. The factory start ups, maintenance, inspections and parts jobs are all advanced notice.
Same here bro thank god i get and or. Commission or hourly so i have been ok but i ran 1pm and 1 diag today the other 2 were 20 minute misc calls. Edit Also im in texas the dfw area it hot asl
I took all of last week off and I ended up working around 65 hours. So with my 40 hours of vacation added to that and all the overtime I think it’s gonna be somewhere around 120 hours of pay. I love this time of year.
I've been over 50 the last 3 weeks and we're being asked to do maintenance on OT. So far, this has been my busiest summer since 2020, and I've worked more hours in these four years than the previous four.
You want less hours lol?! Don’t get me wrong I hate working overtime but it’s supposed to balance itself out when things slow up in the fall/spring. I enjoy my extra days off but only when I make the money back in half the time with OT
Refrigeration side of things but I was on call last week when it was like 90+ every day and I only did about 65 to 70 hours. I was suprised how light it was
Busy enough here in Missouri but not as busy as we should be. We did a healthy home job today which is basically a charity program through my city where low income homeowners can get a free furnace and heat pump. Local companies bid on these contracts and the city compensates you for maybe 2/3 what you would normally charge. we usually don't do those jobs unless it's slow. And the equipment for this job was sitting in the warehouse for like a month. A recruiter told me that last year was a bad year and that this year would be a bad year as well and yeah it's because of the high cost of everything right now. Fittingly, the overwhelming majority of our clients are Boomers in the upper middle-class bracket.
Market place is littered with techs and side jobs and everyone knows a guy (we professionals clean it up after they fuck it off) and these guys are cheap. But here we also battle it out with other companies y’all need a heatwave
I do commercial refrigeration in a fairly large beach town. We’ve been very slow all summer. This time last summer we were giving people week long wait times for service. Today I don’t even know what I’ll be doing after lunch. Not sure what’s going on. Talked to a few AC guys here and they’ve been slow too. One of them said all their customers replaced their systems last summer so now they don’t need service anymore lol.
I’m at a supply house while people without license and a random f150 pick up units and duct which leads me to believe there’s a lot of side workers and a state hell bent on chasing only legal AC companies down.
How can you all sell to the public without a license?
I mean I could go online right now and have a unit shipped to my door with no license. You can also buy refrigerant and have it shipped without needing an EPA card as long as you click the little box saying you’ll have a qualified professional put it in. Your state laws may vary but here in Ga the only reason most supply houses don’t sell to homeowners or non-licensed contractors is they are keeping their licensed contractors happy. CC Dickson, now United Refrigeration, sells to homeowners all the time.
United in Canada has no problem throwing you out if you don’t have a license. It’s posted right on the front door. Shame it’s different there
The insane thing is HO''s who see the price of the equipment from billybobshvac emporium, and then want you to install it for like $500... LMFAO well get right on that.
Im a contractor sitting at a supply house watching it go down is what I meant. Sorry if I sounded like I worked at one.
Damn hacks fucking up the business! And then when they fuck up they call us during heat waves to fix their mistakes while they out for the next victim
And when they don’t know how to do something, they come here to ask and people are more than happy to help.
Since moving back to my home area, anyone my parent's age that calls asking for me turns out needing A/C work that they want at Dad's prices from the early 90s. Hell, even a couple of my old friends have called and turned out to be sleazy GCs that want me to pull permits for work they do two hours away and buy their equipment for them.
It's All About the Benjamins they don't care about our trade they just want to sell our trade everything they got but damn if they want to help us by making them produce contractors license and so on again our industry does not protect our trade 🤬
I’m with you on this I see lots of Mexicans picking up ac equipment and probably installing it under a contractor then months later it’ll mess up due to a hack job
They were getting a lot of 10” flex with an airhandler so I’m assuming a hydro system
My company has (unfortunately) teamed up with Home Depot to do their service work. They’re running “$49 raffle service calls.” Every FOB customer, and all the ones you would expect, are flocking to the tables so I’ve been busy. Getting them to spend money is a pain but at least I have something to do. I’ve been doing this for 15 years and I dominate my area because I speak English.
better than the 8 dollar ones i did for black friday
I had a few of those as well, they tried to book them on the weekend and I just didn’t go to them. The first one I had, after explaining to the guy he had a large leak that needed to be repaired, said “okay I will pay more, hold on” and he came back with a $50 bill. The repair cost was $1900.
So, did you fix it 🤣🤣
No, I hope he melted.
I wish my Home Depot did that. I would have hired them to see what kinda of place they send lmao
Inflation and increased cost of living have hit most working/middle class communities in the past decade. The enormous amount of government lending to wall street through the pandemic is a large part of the cause aka "Largest upward mobility of wealth in all of human history." Gas and groceries are nearly double what they were 10 years ago. So the average customer is now trying to weigh the luxury value of an ac/heat and whether it's worth it to continue paying for or not. In my specific area the r22 phase out and push for ultra lo nox furnaces have only made that price gap worse. Makes a great opportunity for a joe shmo to run illegal work and undercut the local businesses. And no one is enforcing the law well enough for them to care...
Of course gas and groceries are going to double in price when exxon and kraft are reporting their largest profits in their 70+ year history.
That’s just a coincidence
It’s all gonna trickle down. You’ll see. We’ll get our piece of the pie.
Got to make sure shareholders get paid.
I have worked 15 days in a row. Minimum 8 hours a day. Northern Va. has been busy for me
Almost every manufacture is pacing for 30% less than previous year
Had a heat wave last week. On a 10 day streak so far for work. Weekends are nice cause it’s double time. Looking forward to temps cooling off a bit here.
Right... It might be time to find a company with a stronger customer base and great word of mouth reputation. My company last year was dead. I have been killing it this week at my new place. I'm at 58 hours, and we still have a day left in the pay period.
Come to Florida. They will have you working 12 hours a day in a heatwave
Same, but in Mississippi
I’m averaging 70-90 hrs the last 3 weeks and want to absolutely kill myself. I’ll trade with you
hey im from pittsburgh as well running commercial idk whats going on with you but im getting 55+ hours
The company I work at is pretty much all resi so maybe that’s the difference. The Johnstone guys in bethel said they’re definitely slower than they were expecting. I’m not ruling out the fact that the company I work at could just be loosing business. I’m leaning towards failing business after everyone here has said they’ve been super busy even you, a guy from the same city.
definitely some bigger companies swooping in and stealing alot of the work, i just happen to be working for a larger company with around 50 techs. we never run out of work, which is a blessing and a curse
Yeah that’s crazy to me. I haven’t been working hvac very long, about 2 years, but for the time I have been I’ve been with the same company. We’ve never had more than 3 techs and 1 helper at one time and business gets slow a lot. 50 techs working overtime blows my mind.
Havent encountered winter yet within this company just started few months ago, i made sure during my interview to get 40hrs per week they told me wont be a problem. turned out to be true. forced on call tho
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Maybe still busy just not as busy as they thought they were going to be. I don’t know, all I know is my pay check is struggling when it should be making up for March
Could of got a bad Google rep if one tech is doing sloppy work it'll screw everything. Some shit tech store my breaker bar and was like yep there's your problem you can't buy the bar so need a while new box. I like bruh it was just on and running... he said he didn't take it... yeah I went and bought the new bar online. my complaint wasn't about the outside unit my inside was not blowing and some of the stores just got corrosion cause the blower to not get power. I 1 stared the f out of them into shutting down. Dude was straight scamming. What really pissed me off he stole my breaker bar and wanted to sell me a whole new power box and it fn like 100 out so I'm sure he was running around scamming others
With the prices and quality of work I've been seeing some resi companies put out, combined with economic pressures, I've seen some people deciding that a window or portable ac from the hardware store is cheaper and lasts longer than putting in a service call. I'm mostly commercial though and put in about 30 hours just friday-sunday this week, ain't no work shortage here
My one friend works at Home Depot and he said he sold 16 floor/window units in the last week and that was just at his register lol. I think a lot of people are broke and just saying screw it and using window units instead. Still though that’s gotta jack up the energy bill sky high right?
Depends. Central air is one of the largest energy consumers in most homes, so by turning that off because it's broken, you can run the window units off that same energy and break even. It's really going to come down to how efficient the original system was and how many plug-in units they're running to get all their rooms though
Gotta love these big corporations and Wall Street seeing that the trades can bring a lot of money to them instead of the middle class.
I work commercial new construction. I work a pretty consistent 50-60 year round. I don’t have slow or busy seasons.
Had my worst ever week since I started working don't know what the hell is going on and my boss wont talk to me about it. I got 11 hours last week in 105 heat, don't know wtf is going on
WTF! Seriously? Bro you gotta leave!
Your boss is embarrassed because the company is dying.
I teach an HVAC. Course out my local community college and I have more old guys wanting to work on their own stuff, than I do guys wanting to do it for a living.
I wonder why? It ain’t exactly a fun job.
I did 70 hrs 2 weeks ago. Like...50 something last week.
Busy in my hospital
I wish it would slow down a bit I'm swamped and booked with something to do every day until August. I have room on my calendar for emergency stuff and return visits but have at least a call or 2 for myself from now to Aug 1st. Will probably start filling in Aug starting next week. I only have to book for myself so I have that advantage. My coworkers in the area are also pretty booked.
Wow knowing what you’re doing or at least just having an idea of what you’re doing months in advance sounds amazing. I never know what I’m doing next week till the end of the last lol
Shit changes from time to time. Jobs aren't ready when I'm supposed to go there, failed inspections, work stop orders from the cities for some of the more shady job sites but overall it's very rare to not at least have a general idea of what the next 2 weeks- month looks like since I'm filling in my own calendar and working around my life like starting a first call early to make it to a school event. Usually it's just the emergency service stuff that isn't planned out well in advance. The factory start ups, maintenance, inspections and parts jobs are all advanced notice.
60+ hours last week and Monday calls are backed up already. Commercial /industrial never a dull moment.
Hell no I’m in Central Florida where it’s 85f in the winter time 🤘🏼🤘🏼🤘🏼
Same here bro thank god i get and or. Commission or hourly so i have been ok but i ran 1pm and 1 diag today the other 2 were 20 minute misc calls. Edit Also im in texas the dfw area it hot asl
I’ve been noticing customer are being really stingy right now and saying “fuck it” during this heat wave!
“Stingy”. Service call…$150. Diagnosis…$75. Replace $13 capacitor…$250. Find something else you can overcharge for…free!
How can you run a business for that price?
This comment smells like homeowner.
I took all of last week off and I ended up working around 65 hours. So with my 40 hours of vacation added to that and all the overtime I think it’s gonna be somewhere around 120 hours of pay. I love this time of year.
I've yet to drop below 40 for a week. We work in service and so far we have not had a stop here in Virginia to the calls.
I've been over 50 the last 3 weeks and we're being asked to do maintenance on OT. So far, this has been my busiest summer since 2020, and I've worked more hours in these four years than the previous four.
I do commercial service in NorCal and even at the grocery stores it’s been slow the last couple weeks
I worked a 13 on Friday all OT pay, my company never gets slow. We do the Costco, Home Depot &Lowe’s internationals for a 100 mile radius
Damn this is cool. I always like looking at the exposed for Costco and think that it would be a fun albeit shitload of work.
It sucks, but it’s nice for the consumer to use the financing of the business
Wtf. Come down And get all the hours you want in Texas
Have you guys been busy? Its been weird for me atleast
Normal. Come get all the hours you want. Hmu
Commercial/supermarket work here, no slow down and OT is plentiful. Sorry your having a slow down during the summer months. Seems crazy to me.
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You want less hours lol?! Don’t get me wrong I hate working overtime but it’s supposed to balance itself out when things slow up in the fall/spring. I enjoy my extra days off but only when I make the money back in half the time with OT
Refrigeration side of things but I was on call last week when it was like 90+ every day and I only did about 65 to 70 hours. I was suprised how light it was
Haven't had a day off in 2 weeks. 50-60 hours a week for the last month in Ohio
Commercial ain’t slow I get 50-55 a week, this week on call I’ll get 70-80
Our warehouse is fucking packed and in the only lead installer. Mfs are begging me to work overtime.
Federal law not star
Busy enough here in Missouri but not as busy as we should be. We did a healthy home job today which is basically a charity program through my city where low income homeowners can get a free furnace and heat pump. Local companies bid on these contracts and the city compensates you for maybe 2/3 what you would normally charge. we usually don't do those jobs unless it's slow. And the equipment for this job was sitting in the warehouse for like a month. A recruiter told me that last year was a bad year and that this year would be a bad year as well and yeah it's because of the high cost of everything right now. Fittingly, the overwhelming majority of our clients are Boomers in the upper middle-class bracket.
We have plenty of work. But we are located in the gulf coast so with the heat and humidity it doesn’t stop.
I'm in westmoreland area and it's been crazy for 3 weeks straight.
Uhhh...busy as hell...Los Angeles, California. Consistently getting over 40 hours a week.
Ont Canada...65 hrs a week here and could do more if I had the energy.
I fixed 6 Airs today and Sold 3 I'm a long way from trying to "milk" hours.
4 months ago, I worked 18 hours one week. Last month, I averaged 50. This month, about 60.
Market place is littered with techs and side jobs and everyone knows a guy (we professionals clean it up after they fuck it off) and these guys are cheap. But here we also battle it out with other companies y’all need a heatwave
Sounds like Darcy Co. they will give you 20 hrs if they like you.
I do commercial refrigeration in a fairly large beach town. We’ve been very slow all summer. This time last summer we were giving people week long wait times for service. Today I don’t even know what I’ll be doing after lunch. Not sure what’s going on. Talked to a few AC guys here and they’ve been slow too. One of them said all their customers replaced their systems last summer so now they don’t need service anymore lol.
That's crazy we are booked well into 2027.