Air Conditioning Installation

Why the Installation of an Air Conditioning System is so Important.

When it comes to an AC system, the installation is a critical point, and the failure to adhere to proper AC installation practices to the letter is usually the cause of inefficient, ineffective, unreliable and loud ACs that fail frequently and ultimately expire many years before they should have.

Unlike a furnace, which is a complexed machine operating on very basic scientific principles (burn fuel for heat, blow said heat out) and thus is fairly accommodating to being poorly installed, mechanical refrigeration, which is what an air conditioning is, is a fairly simple machine (there’s actually very few parts to it, relative to a furnace) operating on complexed scientific principles, and it’s the AC installer’s job not to get in the way of that complexed science functioning as it should by doing things during the AC system’s installation that’ll inhibit or restrain those principles of physics that AC systems use to “make cold”.

A lot of this failure to adhere to proper AC installation practices is done with the best of intentions, by folks that are doing the best they know, but were trained by someone that didn’t know any better, who was usually also trained by someone who didn’t know any better.  This is largely due to the vast majority of AC installations in the Calgary area being installed not by journeymen Refrigeration and Air Conditioning Mechanics, but rather by journeymen Sheet Metal Workers (or worse, apprentices, or worse yet, Plumbers and Gasfitters, who are not legally permitted to work on AC systems).  This is because there’s not a year-round demand for residential AC in our climate, so there’s very few Refrigeration and AC Mechanic journeymen in the Calgary area’s residential heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) industry, relative to Sheet Metal Workers, about a 20:1 ratio.  Sheet Metal Workers are indeed legally permitted to work on residential AC systems, though there’s a vast disparity in AC/refrigeration training, knowledge, and expertise between them and Refrigeration and AC Mechanics getting ~240 hours of refrigeration and AC training each of their 4 years of apprenticeship technical training, and Sheet Metal Workers getting ~15 hours of AC-only training across all 4 years of their apprenticeship combined, amounting to Sheet Metal Workers getting ~1.5% the refrigeration and AC training that a Refrigeration and AC Mechanic does over the course of their respective apprenticeship programs, and the difference in AC proficiency between the two trades that are legally allowed to perform residential AC work shown.