I started working as a tech when I was 17 years old, fresh out of trade school. My first winter out on my own, I went to a service call in an older part of Orlando, a part of town I had never worked in before. It was an especially cold winter that year, and […]

You probably didn’t expect to find the word “autodidact” on an HVAC education site. You’d probably expect to see it in an SAT prep book or a list of words to say five times fast. What does that word have to do with HVAC? Well, autodidacts are some of the best techs in our trade. […]

One of my techs (Jim Walch) brought another common “double trap”-style issue to my attention: techs and installers running a drain too far into a condensate pump. When you run the system drain too deep into the pump reservoir, the water level can rise high enough to cover the drain end. That can create the […]