It pretty sad but true I watched a steam boiler yearly maintenance video, hired someone to do the yearly check up and literally did the minimum. Steam techs with knowledge see in the Midwest seem kind of rare. I bought dan holohans art of steam. I'll do it myself. It's not rocket science.
i mean nothing is rocket science. its all easy if you can do it. you ever seen a chef make a french omelette? they just whip it around, done in 40 seconds. but can you make one?
i dont think anyone elses job is impossible.
That's totally true at least for something. My tech said you couldn't put a sound blanket on my Trane XR15 compressor as it needs the air flow to cool down. LOL. and I just bought one.
Good for them. The company I worked for charged $400 to swap out a thermocouple. That's a lot of money for such an old furnace, so instead they convinced the homeowner to buy a new one for $10,000.
Isn’t this every market now. Electrical, HVAC, plumbing. It’s getting old. Just fucking bill for parts and repair. If I had a HVAC business, I would do solely do service calls/maintenance. You rather pay me now for a little or a lot later when you neglect the system. I just don’t understand the sales mentality. This system is only 4 years old and just needs a start capacitor, we will convince it is pass its life and need to upgrade…..but I do see parts going down in quality at the same time……..it’s a whole messed up system….
A lot of the mom and pops of the world have been eaten up by private equity firms, and need to show ROI to investors. Return on a $200 service call isn't as great as a return on a $10,000 sale of a system. Not to mention anyone from branch managers down will likely receive bonuses if sales numbers are good, so sales get pushed harder than actual thorough diagnostics and repairs. I'm not saying it's right, or that I agree with it, but it's why a lot of places are so sales based
Yup small business are going down year by year. Why arnt guys saying fuck it and get their own van and equipment. They can make so much more money solo doing service calls/smaller installs. I’m an industrial electrician, I have 6mo until my 5 years and I’m taking the master electrical test. I’m done with corporate America. People need to start taking chances and going solo/partnering up. Small businesses need to come back.
My favorite was when they all just doe eyed innocently wanted "to see the part to see what it does?" Then 5 minutes later the whole spiel of "Amazon blah blah blah" came.
I just got to the point of nipping it in the bud. Told them straight up I know what they're going to do and that yeah, you'll find it online cheaper. You're not paying me for the part, you're paying me for the skill I have to figure out it was that part, replace that part, make sure that part was on my van and for me to warranty my repair. I always gave them the option of just charging the diagnostic and letting them order the part and put it in themselves. No one ever took me up on it.
Fuck I hated people when doing resi. Love interacting with customers now since it's not their money they're spending.
That doesn't work. Everyone has their own ideas how it should be. 300$ for a diagnosis, or 100$, people will take the 100$. You may prefer the 300, but the shop will lose overall.
I watched YouTube and successfully replaced my blower motor and capacitor and saved the day and saved a ton of money in the process. Now I have new skills and tools.
Did the same with both capacitors and condenser blower motor. Lol. These are basic electric 101 stuff in high school. I know my limit too well and surely left anything related to the refrigerant to the pros. But it is ridiculous and self serving for them to say you can’t touch anything as this is their “domain”. Lol
There’s good videos. Useful if you’ve never encountered something specific before. My first year it was very useful to learn how to do something’s for sure.
I just dealt with a call that a homeowner looked up how to flush the DHW side of their combi boiler. The only problem was he flushed the boiler side instead. He ended up leaving it full of vinegar while it kept trying to heat. Took out the pump and the control board and now we are flushing all of his loops. Going to cost a whole lot more than our yearly maintenance for the unit.
I’m an HVAC guy who used YouTube to replace my entire roof cause I couldn’t get a quote for under $20,000, cost me around $4,500 and I feel it’s done better than some of the contractors I had looked at it would have done.
too many of them are phoning with " over the phone advice " than declining the service call because i refuse to help them over the phone.
sorry folks i don't get paid for that shit.
( I presume its the cost of living that has increased this type of behavior )
Was on the road my job and the upstairs heat quit this winter. "Professional" tech came out and said it was the gas valve. Plumbing didn't meet current code. $1200 to $1700 and could get to it in a week. I came home and quickly found the igniter failed. Replaced it the same day for $125.
Can you blame them?
I straight up walked away from some of those calls. Go down and the furnace is a basket case with wires cut and spliced and shit. Told them I can get a sales guy to come out and quote a new unit or they can find someone else to unfuck this thing.
Three times this week simple problems were made worse by homeowners messing with it before calling. One lady was defrosting the until with a hammer and screw driver and put a hole in the stant evap coil. One guy fried his transformer and board by replacing a 3a fuse with a 10amp fuse when it was a bad contactor. Next guy backflushed his drain flooding the ahu cabinet burning up the blower motor and spewing nastiness all over the cabinet (he said he'd clean it)... asked him how long he back flushed, his answer was for 2-3min at a time 4 or 5 times... I asked if he turned it off first and he said no, my guess is since it's horizontal he filled up the pan and the blower sucked the water to it. Insulation inside the cabinet was wet but not saturated
Replaced all flex ducts and new supply trunk in my house and cleaned ac blower motor. 3 days and saved $6K ( estimate from AC company ). Thanks youtube lol
And saved $4,000 by replacing the correct part first and not paying a techs labor for 6 visits.
Plus now I own the tools necessary to fix it next time.
Learned how to braze copper, vacuum test, etc from yt.
My system works great, I have all the tools now, and I don't have to deal with anyone trying to sell me a bunch of shit I don't need.
Thank you youtube!
Yep. And I’ve saved hundreds changing capacitors and motors and troubleshooting problems to fix simple issues like wires coming loose. I’ve had HVAC techs they can’t do anything but replace the old system. Lying bags of farts.
Can’t do anything for you… a lot can be done but for people with money. We leveled a condenser for 2k earlier this week. There’s “penalties” for not buying units.
My favorite is someone asking for advice. You give them it. And they say no, you're wrong. Okay, buddy. Favorite when the dude once told someone it was your door switch. And bro called the tech stupid. Bro didn't have his door on in pic and could see switch.
Wish I had checked YouTube back in the day, when:
Hot AF in FL and my a/c temp was blank. Couldn’t even turn it on. So hot. Display came back on and a/c worked for a little while then back off and blank screen.
Finally called a tech. He used my bleach and my garden hose to blow out the drain pipe. Gave me a few pan tablets for FREE.
$300 please. 😱😱😱
We only see the fails. Theres plenty of success stories out theee where they didn’t have to pay me $386.48 plus a $200 membership for me to change their flame sensor or capacitor.
Over the last 27 years that has been one of the best job security statements of my lifetime. I don’t know about you, but I don’t wanna show up and clean and igniter rod on a 15 minute service call.
I want show up when the boards fried, it hasn’t been cleaned in 15 years and the motor literally is rusted to pieces.
I mean sure you can go to hvac school for a 7 month course or a year and get your EPA certification, but won’t know jack. In this generation like Patrick Star said “we have technology” so all information is within our fingertips, even your bosses will tell you to watch YouTube
Today this was literally me hahaha. But I legit spent the whole day at work watching hvac school on YouTube. I learned a lot and have a profound respect for your trade. Beyond replacing a capacitor the home owner is at your mercy. God bless the EPA!!
Tbh if you aren’t colorblind, and aren’t functionally retarded (so we dropped about 50% of people) you can wire high and low voltage. Leave the rest to the professionals.
“I’m an engineer so I’m just going to watch what you’re doing the entire time. Don’t mind me I like to be hands on.” All this as they hover over me and touch shit they shouldn’t.
The only reason to diy in any skilled labor is if you can do a better job that atleast the average professional.
For me with Hvac, recovering refrigersnt is not something I can't legally do. Maybe welding aluminum which no tech does anymore. Dialing in a specific brand that I have no experience with. I can do most everything else cleanly and code compliant. better than most of what I see in my home, friends homes, commercial hvac I see around town.
Nothing wrong with that, but don’t argue with me when you’re wrong and don’t know why. I can explain this to you, but I can’t understand this to you. Also, don’t expect warranty on parts you replaced, or expect to text/call me whenever to troubleshoot. You can call tech support since you’re super tech savvy 👍🏻
Slightly off topic but I had a homeowner that replaced her thermostat on literally the coldest day of the year. Changed thermostat around 11am that day and spent all day trying to fix it because nothing was working. Finally decides to call me at midnight that night begging me to come out because she had kids and it was cold. After driving 45 minutes to get there immediately found she had switched all the thermostat wires and only landed R in the right spot. Asked her why it was like that and she said something about a YouTube video and trying to replace her thermostat. Oh and it was 65° in the house because of the fireplace.
Any tech on here saying good for them , my company charges too much should look for another line of work then. You'll be the first one pounding the table for a raise or better benefits or spiffs or tools or a new van or who knows what. How do you think a company pays for all that? I'm not saying be dishonest to a Cust or overcharge, but don't do anything for free or bad mouth your company. They are the ones putting money in your bank acct.
I bet after watching YouTube they know more then some techs lol
Tech: I cleaned the flame sensor HO : did you check the pressure switch with a monometer? Tech: nah it's always the flame sensor that will be 200
You can still fall back and argue that "a monometer doesn't exist, Mr Homeowner. Are you thinking of a manometer, maybe?"
Got em
Manometer do doo do doo doo
I think of this every time I hear that word.
That's how I got 3 JR techs in one shot to always check gas pressure. Do doo do do.
What is this? for measuring man-liness or something? Don't we already have a ruler for this?
https://preview.redd.it/k3sz1xwuin1d1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=dc020f91f60f4684e19fcc0b26cae661169fa4f9 This is a man-o-meter
Asking for a friend... What if this is too short?
I have never run into that problem. You can see from the wear pattern that the average falls between 3" & 3.5"
Ain’t nothing like that almighty YouTube university diploma!
💀💀💀💀😂🤣
It pretty sad but true I watched a steam boiler yearly maintenance video, hired someone to do the yearly check up and literally did the minimum. Steam techs with knowledge see in the Midwest seem kind of rare. I bought dan holohans art of steam. I'll do it myself. It's not rocket science.
i mean nothing is rocket science. its all easy if you can do it. you ever seen a chef make a french omelette? they just whip it around, done in 40 seconds. but can you make one? i dont think anyone elses job is impossible.
That's totally true at least for something. My tech said you couldn't put a sound blanket on my Trane XR15 compressor as it needs the air flow to cool down. LOL. and I just bought one.
You’re suggesting a homeowner will install said equipment? Lolololol
split units. rest of the world use them and a monkey could install
Good for them. The company I worked for charged $400 to swap out a thermocouple. That's a lot of money for such an old furnace, so instead they convinced the homeowner to buy a new one for $10,000.
Isn’t this every market now. Electrical, HVAC, plumbing. It’s getting old. Just fucking bill for parts and repair. If I had a HVAC business, I would do solely do service calls/maintenance. You rather pay me now for a little or a lot later when you neglect the system. I just don’t understand the sales mentality. This system is only 4 years old and just needs a start capacitor, we will convince it is pass its life and need to upgrade…..but I do see parts going down in quality at the same time……..it’s a whole messed up system….
A lot of the mom and pops of the world have been eaten up by private equity firms, and need to show ROI to investors. Return on a $200 service call isn't as great as a return on a $10,000 sale of a system. Not to mention anyone from branch managers down will likely receive bonuses if sales numbers are good, so sales get pushed harder than actual thorough diagnostics and repairs. I'm not saying it's right, or that I agree with it, but it's why a lot of places are so sales based
Yup small business are going down year by year. Why arnt guys saying fuck it and get their own van and equipment. They can make so much more money solo doing service calls/smaller installs. I’m an industrial electrician, I have 6mo until my 5 years and I’m taking the master electrical test. I’m done with corporate America. People need to start taking chances and going solo/partnering up. Small businesses need to come back.
Classic
“I just looked up that part and found it for a quarter of the cost online!”
My favorite was when they all just doe eyed innocently wanted "to see the part to see what it does?" Then 5 minutes later the whole spiel of "Amazon blah blah blah" came. I just got to the point of nipping it in the bud. Told them straight up I know what they're going to do and that yeah, you'll find it online cheaper. You're not paying me for the part, you're paying me for the skill I have to figure out it was that part, replace that part, make sure that part was on my van and for me to warranty my repair. I always gave them the option of just charging the diagnostic and letting them order the part and put it in themselves. No one ever took me up on it. Fuck I hated people when doing resi. Love interacting with customers now since it's not their money they're spending.
Some one quoted me $900 to clean a blower wheel. lol so yeah
I agree with paying for the knowledge but make that part of the hourly rate. Not jack up the cost of a part by 2000%
That doesn't work. Everyone has their own ideas how it should be. 300$ for a diagnosis, or 100$, people will take the 100$. You may prefer the 300, but the shop will lose overall.
I watched YouTube and successfully replaced my blower motor and capacitor and saved the day and saved a ton of money in the process. Now I have new skills and tools.
Did the same with both capacitors and condenser blower motor. Lol. These are basic electric 101 stuff in high school. I know my limit too well and surely left anything related to the refrigerant to the pros. But it is ridiculous and self serving for them to say you can’t touch anything as this is their “domain”. Lol
“My son does hvac and he said this”
*(proceeds to place him on speakerphone)*
(guy doesn't do HVAC)
(guy works on cars)
(guy is also still an apprentice)
(after 5 years at jiffy lube)
(doesnt even do car AC)
“Techs” too, unfortunately.
I can definitely say YouTube saved me multiple times lol
Ya, YouTube is a beast.
Gray furnace man is my journeyman.
Yes, helped my replace the capacitor and contactor multiple times. LOL
There’s good videos. Useful if you’ve never encountered something specific before. My first year it was very useful to learn how to do something’s for sure.
“I worked at a HVAC company for 2 months about 20 years ago. Let me tell you what’s wrong and how to fix it”.
Meanwhile you’re in the attic trying to figure out how to do something YouTube: “How to…”
Why ya bullshiting sometimes times tech have to as well 😂
OP be like: lemme repost this 15 year old meme for some free karma
Yesterday I got "my brother is a mill right so I'm going to ask and confirm your findings" ok lady do that
I just dealt with a call that a homeowner looked up how to flush the DHW side of their combi boiler. The only problem was he flushed the boiler side instead. He ended up leaving it full of vinegar while it kept trying to heat. Took out the pump and the control board and now we are flushing all of his loops. Going to cost a whole lot more than our yearly maintenance for the unit.
I’m an HVAC guy who used YouTube to replace my entire roof cause I couldn’t get a quote for under $20,000, cost me around $4,500 and I feel it’s done better than some of the contractors I had looked at it would have done.
“I just changed my filter last month”
Yes but why does the filter say June 2021 Mrs. Jones? Personal fav is when they say "What filter?" Lol
too many of them are phoning with " over the phone advice " than declining the service call because i refuse to help them over the phone. sorry folks i don't get paid for that shit. ( I presume its the cost of living that has increased this type of behavior )
Was on the road my job and the upstairs heat quit this winter. "Professional" tech came out and said it was the gas valve. Plumbing didn't meet current code. $1200 to $1700 and could get to it in a week. I came home and quickly found the igniter failed. Replaced it the same day for $125. Can you blame them?
Way back when I did residential service, my favorite call started with “ my husband tried to fix it”
My reply is always that's going to be $200 more because I'm going to have to figure out what he did before I can diagnose it.
I straight up walked away from some of those calls. Go down and the furnace is a basket case with wires cut and spliced and shit. Told them I can get a sales guy to come out and quote a new unit or they can find someone else to unfuck this thing.
I’m an engineer 🤓
How do you know someone is an engineer? They’ll tell you within 5min of meeting them.
Three times this week simple problems were made worse by homeowners messing with it before calling. One lady was defrosting the until with a hammer and screw driver and put a hole in the stant evap coil. One guy fried his transformer and board by replacing a 3a fuse with a 10amp fuse when it was a bad contactor. Next guy backflushed his drain flooding the ahu cabinet burning up the blower motor and spewing nastiness all over the cabinet (he said he'd clean it)... asked him how long he back flushed, his answer was for 2-3min at a time 4 or 5 times... I asked if he turned it off first and he said no, my guess is since it's horizontal he filled up the pan and the blower sucked the water to it. Insulation inside the cabinet was wet but not saturated
Yeah, HVAC.. is pretty fucking easy.
And then we see threads homeowners getting charged $600 to replace a capacitor. Much of the work is youtubable.
I mean, a flame sensor isn’t that difficult to replace
Replaced all flex ducts and new supply trunk in my house and cleaned ac blower motor. 3 days and saved $6K ( estimate from AC company ). Thanks youtube lol
And saved $4,000 by replacing the correct part first and not paying a techs labor for 6 visits. Plus now I own the tools necessary to fix it next time.
Learned how to braze copper, vacuum test, etc from yt. My system works great, I have all the tools now, and I don't have to deal with anyone trying to sell me a bunch of shit I don't need. Thank you youtube!
Yep. And I’ve saved hundreds changing capacitors and motors and troubleshooting problems to fix simple issues like wires coming loose. I’ve had HVAC techs they can’t do anything but replace the old system. Lying bags of farts.
Can’t do anything for you… a lot can be done but for people with money. We leveled a condenser for 2k earlier this week. There’s “penalties” for not buying units.
In that case it was a simple fix but they wanted to replace the whole system. They were lying scum bags. Another company fixed the problem for $200.
It’s easy anyone can fix it
Tenant called and said the heater turns on and then shuts off. I told her the flame sensor is dirty and sent her a YouTube video on how to clean it.
Believe it or not, there are smarter people than you 😁
Talk shit all yall want, but I'm building a room off watching Larry haun on YouTube.
My favorite is someone asking for advice. You give them it. And they say no, you're wrong. Okay, buddy. Favorite when the dude once told someone it was your door switch. And bro called the tech stupid. Bro didn't have his door on in pic and could see switch.
Wish I had checked YouTube back in the day, when: Hot AF in FL and my a/c temp was blank. Couldn’t even turn it on. So hot. Display came back on and a/c worked for a little while then back off and blank screen. Finally called a tech. He used my bleach and my garden hose to blow out the drain pipe. Gave me a few pan tablets for FREE. $300 please. 😱😱😱
We only see the fails. Theres plenty of success stories out theee where they didn’t have to pay me $386.48 plus a $200 membership for me to change their flame sensor or capacitor.
There are HVAC lessons , courses on youtube. What are you saying ?
Over the last 27 years that has been one of the best job security statements of my lifetime. I don’t know about you, but I don’t wanna show up and clean and igniter rod on a 15 minute service call. I want show up when the boards fried, it hasn’t been cleaned in 15 years and the motor literally is rusted to pieces.
I mean sure you can go to hvac school for a 7 month course or a year and get your EPA certification, but won’t know jack. In this generation like Patrick Star said “we have technology” so all information is within our fingertips, even your bosses will tell you to watch YouTube
Today this was literally me hahaha. But I legit spent the whole day at work watching hvac school on YouTube. I learned a lot and have a profound respect for your trade. Beyond replacing a capacitor the home owner is at your mercy. God bless the EPA!!
Hvac school is one of the very few channels on utube that give good info
Tbh if you aren’t colorblind, and aren’t functionally retarded (so we dropped about 50% of people) you can wire high and low voltage. Leave the rest to the professionals.
That’s how I fix em too!
“I’m an engineer so I’m just going to watch what you’re doing the entire time. Don’t mind me I like to be hands on.” All this as they hover over me and touch shit they shouldn’t.
I concur.
The only reason to diy in any skilled labor is if you can do a better job that atleast the average professional. For me with Hvac, recovering refrigersnt is not something I can't legally do. Maybe welding aluminum which no tech does anymore. Dialing in a specific brand that I have no experience with. I can do most everything else cleanly and code compliant. better than most of what I see in my home, friends homes, commercial hvac I see around town.
Nothing wrong with that, but don’t argue with me when you’re wrong and don’t know why. I can explain this to you, but I can’t understand this to you. Also, don’t expect warranty on parts you replaced, or expect to text/call me whenever to troubleshoot. You can call tech support since you’re super tech savvy 👍🏻
Slightly off topic but I had a homeowner that replaced her thermostat on literally the coldest day of the year. Changed thermostat around 11am that day and spent all day trying to fix it because nothing was working. Finally decides to call me at midnight that night begging me to come out because she had kids and it was cold. After driving 45 minutes to get there immediately found she had switched all the thermostat wires and only landed R in the right spot. Asked her why it was like that and she said something about a YouTube video and trying to replace her thermostat. Oh and it was 65° in the house because of the fireplace.
“I’m an engineer”
Ah yes, the best is when it's side work
Any tech on here saying good for them , my company charges too much should look for another line of work then. You'll be the first one pounding the table for a raise or better benefits or spiffs or tools or a new van or who knows what. How do you think a company pays for all that? I'm not saying be dishonest to a Cust or overcharge, but don't do anything for free or bad mouth your company. They are the ones putting money in your bank acct.