Why Trade Schools Beat College in 2026!

I'll be discussing a topic that is near and dear to me, and that topic is, should we go to college or should we go get in the trades? I have a personal bias in this argument because I have done very well in the trades. I enjoy what I do, and I think it's a good career. I think everybody feels pressure during high school to go to college, get that four-year degree, to continue your education. There's nothing wrong with continuing your education. I'm just saying. Maybe trying to get that four-year degree and accrue a mountain of student debt while you're doing it might not be the right choice. Stay tuned. We're going to talk about it. This is Curtis, the HVAC guy, and let me go ahead and change my view on this so I don't have to see that introduction rolling in the background. Before we get started today, let me mention the QR code in the corner that is for my store. Y'all please check it out. Peruse what I have listed there. Everything you see in my videos, I try to put in there. Things change real fast and there might be something missing. And I need to mention that the link to be an ACIQ dealer and the link to join Jobber is in the description. With that said, let's get started. Today's video is going to be about whether or not we should be telling our For high school graduates, hey, you got to go get that four-year degree. Or maybe we should be telling them, consider the trades because it's a respectable option. For me, I'm going to go jump right in. And I've got to say that a career in the trades is probably the better option. I have known way too many people who get a college degree that may not help them. And I have... Not just may not help them. For example, you graduate with a degree and you end up taking a job driving a truck or something because you can't get a job in the career that you were trying to land. I just had a customer who said he spent four years studying music at Florida State, and that's not what he works in. He told me he never made a penny in music. I'm just saying a career in the trades, it's worth going after. I feel like it's worth making the video so that people Um, younger people know that it is a really good option, an extremely good option. I thought I had to go to college. I started right out of high school, jumped right into engineering school at University of South Carolina, and that wasn't for me. Y'all can see if y'all are listening to this and not watching it on YouTube right now or Facebook, there's a college diploma in the background there that is from Ohio University. I did that through distance learning. A lot of online stuff, and in that one, I was basically searching for what I might want to do. I didn't find out what I really wanted to do until later. I'll just put it like this. I was trying to pursue a career as a mechanical engineer to begin with, because that's what my dad did, and I thought that's what... We were all supposed to do. I mean, I went to a good high school and they pushed everybody to go to college, almost everybody, everybody in my classes anyway. And there was a lot of pressure for us to graduate and to go to college. There was very little guidance that said, hey, maybe go into the military next or maybe you should go into the trades. That kind of guidance just was not there. It did not exist. So part of my reason for making this video and talking about it today is to tell people what the guidance counselors or maybe some of the people who are guiding them are not telling them. One, I was trying to go into mechanical engineering and I can tell you now, I would say seven Seven years after I really started in as a technician and then starting my own business. I was making more money than any mechanical engineer I knew that worked for somebody else. Let's put it that way. I was making more money quickly, making more money than the people who designed the equipment that I was fixing. And on top of that, and I have been basically like a one-man business almost the whole time. I tried to grow my company at one time, and during that time, I was making less money than I'm making now. So, um... The amount of money a person can make going into the trades is kind of unlimited, if you ask me. Going to the trades as an employee for somebody else, y'all forgive me, I didn't mean to hit the microphone, as an employee for somebody else, within a period of like four years, if you are motivated, drug-free, hardworking, wanting to learn, you can be making six figures like that, especially. In metropolitan areas, I'm not talking about just six figures, $100,000 to $300,000, and depending on what you're working on, I'm going to give you all some just Google-able statistics on what I am talking about here. Here Obviously, the time before you enter the workforce, if you're going to trade school, you're thinking about trade school instead of a typical four-year university. Six months to two years for trade school, obviously four years for a college. we You start earning full-time income, in some cases, go. immediately, right after high school, and in some cases, two to four years when you're going through trade school. I was already working full-time when I went to trade school. I was doing both at the same time. Student debt, let's talk about that. The average student debt for somebody going through A two-year program is about $15,000. Here in Georgia, I went through trade school basically for free. I got the Pell Grant. I got a state grant. Forgive me, I was searching for the name of the state grant. But anyway, it paid for my tuition and my books. And all you had to do was maintain good grades. And yeah, I mean, I didn't have to pay anything to go to trade school. And I was already working as a technician anyway. Just saying, there are some people who are mounting thousands and thousands of dollars in student loan to get a four-year degree that may not work out very well for them. I mean, first part of your career, you're tied to that student loan. And I know a doctor who did this. He's got over $100,000 in student loan, and he wants to buy a house. He wants to get on with his life and do better, but he is tied to that student loan that he's trying to pay off as fast as he can. Average starting age for someone who starts in blue-collar, 18 to 20. Average starting age of someone who's going for a bachelor's degree, 22 to 24. Okay, a skilled tradesperson often begins earning two to four years earlier, potentially making $100,000 to $300,000 before many bachelor's graduates receive their first full paycheck. That's not chump change, and I do have some references on these statistics. that I'm giving you. And yes, that depends on where you are working. Around here, your first four years, you're probably not going to make $100,000. But the potential is there. And something else, the job placement rate was something I wanted to mention. Okay, somebody with a bachelor's degree, the job placement rate is 69%. Somebody with, they keep giving me a two-year degree here, but let's just say a tech school, is 78%. And you have to remember, this job placement does not mean that the person graduating from college is getting a job in the field they studied, that they got their major in. All of us know that sometimes when people graduate from college, they can't get a job in the field that they studied. Right now, because of our economy, people are staying in the workforce longer and longer. I'm The baby boomers, my generation, starting when they're getting ready to retire, they are still working. So it doesn't provide the space for new graduates to find that job that they want. And in all honesty, some of those college degree jobs. to speak Start off at a really, really low pay. I'll give you one example. now. I have an uncle who studied to be an accountant, and he worked for a certain entity his whole career. And when he started working as an accountant with a four-year degree, he was making so little money he could have gotten food stamps or SNAP benefits is what they're called now. So I'm going to say when you come right out of college, you're not going to be making a ton of money anyway. And then your cohorts who went into the blue collar trades might already be making six figures by that time. And the reason I say that the blue collar trades, the income can be the sky's the limit is because it's easy to start your own business. If you're in the blue collar trades, you become a master technician. If you have union involvement in your area, you become a master trades person and you start your own business. The sky really is the limit. I had trouble attracting good help and I had trouble keeping good help, partially because I was a young business. I didn't have the resources that some of these other companies did. But I've been watching one of my friends here in town grow his business a little bit at a time, starting out with two to three employees to 15. I think he may have as many as 20 right now because I think he's got two install crews. The potential is really there. The potential is great. I don't know how else to put it. I want this message to get to the young people. You don't have to pursue that four-year degree. I'm not saying you're going to stop pursuing a continued education because our education continues as long as we're alive and in this field. Things evolve and change with the technology and low voltage and communication and the equipment and the refrigerants and the motors. Everything's changing. So it's not like you're stopping learning. You're just focusing on your field of learning earlier. I just think not only should we be talking about it to high school graduates, we should be encouraging this. And there's another reason for this that I haven't mentioned yet. And the reason I think we should be focusing more on blue collar stuff is because of what is happening with our economy right now. We, our economy is moving more towards AI replacing jobs that can be done with a computer. And in HVAC, I don't see that happening anytime soon unless they can develop a robot to climb I'm up on top of a... commercial building and soldering a compressor and that ain't happening no time soon. I mean AI right now can help us do our job. I have seen where people have taken symptoms from an air conditioner that I am showing in a video, plug it into AI and AI can give them a good idea of what to look for. I can say AI can help us but AI cannot do what we do and I'll just give you an example. The solar panels being put up on military institutions and places like that, the AI facilities that are going up all over the country, they all need somebody to work on them. I'm not saying you have to go to college to become an electrical engineer and figure out a way to make solar panels more efficient to make money. You can go work on them and repair them and find what's wrong with them and make more money. I just want to get that message across to the younger generation, and for me, actually working with my hands, going out and meeting people, seeing a problem, being able to provide a solution to that problem, and do a good job, that to me is satisfying. I really enjoy that. I have compared it many times to like somebody, like mowing your lawn. Which I never have time to do anymore. Like mowing your lawn. You get out there and you mow your lawn. You make some nice straight lines. And when you turn around and look at it, it looks good. It is a job well done. And it gives you a little bit of pride in what you just did. That is something we feel working with our hands and doing a good job in the trades every day. I'm just thrilled. I found this trade. It was not suggested to me. None of the trades were suggested to me until, you know, I was beyond 30-something years old, still thinking I'm supposed to go after this four-year degree thing. And I'm just saying, guys, somebody who doesn't pursue college but goes into the trades with the mindset that they're going to learn, be motivated, work hard, That is nothing to look down on. There is no reason to look at somebody like that. He's taking the easy way out. Or look at this person like they are not as well educated or stupid or something because they chose that route. When I was going through high school, that was kind of how we looked at people who did that. And that is completely wrong. That is the mindset that keeps people from going into trades. In all honesty, in a lot of cases, they would have been better off if they had. And I'm here, you know, 40 years after I made those decisions to tell people who are in the position that I was in when I was 18 that, hey, you ain't got to go to college. You don't have to pursue that university degree. And there's always time for that later if you want to pursue it, like I did with this Ohio University degree. That was like a free time thing that I was doing, which included some business courses, which did help me. But what helps me the most was getting into the trades, going to trade school here in my local technical college and starting a blue collar business. That has helped me more than anything in any of the college that I took. Including tech school and learning to be an EMT and years spent at University of South Carolina and Ohio University, I've probably got over six years of college experience, and nothing has helped me more than just that blue-collar tech school diploma that y'all see right behind me. There's another one from Albany Tech, and yes, I was already working. There wasn't a ton that they were actually teaching me, except for like maybe techniques and things that I had not seen before. But I am proud of that degree, that tech school diploma, because of how much that knowledge has helped me. It just has. It's been a vast. It has helped out my life. It's helped me become stable. It's helped me help other people. For example, it's just... It has helped me more than anything I studied in university. Let's put it that way. The stuff I studied in university may have helped me become a more well-rounded person, better educated, but what has helped me make money is that blue-collar learning. It has. And that is basically why I wanted to come on today and start the show. I invited a slew of people to come on today. Forget me, I'm going to call some of you out. Y'all are out there on vacation. I'm just saying, hey, it's the middle of summer. This is when we need to be getting it. But in one of them's defense now, it was vacation Bible school, so he gets a free pass. Oh. But anyway, there are other people who are saying the same things that I'm saying right now about AI and blue-collar businesses. This is, um... I used to watch Mike Rowe a lot, and this is one of the things that he talks about. And I think he has a college degree, but he has become famous for his blue-collar support, which probably started with Dirty Jobs. And we both have this mindset that, hey, we need to be teaching our kids how to work on things instead of... how to manage a multi-million dollar account or something. We need to teach them how to maybe fix their air conditioner or dig up the drain line and fix a drain line. These skills are helpful in many ways, many ways. Let me say there is a comment that I'm highlighting here. If y'all don't see this, if y'all are listening to this on a podcast. It says, as an HVAC guy, it's like you have a mechanical engineering degree with a focus on HVAC, electrical, and mechanical. I cannot claim to have a mechanical engineering degree. I don't want to say that because it's an honor I never achieved. But yeah, you got to know a lot. A lot. You really do. In fact, when I went to go take my state license exam. I had to, they do allow you to bring your books with you, but I had a stack of books, $1,500 worth of books, and then I was well versed in all kinds of stuff. I studied for two years before I actually went to take that exam because I was scared of it. But yeah, we have to know a lot about electrical, about HVAC, mechanical. Some people group HVAC into mechanical. Well, nobody calls this trade mechanical. It is HVAC or HVACR. I think it's time that we get our own little listing. Like the electricians, we are air conditioning technicians. We are HVAC. And what we have to learn and specialize in is crazy sometimes. I think everything from plumbing, electrical, low voltage, refrigeration. I love it. There's a lot to learn here. Guys, one of my buddies is in the comments. Jeff. Jake, dude, I tell you what, I will send you an invite right now if you'll pop in. I'm just saying. I can send it to you via text right here. TechNerd8300, as an engineer, many of our ideas and designs come from techs, just like y'all, that I have seen so many things in the field. That make me think that the engineer has never worked in the fields so many times. So many times. So I am glad to hear that y'all do take some inspiration from the technicians. And speaking of which, I'll say, Jake, I'm trying to decide whether or not I'm going to invite a guest. Let me see. I'm going to copy this link. Y'all hold on just a second. I'm going to try to send Jake a link. I'm just saying. There you go, Jake. We'll find a way to fit you in the screen here. I'm just saying we have to learn a ton of stuff to be able to work on HVAC. And, all right, we were just talking about vacations. Y'all forgive me. I'm getting distracted here. I just got home from a weekend vacation. Okay, what kind of weekend vacation did you go on? That is Nicole with ACIQ. By the way, I am going to... AHR in Chicago. At least I'm going to try if I can get out of Albany. We are making plans and my friends over there at ACIQ are helping to bring me to the event. So I'm looking forward to it. Oh, I was going to mention that there's, we were talking about engineers taking ideas from technicians. I did a video on an ACIQ piece of equipment where I ripped out the DC motor and put in a PSC motor. I can tell you, and I said this in one of my last videos, I can tell you that the engineers that designed that piece of equipment, y'all forgive me, saw that video and they are going to change the equipment because of the video that I made. Basically, it was a DC motor and it had, instead of a module, it had an inverter board. above a contactor. So the contactor and the capacitor is running the compressor, but I've got this fancy little board that runs a DC motor that kept failing. I changed it for a PSC motor and like I said, the engineer saw the video and ACIQ communicated to me that they're going to be making changes to that piece of equipment. So my hat's off to those engineers and ACIQ for thank you for showing it to them and saying, hey, this guy's got a point. So hats off to you there. I appreciate that. There are lots of technicians that appreciate it when the engineers listen to us and make their equipment better. Oh, y'all, forgive me. I lost the comment. The comment. Jake's not going to be able to make it. We'll invite him another time. By the way, Jake is making some really good content. The fact that y'all see people talking about Camel City Mill Socks in the comments is because of Jake. That has been one of his longest sponsors, if y'all don't know who I'm talking about, is Cooling with Krause over on the YouTube. Y'all might be watching me on the YouTube. And I honestly think his mid-video advertisements for Camel City Mill Socks, I kind of get a kick out of them because being able to give a cut. Like a commercial like that, right in the middle of a video, and sounds so animated. I just think he does a really good job with it. Every sponsor in town ought to be going after Jake at Cooling and Krause, because he just does a good job. We're going to click on the tech nerd here, and this guy who I think he identified as being an engineer. Sometimes I make them explain to me what it does before they design it. Most of the time, they can't. What specifically are you trying to design and what do you work on, TechNerd8300? I have come across some engineers that make really good money. I have. And they make more money than I do, even with the social media and all this other stuff. And it's because they own their own business. It is. They make very good money, sometimes just consulting. They will go out to a place and tell them, hey, you need more foundation or something. These guys can make good money. I'm not saying that the four-year degree, the university route, does not pay off. What I'm saying is that going into the trades is a really good and well-informed option that young people need to seriously consider. Seriously. We got comments about engineers here. Engineers are the original AI. I swear they aren't human, most of them. Sounds like he's talking about my dad. That's terrible. That's terrible. It's horrible. Some of them that I have interacted with do have this attitude that they know more than you do. And you can't tell them nothing. And that's where that comment comes from because we have interacted with a few. All right. The engineer in the comments, I work in the heavy-duty truck market, like line haul trucks. We design the electrical communication network between all the modules on the trucks. Cool deal. Speaking of which, and he was talking about the communicating systems that we might be working on, I have been working on a commercial job. These are carrier package units, nine of them on one facility, Thank They have a board on them. that is specifically designed for like a communicating style thermostat and to communicate with a monitoring system and then it controls the rest of everything you. else from that board kind of like with 24 volts so um i've been going there trying to figure out why they aren't communicating it's nine air conditioners two of them are offline but um Basically, they have three wires on this board that need to get to their monitor, and you can tie them in with the three wires of any other air conditioner on the roof as long as that, it's like a daisy chain kind of thing, as long as it gets back to the monitor, it works. So what they have done, or is supposed to, in my case, it's not working. What they have done is tie three air conditioners together. Behind the thermostats, and so they have three wires coming from behind the thermostats, the communication part, that go to this control panel so that they can monitor the air conditioners. Now, not only are they all supposed to be tied together and hooked up to this monitor, they have pins on the board to help you tell The monitoring software, which air conditioner it is. So like yesterday, I went up to all these rooftop units, made sure that the pins were correct, cycle the power off and back on, and then try to find why half of them are not communicating. I spent hours on this job and did not find a fault. I mean, I've probably got hundreds of yards worth of thermostat wire that go through. conduit over part of this building. The access to the roof has a like an island in the middle of the warehouse that has bathrooms and stuff. You get on top of it and go through the roof and I've got thermostat wires that go all the way across that. They go all up over the roof and I'm trying to find out why these things aren't communicating and it's a pain in the rear. Let's put it that way. If it were just a high voltage or low voltage short, which is the case in one of them, it would Let's go to the comments here for just a second. Arkyguy. Arkyguy, does that mean that you're from Arkansas? Random non-engineering question for you. Do soft starts on AC units help prolong life? And if so, then why are they not included by the manufacturer? I'm gonna tell you why they're not included by the manufacturer because they aren't designed to have them, period. That's why they're not there. I have yet to see a manufacturer for like a single-phase system I wouldn't recommend any particular soft start kit to go on a PSC compressor. I have not seen that yet. It is, those soft starts are a tool to use if someone needs one. For example, like if they're trying to run their house with a generator once in a while, and they put a soft start on so that they can crank up their generator and turn on the air conditioner. In that case, If a customer asks me for one, I will install one, but I'm not going to suggest that just out of prolonging life. There's no evidence that it prolongs life. If it did, I think the manufacturers would include one with it. I'm just, I don't think it's a good idea to put one on an air conditioner unless there's a reason for it. No. No, I do not. I mean, I have seen evidence where they can possibly cause harm. Those compressors are not rated for that kind of activity or adjusting the voltage or frequency or however they accomplish their soft start. They're not rated for that. If you look on the nameplate, it's 208, 230, 60 hertz. Anything other than that, that compressor is not rated for. So no, I do not think it's a good idea putting soft starts on a... like a residential single stage air conditioner if there's not a reason. You're better off just making sure your capacitors are still within range. Let's put it that way. If you want a soft start, I'm just saying, the systems that have a real soft start are inverter controlled. If you want a factory specific soft start, it is an inverter driven three phase. DC compressor basically is what we're using. The compressor needs to be designed for it. There's a lot of three-phase compressors like 208, 230, three-phase compressors that can handle a different type of waveform and voltage that people use that kind of create their own little inverter driven system. There was a guy I used to watch who had a solar powered system. He did. He did like that. He put his own like inverter board on it and used a regular three-phase compressor and it worked. I'm just saying, if you're going to be altering the speed of a PSC motor, most of them aren't rated for it. They aren't rated for it. There are very few. And in fact, in the past, the way we used to do that, and some of y'all are going to know what this is, is we used motor masters on condenser fan motors on commercial units and stuff. For example, in a hospital, they don't really need heat, but they might need to slow down so that they can control humidity or something like that. And they would control head pressure with a motor master that may alter the voltage or the frequency. And not all motors are rated for that kind of fluctuation. Honestly, I'm addressing the comments if I'm talking about hack-free Frankenstein Linux heat pump. I don't know what that is. The guy I'm speaking of, I watched his videos probably six or seven years ago, like six or seven years ago, where I was just learning about, he was taking a different kind of drive, like a three-phase drive, empowering a three-phase compressor. Kind of similar to like the three phase variable speed adjustment things that you see on these commercial rooftop units. I don't want to call it a motor master variable frequency drive. He was using something like that to power a three phase compressor and doing it all by himself. It's pretty neat. But anyway, that's the correct way. I'm not saying the way he did it, but the correct way to. Very, variate the speed of a compressor, which can be anything from a one and a half horsepower motor, a residential up to five or six horsepower motor. You don't, I'm sorry, I am not going to put something on that motor that is not recommended by the people who manufactured it unless the customer specifically requests a soft start or something like that because of generator reasons. That would be the only reason I would put one on. Armando Gomez is asking, what's my personal opinion of Bosch equipment? I've only worked on a few of them, and I actually have one at my house, and it is an inverter heat pump, and the reason I do not like it is because during the winter, it still needs heat strips. I don't know if they have made one now. I mean, that's been two and a half, three years ago I installed that. I don't know if they have come out with one that does not need heat strips in a place like where I live. But at that time, that was the top of the line, and I'm selling stuff now, even their ACIQs, like essential systems that I'm installing in apartments. I mean, I installed one in a quadplex that don't need heat strips, and it was actually a more financially available option than like a 14.3 SEER heat pump with 10 kW. It's cost-effective. It saves the landlord money. It saves the tenants money. I just like their options. I think that instead of us being afraid of installing something like that and complaining about how hard it might be to work on, I think we just need to learn how to do it because that is, in my opinion, that's the future of HVAC. Okay. Some of the comments right now are talking about the Bosch systems. A frequent commenter, Seaton Heating AC, the new Bosch systems do well in cold weather, but bring your checkbook. That is the main issue. The only problem with mine specifically that I have is the fact that it needs heat strips. And if that board outside fails, that's like a $1,500 board and we don't have one board does everything on it. Everything. Down here where I live, Our heating or cooling load is determined by, technically it's the heat load, which means the heat that is on the house. The heat load determines what size equipment we use, or you could call it the cooling load, how much you need to cool the house. And if we have a house, for example, that needs three tons to cool it, 36,000 BTUs, that's more than enough to heat it. So the idea of heat strips that don't need heat strips is a really good idea here. I think if you were going to try to do that in a place that is much colder, you might, for example, northern Michigan, like effect snow or something, your load calculations are going to be dominated by your heating load, how much heat you need to heat the house. It's going to be higher than your cooling load. So if you're going to try to use a heat pump that doesn't need heat strips, you're probably going to have to base it on the heating load of the house instead of the cooling load. And I happen to know that many of the places up north, the cooling load is much lower. So they might have a three ton coil on like 150,000 BTU furnace. I'm just saying that if you're going to try to replace all of that with a heat pump. You might want a load calculation so that you know exactly how much heat you need to heat the house. Down here is easy because it doesn't get real cold. If I have 36,000 BTUs for air conditioning, I know that's enough to heat the house. It's kind of easy for us down here. That's not the case throughout the whole country. All right, I guarantee you I'm reading a comment Here's a comment here from... One of my guests that has been on the show, one man, HVAC, he's saying Carrier's selling Infinity boards for $3,500, and I guarantee you that Infinity board is on a heat pump that needs heat strips. I keep ragging on this because they advertise this 19 or 20 SEER system, and they don't tell you that the SEER rating is only based on five months of cooling. I mean, why even mention it? Because as soon as you turn on those heat strips, every penny you saved on this $20,000 system with this $3,500 board in it goes right out the window as soon as those heat strips fire up. I'm just saying, they've been selling those systems for years and years and years, and I feel like it has been a ripoff for every customer that's bought one. I have never sold an inverter-driven heat pump that needed heat strips. I felt like it was a waste of technology when I knew even way back then, 15, 20 years ago, that mini splits were already doing what these ACIQ equipment that I'm selling or now Carrier has finally figured out that people like the idea of not having to use heat strips. So they are offering the exact same piece of equipment as one of their Infinity top-of-the-line systems. Finally, after 20 years of selling these Infinity systems that need 10 to 15 kW around here. Finally, I feel like, you know, honestly, I feel like some of the manufacturers just didn't care about this technology. In fact, some of the technology, you don't even really have to reheat your own. Do the hot gas injection on the suction line. That's not even in all the cases with some of the ACIQ equipment that don't need heat strips. That is a tool that is used sometimes to help produce heat when it's really cold, but not all of their condensers, even the extremes, not all of them have that ability. Sometimes I use a double row of condenser coil. Thank They're able to accomplish this with their inverter technology and other engineering capabilities that have been around for a long time. They're just now putting them in unitary systems you. because there is a demand for it. Address one of these comments, and this is about heat pumps not being efficient when they're cold. At 32 degrees Fahrenheit ambient, and this This is from Ted T07, your heat pump. is a lot lower than 90 degrees Fahrenheit. So your three-ton cooling will not be a three-ton heating with an outdoor of 32 degrees. In most cases, I agree with you. Yes, with a traditional heat pump, let's just say I installed one the other day, a Ruud 14.3 SEER traditional heat pump with 10 kW. I was actually going to put up some pictures of it. When it's cold, near freezing, That heat pump loses efficiency quickly as it starts to get close to freezing. It's amazing. Instead of producing, let's just say a 20 degree temperature difference, that temperature difference drops quickly to something like five, six, seven degrees. That is why that heat pump needs heat strips. It is a traditional PSC single stage, Actually, this one's a two-stage. PSC driven compressor. It has basically two speeds. That's not the case with the inverter systems. They can ramp up and ramp down. Some of them actually reheat the suction going into the compressor. So that compressor acts and feels like it's not 32 degrees outside, but more like it's 50. It's just the technologies that they're using to do this make these heat pumps much more efficient in the winter. I have installed, I'll give you a personal experience, my other house, I installed a Gree that used a reheat capability on the suction with no heat strips. It got down to 17 degrees and I never even noticed it. I installed one over on an ACIQ system on my neighbor's house, and this fellow, he's getting close to 100 years old, and he likes it 80 degrees in his house. Once again, it got down to 17 degrees. My heat strips haven't showed up yet. I did install them, but at 17 degrees, that thing was doing fine. It kept it 80 degrees in his house. No problem. Traditional heat pumps, yes, they will have a problem with that, but these aren't traditional heat pumps. Okay. Now the heat pumps I've been talking about, they are mini split style condensers. So I'm going to address this question here from Trendkill91. Mini split installs, self-install or is it better to pay a tech? I understand most of, not all of them do not warranty them for DIY installs. Pay somebody to do it right. Unless you really know what you're doing, pay somebody to do it right. You self-install, What if one of your flare joints starts leaking and all your refrigerant leaks out? You're just out. You're doing. If you pay somebody to install it, like for me, I've got one year on labor and five to ten years on parts. So pay somebody else to do it. I guarantee it's probably going to look better. That's some of the problems. I mean, you reminded me of kind of like a horror story call that I went to. I had somebody that works out there cutting grass where my shop is call me and request that I come look at his air conditioner. He has a mobile home, ripped out the package unit, and installed two mini splits, one of them with two heads. About three weeks later, ain't nothing working. Go figure. Freon is leaking. The electrical's all messed up. The electrical was absolutely, it was dangerous. It was. It was terrible. In fact, I walked away from the job and told him, you get an electrician to fix this and then I'll come out and try to fix what's going on with your air conditioner. I am not touching some of the stuff that I saw out there. Guys, get a professional to do it. It is worth it. I promise you it is worth it. There is a reason. Our state requires us to have Insurance. If you get, if you're doing this yourself, or if you get somebody that you know to do it who is not licensed or does not have insurance, what are you going to do if something happens to your house? I'm just saying, I understand having confidence in your own work, but for example, if you do it yourself or you pay somebody who is not licensed, your insurance company is going to lay all the blame on you. I'm just saying. That's why we have insurance, just in case something happens. This is from another business owner, and I understand the sentiment here. Speaking of what we were just talking about, somebody hitting somebody else or chucking a truck to install an air conditioner for them. This is from a business owner. He says, if you want to denigrate my 32 years of HVAC experience, then you deserve what you get. It is very much worth calling a professional. It is. It is, in my opinion. If for nothing else, somebody that is familiar with the system, who's insured, can give you some kind of warranty if for no other reason for that, for that. Well, guys, we have almost gone on for an hour. This one has gone very well. I hope I have communicated with you that the trades are a good option right out of high school. The military is too. They teach you a lot of good things. The trades are a great option. They really are. If you like working with your hands, if you like solving problems, yeah, you're probably going to have to go through some years where you're pushing a broom or doing duct work or carrying tools for somebody. You got to put in the work. Yes, but it's worth it. It really is worth it. Women dig it too. I'm just saying, if you can provide for your household. and know how to fix things. I'm just saying guys go out and get you a job in the trades. You can always go back to college whenever you want to. Thanks for watching guys. I really do and enjoy speaking with you. I'm glad you came out. I appreciate it.