Install and fix the furnaces, air conditioners and refrigeration that every building depends on.
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What you earn and what it costs to get there.
Licensed tech
$61,010
Helper or apprentice
$40,050
Senior tech or owner
$95,210
The national median is $61,010 a year and the bottom tenth start near $40,050. Commercial refrigeration and industrial work sit at the top of that range, residential install at the bottom. Overtime in July and January is real money on top of it.
About $19 an hour
Helper or first-year apprentice, roughly $40,000 a year full time
Apprentices are paid a percentage of the journeyman rate and get a raise every period as their hours build. Nobody in this trade pays to sit in a classroom for four years before earning.
$95,210 and up
Top tenth: commercial refrigeration, controls, and contractors who own the van
Service techs on call earn overtime and callout pay. A tech who gets a contractor license and hires two people can clear far more than this, with all the risk that comes with running a business.
Tuition, fees, exams and kit. Not rent, food or travel
The low end is a registered apprenticeship, which is paid work from the first week, so all you fund is the federal refrigerant handling certificate and a starter set of gauges, a meter and hand tools. The high end is a private trade school diploma plus a fuller tool kit, and a few of those schools charge as much as $35,000. A community college certificate sits in the middle at roughly $4,000 to $8,000 in state and teaches the same material, so file the Free Application for Federal Student Aid before you sign anything with a private school.
File the FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid) before signing anything with a private school. A Pell Grant often covers most of a community college program that teaches the same material for a fraction of the price.
A take-home van
Most service companies give you the vehicle, the fuel card and the tools that live in it.
Overtime and on-call pay
Heat waves and cold snaps are when this trade makes its money.
Union benefits where the union is strong
Commercial and industrial work is often organized, with a pension and health coverage.
Manufacturer training paid for
Equipment makers run free or cheap factory schools, and employers usually send you.
Work anywhere
Every state has buildings that get too hot and too cold. The skills move with you.
The exact path from high school to qualified.
Short training, then years of getting good. You can be earning a full wage before your friends finish a bachelor's degree.
High school diploma or GED (General Educational Development) test
Grade 12
Math, physics and shop. Some high schools run a heating and cooling program that puts you a year ahead.
Pick apprenticeship or trade school
6 months to 2 years
A registered apprenticeship pays you from the first day. A community college certificate takes 6 to 24 months and gets you hired faster by companies that want some theory first.
Get certified to handle refrigerant
A few weeks of study
Federal law requires certification before you can service equipment containing ozone-depleting refrigerants. The test has a core section plus separate parts for small appliances, high-pressure and low-pressure systems.
Work as a tech
2 to 5 years
Two to five years of installs and service calls until you can diagnose a system without calling someone. This is the part that cannot be shortened.
State license and voluntary certification
Year 3 onward
Most states license heating and cooling contractors and some license technicians. Add a national skills certification to prove what you can actually do.
Math
Sizing ducts, calculating heat loads and reading pressure charts is all arithmetic and algebra.
Physics
Refrigeration is thermodynamics. Understanding why it works makes you a diagnoser instead of a parts changer.
Shop or welding
Brazing copper pipe is a daily skill.
Electrical technology
Half of all service calls turn out to be an electrical fault, not a mechanical one.
The one national requirement is refrigerant certification under Section 608 of the Clean Air Act. The Environmental Protection Agency requires anyone who maintains, services, repairs or disposes of equipment that could release ozone-depleting refrigerant to be certified, and there is no way around it. Everything else is state by state. Some states license individual technicians, most license the contractor who holds the business, and a few leave it to cities and counties. Look up your own state before you plan anything.
Community colleges
The cheapest classroom route. Certificates run 6 to 12 months, associate degrees 2 years.
Registered apprenticeships
Search the United States Department of Labor apprenticeship finder at apprenticeship.gov for sponsors near you.
Private trade schools
Lincoln Tech and similar schools run diploma, certificate and associate degree programs in air conditioning, refrigeration and heating systems. Faster, and far more expensive.
Union training centers
Sheet metal and pipefitting locals train heating and cooling techs for commercial work, with the wages and pension that go with it.
Things you don't need, but that help.
Federal refrigerant certification
Not optional if you touch refrigerant. The test covers a core section plus Type 1 small appliances, Type 2 high-pressure systems and Type 3 low-pressure systems. Techs who pass all of them are usually called universally certified.
North American Technician Excellence certification
The country's largest nonprofit certification body for this trade, with nearly 42,000 certified techs listed. Many employers pay more for it and customers look for it.
Commercial refrigeration
Supermarkets, cold storage and restaurants. Fewer techs can do it, so it pays more and the calls never stop.
Controls and building automation
The computer side of big heating and cooling systems. The best-paid branch of the trade.
Contractor license
The state credential that lets you pull permits and run your own company.
A clean driver's license
You drive a company van between six and ten calls a day.
Customer manner
Service techs work inside people's homes. Companies fire good technicians who are rude and keep average ones who are not.
Heat pump training
Electric heat pumps are replacing gas furnaces in a lot of the country, and techs who understand them are ahead.
Tolerance for attics and rooftops
In August. There is no way around this part.
This trade has one of the shortest routes from employee to business owner of anything on this site. Get your hours, pass the state contractor exam, buy a van and some insurance, and you are a company. Plenty of one-truck operations turn into five-truck ones. The catch is that you stop being a technician and start being a scheduler, an estimator and a collector of unpaid invoices, and some very good techs hate that.
Day to day, pros and cons, where you'd work.
Dispatch sends your first call at 7:30am: no cooling, a house in the suburbs. Check the thermostat, the filter, the outdoor unit, read pressures, find a failed capacitor, replace it, take payment. Next call is a maintenance visit, then a no-heat at a restaurant that has to be fixed before dinner service. Summer means rooftops at 130 degrees; winter means crawlspaces. Install days are different: two techs, one system, eight hours of ducting and lifting.
The good
The hard parts
Things people don't tell you.
Section 608 of the Clean Air Act bans intentionally releasing ozone-depleting refrigerants into the air. That is why the certification exists, and why every technician carries a recovery machine to capture the gas instead of letting it go.
The first 95 degree day of summer and the first hard freeze of winter are when every phone rings at once. Service companies plan their whole year around those weeks, and techs who want overtime get all of it they can handle.
Capacitors, contactors, relays and control boards cause a large share of service calls. A technician who is strong on electrical troubleshooting fixes things in 20 minutes that take others all afternoon.
The United States Department of Labor reports that people who complete a registered apprenticeship start at an average of about $86,000 a year across all trades, with a 93% retention rate in employment afterward.
Last checked September 2026. Pay figures are typical full-time annual amounts in United States dollars, based on Bureau of Labor Statistics wage data and published pay scales. They vary by state, employer and experience. Tuition is for in-state students at public schools unless the card says otherwise.