Run a tighter HVAC business.

BLS counted 409,670 people employed as HVAC mechanics and installers in May 2025, at a median wage of $61,010 a year ($29.33 an hour).¹ Counting the self-employed, BLS puts the occupation at 440,900 jobs and projects 10.9 percent growth to 2035, with about 40,600 openings a year from growth and turnover.² Demand is not the hard part. Running a profitable shop through the swings of the season, and staffing it in a tight labor market, is.

How an HVAC business makes money

Most residential HVAC companies run on three engines.

Service and repair. No-cool and no-heat calls, capacitors, contactors, igniters, blower motors, refrigerant leaks. Tickets are smaller but frequent, and every call is a chance to earn trust, sell a plan and spot aging equipment.

Replacement. A full system replacement is often worth more than dozens of repair calls. Some shops route replacement conversations to a comfort advisor; others train senior techs to present options on the spot. Either way, the lead almost always starts with a service call.

Maintenance plans. Members pay monthly or yearly for seasonal tune-ups, priority scheduling and a repair discount. The direct margin is modest. The real value is a steady base of visits in slow months, customers who call you first, and early warning on equipment nearing the end of its life.

Add-ons such as IAQ products, thermostats and duct work sit on top of these. Light commercial work (rooftop units, small offices, restaurants) is a natural extension, but it brings different billing, PM schedules and, from 2026, different refrigerant paperwork (more on that below).

The market in numbers

Census does not split HVAC from plumbing. Both sit in one industry, plumbing, heating and air-conditioning contractors (NAICS 238220). The 2023 County Business Patterns file counts 111,207 establishments with paid employees, 1.21 million employees and $89.5 billion in annual payroll, which works out to about $73,700 per employee.³ Another 178,663 businesses in the same industry had no employees at all, averaging $78,389 in receipts.⁴

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, County Business Patterns 2023, NAICS 238220. Shares are of all 111,207 employer establishments.

Two things follow. First, the typical competitor is a few trucks, not a franchise. The way you beat them is not price; it's answering the phone, showing up in the window you promised, and following up. Second, an establishment with 10 or more employees is already in the largest quarter of employer shops (23 percent of them), and that is about where the systems that worked at five trucks start to break.

The seasonality story is in the payroll data. BLS monthly employment for plumbing and HVAC contractors (not seasonally adjusted) ran from 1,293,700 in January 2025 to a peak of 1,335,400 in July, a swing of only 3.2 percent.⁵ Call volume swings far more than that. Shops keep their techs through the shoulder months because good techs are too hard to replace, which means you pay for capacity all year. Filling April and October with maintenance visits is how that capacity earns its keep.

Use the state number when you build your labor rate, not the national one. A New York tech at the median costs about $17,800 a year more than a Florida tech at the median, before burden.

Running the day

The best HVAC days are planned the night before and re-planned by 10 a.m. Protect two or three open slots per day during peak season for emergencies, and fill them with maintenance or follow-ups if nothing comes in. BLS notes that HVAC techs are often on call and work overtime or irregular schedules during peak heating and cooling seasons;⁶ if your on-call rotation isn't written down and paid fairly, that's where you lose people.

Match the job to the tech. A heat pump defrost problem should go to someone who has fixed one, and a replacement estimate should go to someone who can present it. Check truck stock against the job: a second trip for a part costs more than the part.

On site, the routine matters more than the software: take readings, photograph the data plate, explain what failed in plain words, and present options before touching anything. A good tech app makes that routine easy to follow. TradesWork walks techs through arrive, diagnose, options, work and wrap-up, and keeps working in an attic with no signal.

Safety is part of the routine too. BLS puts the 2024 fatal injury rate for HVAC mechanics at 6.7 per 100,000 full-time workers, about double the 3.3 rate for all workers.⁷ Attics in July, roofs, ladders and live electrical are the daily exposures.

Refrigerant rules: what changed and what's next

Three federal changes in two years touch how you sell, install and document work.

1. Ongoing

   EPA Section 608 certification

   Technicians who maintain, service, repair or dispose of equipment that could release refrigerant must be certified. EPA does not issue cards; the certifying organization does, and techs must keep a copy until three years after they stop working as a technician.

2. Jan 1, 2025

   GWP limit of 700 for new residential and light commercial AC and heat pump systems

   EPA's Technology Transitions table sets the installation compliance date for new systems in this subsector, with an exception where all specified components were made or imported before that date.

3. End of 2025

   Federal 25C homeowner credit ends

   IRS describes the energy efficient home improvement credit, up to $2,000 a year for qualified heat pumps, as available for property placed in service before December 31, 2025.

4. Jan 1, 2026

   HFC leak repair rules (40 CFR 84.106)

   Leak rate calculation and repair requirements apply to appliances holding 15 or more pounds of HFC refrigerant above 53 GWP. Residential and light commercial AC and heat pumps are excluded; commercial refrigeration is not.

Sources for the timeline: EPA's 608 certification page and 40 CFR 82.161,⁸ EPA's sector restriction table,⁹ the IRS credit page¹⁰ and 40 CFR 84.106.¹¹

The leak repair rule is the one residential shops misread most often. It names its own carve-out:

So a split system in a house is outside it. A walk-in cooler or a supermarket rack you service is not, and the same section requires whoever adds or removes refrigerant to give the owner documentation. If you are growing into commercial refrigeration, your records need to be good enough for your customer's leak-rate math.

Our EPA 608 guide and A2L refrigerant guide go deeper on certification and A2L handling.

Pricing your work

Most successful residential shops price repairs flat-rate. The customer approves a price for the task, not an open-ended clock.

The number most owners get wrong is cost per billable hour. Here is a worked example using the BLS median wage and assumptions you should replace with your own:

A 1.5-hour repair with $60 of parts at a 55 percent target margin is then (1.5 × $73.09 + $60) ÷ 0.45 = $377. That is before office, dispatch and marketing overhead, which the labor rate calculator adds in. If your billable share is 50 percent instead of 60, cost per billable hour jumps to $87.70. Drive time and callbacks are pricing problems, not just scheduling problems.

For replacements, size the system properly (our BTU calculator is a rough first pass, not a Manual J), then price equipment, materials, crew hours, permit and haul-away as a package. Present good, better and best, with the monthly payment shown on each. Use margin, not markup: a 50 percent markup is only a 33 percent margin, which the markup and margin calculator shows in one line. Write it up on the HVAC estimate template and bill it on the HVAC invoice template if you are not on software yet.

For maintenance plans, price from the cost to deliver two visits a year plus the discounts you give, then test it with the membership revenue calculator. Our maintenance plan guide and pricing guide walk through the math.

Marketing that works for HVAC

Answer the phone. In peak season, the company that answers first usually gets the job. Missed-call text back and after-hours answering are cheap insurance.

Google Business Profile and reviews. Most homeowners search "AC repair near me" and pick from the map results. A steady flow of recent reviews, requested after every job, does more than any ad.

Your own customer list. Past customers and members are your cheapest marketing. Seasonal tune-up reminders, replacement follow-ups for old equipment and referral rewards all start from good records.

Paid search, carefully. Google Ads and Local Services Ads can work, but only if you track booked jobs and revenue per lead, not clicks. The HVAC marketing guide covers each channel.

Following up on replacements

Most replacement revenue is lost after the tech leaves. A homeowner who declined a new system today still owns a 17-year-old condenser, and when it fails in July they'll call whoever answers first. Give every declined replacement an owner (a comfort advisor or the office), a follow-up date and a reason to call: a seasonal check, a rebate deadline, or simply asking how the repair is holding up.

Record the equipment properly on every visit: make, model, serial, age, refrigerant and condition. That list becomes your best marketing audience. TradesWork flags old units and repeat repairs as replacement opportunities, so the follow-up list builds itself from the work your techs already do.

Where TradesWork fits today, and where it doesn't

TradesWork was built for residential HVAC first. Today it covers good-better-best options from your price book with member pricing and monthly payment shown, memberships that bill themselves and bring visits due, HVAC calculators in the tech app, data plate scanning that works out equipment age, a refrigerant log per unit and tech with EPA 608 certification numbers, warranty claim tracking, an AI receptionist for after-hours calls and Tap to Pay at the door.

What it does not do yet: financing lender connections (monthly payment is shown on options, but applications run through your lender), and live distributor pricing (you upload supplier price files instead). If either of those is central to how you sell, weigh it.

Choosing HVAC software

Score each product against your real work, not a demo script:

• Field app quality. Can a tech build a three-option estimate, take a photo and collect payment in under five minutes, with no signal?
• Price book and options. Flat-rate tasks, member pricing and good-better-best built in.
• Memberships. Automatic billing, failed-card recovery, and visits that come due on their own.
• Equipment and refrigerant records. Age, history, warranty and refrigerant use per unit, with the tech's 608 number.
• Total cost. Per-tech price, add-ons, implementation fees and contract length. Some vendors don't publish prices.

Our software buyer's guide has a full scorecard, and the ServiceTitan alternatives page compares the larger platforms.