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Why AC is cheap, but AC repair is a luxury

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Re: Why AC is cheap, but AC repair is a luxury

#71

Post by s1gsegv »

turtlebits wrote: post #25
harikb wrote: post #3

There is a simpler explanation - HVAC jobs are directly influenced by the push to covert everything to heat-pumps. And good heat-pumps are expensive . So when you install a $15K to $25K, installation fee also goes up. I am surprised Solar isn't up there. Panels are cheap, install is what we pay for 10 years+

Good mini splits aren't expensive. They're expensive because HVAC installers are fleecing US consumers. A majority of mini splits are made in China and are inexpensive and reliable because they're so pervasive in Asia. Most are rebadged Midea or Gree. You can get a decent mini split for <1.5K and install it yourself for $200 in tools.

If it was so lucrative, wouldn’t more people set up shop undercutting the current offerings? Why not become an HVAC installer and make millions, if you’re really able to make $15k profit on a job you can turn out in a day.

The truth is probably more that the various money sinks in our society are starting to add up, things like healthcare, legal protection, licensure, compliance, rent (business or personal), even just having appropriate work vehicles, fueling them, compensating people for the time spent sitting in traffic to come across town to your house. Somehow you’re paying for all of that when someone’s livelihood is installing your mini split. A lot of those costs have grown faster than wages, if you try to point to a reason why it’s different today than 20 years ago. More people looking to make a quick buck without doing any work or providing any real value, and more people succeeding.

Re: Why AC is cheap, but AC repair is a luxury

#72

Post by XorNot »

locknitpicker wrote: post #64
chemotaxis wrote: post #7

That's a lot of economic theorizing, but to me, it doesn't seem to be substantiated all that well. You can just as well argue that labor is getting more expensive in the West because of two non-market pressures. First, we have a multitude of government programs that seek to eliminate extreme poverty, so there are fewer people who are desperate to take any job for any money. Second, you have consumer protection polici…

> (...) a multitude of government programs that seek to eliminate extreme poverty, (...) consumer protection policies that make it genuinely expensive (...) I don't think this opinion holds a rational basis. Extreme poverty being a factor in low job demand is an argument for coercing people into performing certain tasks even though they are not economically viable just because it benefits you personally. This is not…

I agree.

Given that as soon as cloud computing happened we stopped bothering to debug VMs and just started deleting them and rebuilding, I don't know why people find the idea this applies to other industries surprising.

Repair involves establishing where in a very large state space an item is, and finding a path back to optimal.

Whereas building a new item simply involves traversing an already known path to optimal.

Re: Why AC is cheap, but AC repair is a luxury

#73

Post by wombatpm »

magicalhippo wrote: post #10

Just had our minisplit develop a leak after 7 years. The shop recommended replacing it, as just the refrigerant is half the price of a new one if most has to be replaced, due to environmental taxes. Basically a repair is guaranteed to be at least 50% of new price of NOK 23k ($2.3k) installed and can quickly approach 80+% if the guy has to spend time on it. That made me wonder how on earth they make money on selling t…

New refrigerant rules went into place in January of this year. That alone tipped the scales on my AC compressor repair becoming an AC replacement.

Re: Why AC is cheap, but AC repair is a luxury

#74

Post by ryao »

matwood wrote: post #61
magicalhippo wrote: post #10

Just had our minisplit develop a leak after 7 years. The shop recommended replacing it, as just the refrigerant is half the price of a new one if most has to be replaced, due to environmental taxes. Basically a repair is guaranteed to be at least 50% of new price of NOK 23k ($2.3k) installed and can quickly approach 80+% if the guy has to spend time on it. That made me wonder how on earth they make money on selling t…

For a non-obvious leak it's pretty normal to recommend a new system at that age. The reason is that a tech's time is expensive, and finding a leak can take a lot of time. Then once it's found, if the leak is in the exchange you're looking at a fairly large replacement part cost. At least in the US, refrigerant costs have been high because of a shortage, not taxes. https://www.coolingpost.com/world-news/us-ac-companie…

If you need R410A refrigerant, the high costs are due to government regulations causing the shortage. I very much hope that the heat pump I had installed 2 years ago does not leak. Theoretically, if the leak occurs under warranty, it should be covered. The central A/C unit I replaced with the heat pump had developed a leak right before the warranty expired, which resulted in a costly repair being covered. Unfortunately, we paid another company to refill it before learning that it would be covered as part of the warranty repair by the company that installed it. It then developed a second leak several years later, so I had a heat pump installed. Of course, that heat pump uses R410A refrigerant.

The leaky A/C unit had been made by Lennox while the new heat pump was made by Fujitsu. I very much hope that Fujitsu engineered its heat pump to last. The heat pump had also replaced an oil heating system that was around 25 years old and still could have been used for many more years. Expecting similar or better longevity out of a heat pump does not seem unreasonable.

Re: Why AC is cheap, but AC repair is a luxury

#75

Post by XorNot »

landl0rd wrote: post #27
chemotaxis wrote: post #7

That's a lot of economic theorizing, but to me, it doesn't seem to be substantiated all that well. You can just as well argue that labor is getting more expensive in the West because of two non-market pressures. First, we have a multitude of government programs that seek to eliminate extreme poverty, so there are fewer people who are desperate to take any job for any money. Second, you have consumer protection polici…

Why do you think people insist someone needs to be licensed, bonded, and insured? It's not really a quality question, it's CYA, a direct response to the rise of ambulance-chasers and increasingly-ridiculous jury awards. Morgan and Morgan are probably doing as much economic damage here as Baumol.

They insist on that because if someone does work on your property they might destroy your property

Yeah it's CYA: the ass in question is yours. The guy who burns your house down without insurance will just file bankruptcy. You're the one left with the ashes.

Re: Why AC is cheap, but AC repair is a luxury

#76

Post by locknitpicker »

ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #38
WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Second, you have consumer protection policies that make it genuinely expensive to, say, be a HVAC repairman. clarification: Of the things that make it expensive to run an HVAC repair company, consumer protection related expenses are super far down the list. source: 2 decades (on/off) supporting a close friend's regional hvac biz, national geothermal interests.

A quick Google says it takes 4 years to get a license to be an HVAC technician in my state. I understand large installs at businesses are a different problem, and granted I've only ever installed a mini split, but that was hardly rocket science. And home installs are likely what most people are thinking of here. In Japan you can get minisplit's installed for $1k a unit, here you regularly find quotes over $10k. Somet…

> In Japan you can get minisplit's installed for $1k a unit, here you regularly find quotes over $10k.

How much does the unit cost? What work does it take to install it? How large does it need to be to support your home?

What are the energy needs of your typical home in Japan vs your home town?

Those are the key factors, not how many years someone spends in tradeschool.

Re: Why AC is cheap, but AC repair is a luxury

#77

Post by jonway »

landl0rd wrote: post #27
chemotaxis wrote: post #7

That's a lot of economic theorizing, but to me, it doesn't seem to be substantiated all that well. You can just as well argue that labor is getting more expensive in the West because of two non-market pressures. First, we have a multitude of government programs that seek to eliminate extreme poverty, so there are fewer people who are desperate to take any job for any money. Second, you have consumer protection polici…

Why do you think people insist someone needs to be licensed, bonded, and insured? It's not really a quality question, it's CYA, a direct response to the rise of ambulance-chasers and increasingly-ridiculous jury awards. Morgan and Morgan are probably doing as much economic damage here as Baumol.

Yikes! There are so many corner cases and pitfalls in construction, it would blow your mind! I did it for 2 months way back and concluded I would certainly die.

Paint a fence? Pay the neighbor kid. Patch a roof? eh ... what could go wrong.

Re: Why AC is cheap, but AC repair is a luxury

#78

Post by WarOnPrivacy »

ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #38
WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Second, you have consumer protection policies that make it genuinely expensive to, say, be a HVAC repairman. clarification: Of the things that make it expensive to run an HVAC repair company, consumer protection related expenses are super far down the list. source: 2 decades (on/off) supporting a close friend's regional hvac biz, national geothermal interests.

A quick Google says it takes 4 years to get a license to be an HVAC technician in my state. I understand large installs at businesses are a different problem, and granted I've only ever installed a mini split, but that was hardly rocket science. And home installs are likely what most people are thinking of here. In Japan you can get minisplit's installed for $1k a unit, here you regularly find quotes over $10k. Somet…

> A quick Google says it takes 4 years to get a license to be an HVAC technician in my state.

A flat time mandate for HVAC tech certification seems really out of place. And a 4 year path of any sort seems excessive for a technician. I couldn't find anything like that. Most results I found were in the 6-12 mos range - which is often spent employed.

WV was an outlier with a 2000hr requirement. How I have seen (non-hvac) 2k requirements get satisfied are thru a HS VoTech (my son) or 18-24mos doing paid tech work toward the official certification (electrician techs do this).

I can't find a state that requires anything a like a 4yr college degree, where life is put on hold to focus on that. And then 4yrs of living and school expenses are investments that need to be earned back. Not for any trade tech.

Re: Why AC is cheap, but AC repair is a luxury

#79

Post by navigate8310 »

kelnos wrote: post #58
trollbridge wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A radiologist read my brother-in-law's MRI and contacted him and told him to go directly to the ER and actually wrote up a referral to have him immediately admitted. This happened in the middle of the night since the radiologist was reading them on the night shift. He was admitted and operated on two days later (as he had to be prepared for surgery and have additional pre-op testing done). No AI replacement is going…

I'm as skeptical of AI as the next guy, but in this particular case, wouldn't the AI have read your brother-in-law's MRI right after it was taken, and sent him to the ER before he even left the MRI testing room? I'm not arguing with the GP's point that radiologists don't do many other things that the AI maybe can't do, but it feels like your example is the opposite of that. And not only that, your example demonstrate…

Maybe the radiologist did that 'one' out many possible correlations and deduction that AI couldn't have had possibly done for OP's BiL.

Re: Why AC is cheap, but AC repair is a luxury

#80

Post by magicalhippo »

matwood wrote: post #61
magicalhippo wrote: post #10

Just had our minisplit develop a leak after 7 years. The shop recommended replacing it, as just the refrigerant is half the price of a new one if most has to be replaced, due to environmental taxes. Basically a repair is guaranteed to be at least 50% of new price of NOK 23k ($2.3k) installed and can quickly approach 80+% if the guy has to spend time on it. That made me wonder how on earth they make money on selling t…

For a non-obvious leak it's pretty normal to recommend a new system at that age. The reason is that a tech's time is expensive, and finding a leak can take a lot of time. Then once it's found, if the leak is in the exchange you're looking at a fairly large replacement part cost. At least in the US, refrigerant costs have been high because of a shortage, not taxes. https://www.coolingpost.com/world-news/us-ac-companie…

> The reason is that a tech's time is expensive

Yeah labor costs also make a lot of repairs uneconomical. There's been talk here about removing the 25% VAT on repairs to make the value proposition a bit better, but doesn't seem to have much traction currently.

> At least in the US, refrigerant costs have been high because of a shortage, not taxes.

The guy said it was due to taxes, specifically that they had gone up so much in recent years. Seems it's because the tax is tied to CO2 tax[1], which has been going up since they introduced it in 2020. Not sure what refrigerant they use in my minisplit, but even if it's one of the cheaper one the tax is about $90 per kg, so adds up quick.

edit: mine uses R-32, so yeah about $90/kg.

[1]: https://www.vke.no/artikler/2024/okning-avgift-hfk/

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