This is something that I am not currently planning on doing as I deeply enjoy my experience in meeting new people with residential and am green as can be anyway. I was curious, however, if the change from residential units to commercial ones was a large gap or not. I was helping with a commercial unit last week and was intimidated by the size of the unit (Trane unit experiencing leak in Evap coil). The thing had two compressors and I know that it would probably be considered small when compared to the units that commercial techs have worked on. I remember being told by my old instructor to not be too intimidated by commercial units since they are essentially the "same as residential units, just bigger". Is this true to your experience? I remember just being intimidated by changing out a three phase condenser fan motor lol.
It’s all the same just different.
"Commercial" is a big tent. It runs from basically resi equipment in a commercial setting to 10,000 ton chilled water plants and millions upon millions of BTU boilers, etc.
The stakes are a lot higher. Fuck up a little half horse furnace motor and you're out hardly anything. Pull the gas out of a big chiller the wrong way and you'll hoop a $1,000,000 machine.
Your first time going into a big hydronic mechanical room will be eye opening. There's fucking pipes running every which way and 50 pumps sending shit everywhere.
Just don't do anything important on a Friday and you'll be fine!
I'm glad I got some resi under my belt but on my path, the experience I got doing resi didn't really help me too much in commercial. Unless you're only doing light commercial, you won't be hitting the ground running coming from resi.
Just made the jump in the new year. It's the best career decision I've ever made.
The refrigeration cycle is the same from a window ac, mini split, 100 ton RTU, 400 ton chiller, supermarket rack refrigeration ( co2 systems also) , ice rink refrigeration plants and more.
The heating cycle is basically the same for anything they heats. Call for heat, purge, pilot of flame proof and staging up and down.
The best part of commercial industrial is you the customers basically leave you alone to do your diagnostics and repairs. You don’t have to sell your soul to make extra money.
Building automation is basically fancy thermostats inputs and outputs.
There is a lot to learn but you will make more money.
Dude, don’t be. I just made the switch myself after 3 years in resi and the hardest part was remembering the nomenclature to all the new equipment you normally wouldn’t see in residential. Operation is mostly the same with some additionals. Controls, isolation/bypass valves, etc. plus the pay is usually higher. I’m working commercial refrigeration
Just remember with 3 phase if it goes backwards switch any 2 wires and it will go the right way, no unless the new company is doing equipment you didn't do at all chillers/boilers than the equipment is just bigger with more safeties and more redundancy.
Really depends on what you’re doing. Commercial is a lot wider of a field than residential where there’s like three different kinds of equipment you’re working on. Going from a furnace to an RTU isn’t that bad. Going from a resi boiler to a commercial boiler is a bit more intimidating. Things like chillers and ammonia refrigeration have no analog to anything you touch in residential other than the underlying theory. Controls is probably the biggest learning curve; things like BAS, PLCs, VFDs, actuators, SSOVs and BVs, etc. are take effort to learn. How much you need to know is entirely dependent on the kind of company you work for. Some places just do RTUs and shit. Where I’m at now has me working on stuff I’ve never seen before all the time like MRIs and fuel chillers for gasoline r&d labs and such.
Damn your job sounds cool as shit
It is about 70% of the time.
In commercial you don’t meet a lot of new people. You build relationships with the same people that you will deal with on regular basis. It’s definitely more personal. As to the industry itself, it depends on whether you go into light commercial, heavy commercial, or industrial. I’ll just tell you if you go into heavy commercial and industrial, it’s far more advanced and much more is required of you in terms of knowledge and daily tasks. That’s because the different types of equipment and systems you must know to be a technician in heavy commercial and industrial HVAC. There’s chillers, VRF, pumps, boilers, DOAS, exhaust fans, VAVs, and building automation systems just to name a few. Some guys that have worked on both sides like one or the other including me. I liked and enjoyed residential but I’ll never go back. I much rather be in a mechanical room or a rooftop than in an attic or crawlspace any day.
The biggest difference IMO is having a lot more big picture stuff to think about during diagnosis (building management, how the system itself works—hot deck/cold deck, VAV, etc, building pressure, how it’s zoned, etc. you’ll rarely run into a residential situation where the static pressure of the building comes into play, but that’s essential info in tons of commercial work. Economizing and make up air is a huge thing due to air change requirements for commercial code that either don’t exist in residential or are drastically different. The machines themselves are essentially just larger versions of resi machines, but they also do a whole lot more. It really is true that you can do 3 years of commercial and be overqualified for residential, and on the flip side someone can do 30 years of residential and be completely underqualified for commercial.
Having started in commercial and do residential every now and then much more prefer commercial. I like the here is the price accept or reject. Doing the work with no one breathing down my neck.