A Conversation with an HVAC Tech Cooling Phoenix While It Burns

I meet Dante Coolidge at a Phoenix diner at 6:15 AM, before the November sun turns the parking lot into a convection oven. He's already been up for an hour. His company starts service calls at 7 AM sharp during the cooler months, 6 AM in summer when attics hit 140°F by noon. At 42, Dante has the weathered forearms and careful movements of someone whose body does climate work for a living. He orders coffee and eggs, mentions he's between jobs. A residential AC replacement in Scottsdale, then a commercial unit inspection at a school in Tempe. His phone buzzes constantly. He ignores it.

"Fair warning," he says, sliding into the booth. "I'm a composite character, a narrative device assembled from interviews with real HVAC technicians across the Southwest. But my frustrations are authentic, my technical knowledge is accurate, and my dark humor about working in hell while carrying flammable refrigerants is very, very real."

So let's start with January 1, 2025. What changed?

Dante: The refrigerant. R-410A, what we've been using in residential and light commercial AC systems since the 2010s, is officially phased out for new installations. EPA mandate. Now everything has to use these new A2L refrigerants—R-454B or R-32—which have lower global warming potential.¹ Sounds great, very environmental, except for one small detail.

They're mildly flammable.

Not propane-level flammable, but enough that if you're careless in an enclosed space with an ignition source, you could have a problem. The industry calls it "mildly flammable." I call it one more thing to worry about when I'm working in a 130-degree attic and my brain is basically cooking.

How does that change your day-to-day work?

Dante: Everything. Installation procedures are different. We need better ventilation during the process, different recovery equipment, new leak detection protocols. The units themselves are designed differently because the refrigerant operates at different pressures.

And here's the fun part: we're supposed to get recertified for handling A2L refrigerants, but the EPA isn't actually requiring it yet. So it's this weird voluntary best practice thing that some companies are doing and others aren't.² Very reassuring for everyone involved.

We're doing all this during a massive tech shortage. The industry needs something like 225,000 more technicians by 2025, which is now, and we're not even close.³ Fewer people trying to learn new systems while demand is exploding because Phoenix heat makes AC survival equipment, not a luxury.

What does that heat look like from your perspective?

Dante: laughs Phoenix has always been hot. That's not news. But the intensity and duration have changed even in the fifteen years I've been doing this. We used to have a "season"—May through August, maybe early September, where you're running AC constantly. Now it's May through September, sometimes into October.

And the peak temperatures are testing the limits of what these systems were designed to handle.

At 115°F or higher, some of the newer variable-capacity heat pumps will automatically derate—reduce their output—or shut down entirely to protect the compressor from damage.⁴ Which means on the hottest days of the year, when people need cooling most, their brand-new expensive system might be producing less cooling.

Try explaining that to a customer who just dropped $8,000 on a new unit.

How do you explain it?

“

Dante: I tell them the truth: the system is designed to keep you alive, not comfortable. At 115 degrees outside, if your house stays at 85 inside, the system is working. It's doing exactly what it's supposed to do.

But people remember when their old system could keep the house at 72 on a hot day. They don't understand that the old system was oversized and inefficient and basically destroying itself to do that. The new systems are smarter. They protect themselves.

"Smart" doesn't feel good when you're sweating in your own living room.

I also tell them: we're in Phoenix. We've made a collective decision to live in a place that requires artificial cooling to be habitable for four months a year. That has costs. Energy costs. Equipment costs. And now, with these new regulations, higher upfront costs because the new refrigerant systems are more expensive to manufacture and install.⁵

You mentioned you're working on a school system today. What's that like?

Dante: Schools are a nightmare. Most of the ones I work on were built in the '50s and '60s, designed for a different climate. They need either brand new AC systems or major upgrades to existing ones. The funding isn't there.

By 2025—again, now—something like 13,700 schools need to install AC and another 13,500 need upgrades just to deal with increasing temperatures.⁶ That's billions of dollars in infrastructure investment that nobody wants to pay for.

So you get these patchwork solutions. One classroom has a working system, the next one has a window unit someone bought at Home Depot, the third one has nothing and hits 90 degrees by 10 AM. I've been in classrooms where the teacher has moved all the kids to the library because it's the only air-conditioned space in the building.

You can't learn in that environment. You can't teach in it either.

What goes through your mind when you're working on those systems?

Dante: Anger. Not at the school, they're doing the best they can with no money. But at the collective failure to plan for this.

We've known for decades that temperatures were rising, that infrastructure built for one climate wouldn't work in another. And we just didn't prepare. So now I'm the person trying to retrofit a 60-year-old HVAC system in a building that was designed to withstand cold, not heat, while teachers are passing out from heat exhaustion and kids are getting dizzy.⁷

Even when schools get funding for upgrades, we don't have enough technicians to do the work. The installation backlog is months long. Schools that have the money, finally, still can't get their systems upgraded before the next heat wave hits.

Let's talk about the physical toll of your work.

Dante: shifts in his seat

My knees are shot. That's the first thing. You're climbing ladders, crawling through attics, kneeling on rooftops that are hot enough to burn through your pants if you're not careful. I wear knee pads now, which I didn't when I started. I also wear cooling towels around my neck in summer, drink probably a gallon of water before lunch, and I've learned to recognize the early signs of heat exhaustion in myself.

I've had it twice.

The work is physical in ways people don't think about. You're lifting equipment—condensers, air handlers, refrigerant tanks. You're working in extreme temperatures. And you're doing it fast because there's always another call, another customer whose system just died, another emergency. The demand is insane. In summer, we're working six days a week, ten-hour days, and we still can't keep up.

Do you think about how long you can keep doing this?

Dante: All the time. I'm 42. My body already feels older than that. I've got maybe another ten, fifteen years in me if I'm lucky and if my knees hold out. And that's assuming the heat doesn't get worse.

Which it will.

There's this thing in the industry where older techs move into dispatch or sales or teaching at trade schools, because the physical work becomes impossible. I'm starting to think about that transition.

But here's the problem: if everyone my age is thinking about transitioning out, and we're not getting enough young people into the trade, who's going to maintain all these systems? Phoenix alone has hundreds of thousands of AC units that need regular maintenance and eventual replacement. We're short 80,000 technicians nationally right now.⁸

That gap is going to get worse before it gets better.

What would make it better?

Dante: Pay us more. laughs

I'm serious. The median wage for HVAC techs is about $51,000 a year. The top 10% make over $82,000.⁹ That's not bad, but it's not enough for the physical toll and the technical skill required. You need to understand thermodynamics, electrical systems, refrigerant chemistry, building codes, safety protocols. You need to be able to diagnose complex problems with expensive equipment while working in extreme conditions.

That's skilled labor. It should pay like skilled labor.

We also need better training infrastructure. The refrigerant transition is happening right now, and a lot of techs are learning on the job because there aren't enough formal training programs. That's dangerous. You're working with systems that operate at high pressure with mildly flammable refrigerants, and you're expected to just figure it out?

That's not sustainable.

Do you ever feel like you're fighting a losing battle? Cooling a city that's getting hotter, with systems that are struggling to keep up?

Dante: long pause

Yeah. Sometimes.

There's this moment that happens maybe once a month where I'm on a roof in 110-degree heat, working on a system that's trying to cool a house to 75 degrees, and I just think: this is absurd. The amount of energy we're using, the infrastructure we're maintaining, the physical toll on workers like me, all to make a desert city habitable. And every year it gets a little harder.

But then I finish the job and the AC kicks on and I see the relief on the customer's face, and I remember: this isn't abstract. People live here. They have jobs, families, lives. They can't just leave.

So someone has to keep the systems running. That's me. That's what I do.

Last question. Do you think Phoenix is sustainable long-term?

Dante: pushes his empty coffee cup aside

I think Phoenix is sustainable as long as we have electricity and water and people willing to do the work of keeping it habitable. But all three of those things are question marks. The electrical grid is strained. Water rights are complicated and getting more complicated. And we don't have enough workers to maintain the infrastructure we already have, let alone expand it for a growing population.

So I don't know. I think we're in this weird transitional period where we're still pretending everything is fine, that we can just keep building and cooling and growing, but the cracks are showing. Systems are failing more often. Costs are rising. Workers are burning out.

“

At some point something's going to break. Maybe it's the grid. Maybe it's the labor force. Maybe it's just that people finally accept that living here requires accepting a level of discomfort and risk that previous generations didn't have to deal with.

His phone buzzes again. This time he checks it.

I'll probably still be here when that happens, though.

Someone's got to fix the AC.