Youll be finding a compressor that night...
I've been thinking for a while now I'd like to make the move from residential to medium temp. or commercial.
I am curious as to how you all in the commercial end of the trade handle things as opposed to how we do in our end.
For example......you go to a call for a walk in down at 4:30 on a friday and find the compressor is out.
With us, it's only a residential condenser, so we basically tell them sorry, W'ell be back on monday with a new condenser unit.
But with a walk-in cooler or freezer with thousands of dollars of product in them, how do you handle this?
With the residential side, it's not as detrimental to get someone up and running as soon as possible but what do you do in a situation where something is down and every place is closed, or a part you need is days out?
Youll be finding a compressor that night...
The facility would rather pay you $$$$ than lose possibly thousands of $$ of food. Make sure you have a good shop light and extra lightbulbs.
Officially, Down for the count
YOU HAVE TO GET OFF YOUR ASS TO GET ON YOUR FEET
I know enough to know, I don't know enough
Why is it that those who complain the most contribute the least?
MONEY CAN'T BUY HAPPINESS. POVERTY CAN'T BUY ANYTHING
Wow. So never mind 4:30 on a Friday....what about in the middle of the night? Will supply houses open for you to come get a compressor? or is it typical to keep a bunch on the shelf at the shop?
I've got the cell numbers of everyone who works for both of my suppliers.
They can, have and will open up at all hours for you. For a fee......
We are a larger shop and our purchasing manager also keeps a pretty substantial inventory on hand.
As others have said, this ain't AC work. Refrigeration has GOT to run.
It's certainly a different position to be in. You have to be able to handle the pressure when stuff really goes south on you. If you are talking about doing walk-in work, I find it pretty enjoyable. Patience is certainly required.
Yep, 3:30am calls because the walkin freezer is at 30degrees and the product is soft. You can't tell them that you will be out after the safety meeting is over at 10am
Rack refrigeration guys are animals! They think a slow week is 65 hours! On call for them is working all day AND all night right through the weekend.
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What do you do if, say, you get an emergency compressor changeout or something that will take hours to repair at night or on a weekend, and there are 2 or 3 other calls ahead of you with units down?
And yeah, it sounds like you guys would have to be patient and put up with a lot.
With a resi customer, we have the luxury of saying "He'll be there as soon as he can" and we get there when we get there. I would imagine refrigeration companies would have to have more than one person on call?
If you're planning on being a one man shop(self employed) then you will have to prioritize the calls that come in. I did it for years. I still do it. If a freezer is down and you have to change the compressor, the sandwich maketable will have to be iced down until you get out there. Most customers understand. If you are a good tech and the customer knows it. They will wait. What is the alternative? Go Bo back to the hack they were using until they found you.
40-45 doing Markets? That must be a large company you work for. I work minimum of 50, and yep, that is a slow week. Market techs are a breed all our own, and we wouldn't do anything else. It's on heck of a way to make a living. But you will work for it.
It's never boring
I can't fix it if it won't stay broke..
Yeah, we're a big company, but we bust our butts doing maintenance and making good, technically correct repairs.
We have customers that believe in PM and making good, technically correct repairs.
When you keep the equipment running in "tip-top" shape, then 40-45 hours a week is easy.
I can see that. I have a handful of stores I do quarterly's on, and I rarely get service calls on them. Most of the calls come from the Back up service for some of the Markets we do work for or the "the other company cannot seem to find the problem" calls. Then they don't call back until the other company fails again. There are a lot of small 'Rack Service Companies' out here, and everyone undercuts the other. We can be expensive at times, but we do the job right.
I can't fix it if it won't stay broke..
Definately make the move. Its hard work, and long hours. But commercial service work is where its at. Its year round, never ending work. There are no slow seasons. And its absolutely crucial that some systems are running. But when you get that WIF down to temp and you see the sigh of relief on the GM's face, its all worth it in the end.
I transitioned to commercial refrigeration after years of strictly HVAC work, resi and light commercial. The stress level is definitely higher when you have a customer with a fully stocked walk in that is rising in temp and they have no other place to put the product...and it's the middle of the night. Although it doesn't differ too much from resi HVAC, in that you don't want to leave some family freezing through the night just as you don't want a customer to lose all their product; You need to keep up on the truck stock that's relevant to your customer. I will say that I am MUCH happier doing commercial refrigeration
When I was doing residential HVAC we had this "Piece of mind" agreement that customers would pay a little extra for. It reduced the cost of an emergency service call. And they would take advantage of it, literally to where you could expect at least one after hours call per week where the complaint was "the t-stat says 70 but it doesn't "feel" like 70". Commercial customers on the refrigeration end aren't like that. They aren't going to call you out unless it's absolutely necessary. Because for them it has nothing to do with comfort. It's all about money. Take this advice with a grain of salt though. There are certainly a lot of other perspectives and points to be made.