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Field Notes
Practical guides for running the work, plus a sourced weekly digest of the changes that matter to field-service owners.
Weekly Digest · Free
What changed in HVAC this week.
Refrigerant rules, efficiency standards, tax credits, licensing, safety — we read the trade press and the regulators so you don't have to. Every source named and linked. Every read two sentences. Written for owners, not inboxes.
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The archive
08-21
This week in the trades — a code deadline, the $220 close, and a label that's quietly wrong (W33)
This week's four all have a clock on them. A code deadline that lands September 1 whether your breakers are ready or not; a pricing conversation you may be losing in the first sentence; a safety label that goes stale while nobody's looking; and a stack of free training that closes in September. None of it is dramatic — all of it is the kind of thing that's cheap to handle early and expensive to handle late.
licensing-regulationtechnologybusiness-practicesafety-recalls2026-W3208-13
This week in the trades — who you send, what you lean on, and what's charging in the van (W32)
None of this week's four is flashy, and that's the point — they're the operational decisions that quietly decide whether a shop keeps its crew. Who you dispatch to which call, which lead channels you actually own, how fast and how completely your team responds, and what's silently becoming a fire risk in the back of every van. Read them as a set: it's a week about not being caught out by the boring stuff.
business-practiceworkforcesafety-recallslicensing-regulation2026-W3108-03
This week in HVAC — who is going to do the work, and who is buying the suppliers (W31)
The through-line this week is labour. Two separate pieces land on the same conclusion — that the technicians who will carry your business in five years are the ones you train yourself — and the electrical trade is putting federal weight behind the same idea. Meanwhile the supply side keeps consolidating and the manufacturers' numbers say commercial is carrying residential. None of it changes your Tuesday, but all of it changes who you are competing with for a technician.
workforcebusiness-practiceefficiency-standards2026-W3007-24
This week in HVAC — refrigerant rules, response time, and the AI question (W30)
Three things worth your attention this week: the refrigerant transition keeps moving (your suppliers will start shipping A2L equipment whether you're ready or not), response time is still the emergency-call decider, and the useful version of AI in the trade is the boring one — answering, routing, drafting — with a human on every promise.
refrigerant-rulesbusiness-practicetechnology