Blogs are an easy and effective way to stay connected with what’s new in the HVAC industry. They’re also a source of wisdom when faced with a niche problem around the installation, maintenance, or marketing. Having the best HVAC blogs bookmarked in your smartphone is akin to having several HVAC experts at the touch of a button to answer any of your, or your customer’s, questions.
Many HVAC blogs are connected to small, medium, and large HVAC businesses. Sometimes this is exactly what an HVAC technician is looking for: the personal perspective of someone who is actively working in the field and aware of what’s important and what isn’t. But other HVAC blogs can be consumer-focused posts that amount to little more than advertisements for the business’s HVAC services.
Not all HVAC blogs are created equal. Below, we’ve collected nine of the best. Whether you’re interested in HVAC technical issues, HVAC marketing, HVAC products, or just looking to connect with the wider community, there’s a blog out there for you.
Air-Conditioning, Heating, and Refrigeration (ACHR) News
ACHR News is bigger than your average blog: it’s a major hub for all HVAC news. This is a site for HVAC technicians to stay up to date with conferences, economic data, regulation changes, and trends related to every facet of HVAC.
If you’re short on time, you can use their daily news round-ups to get quickly up to date; if you’re looking for something more specific, they have convenient filters for a wide range of different topics. Full membership benefits require a $5 per month subscription, but there’s plenty to explore before deciding whether the paid route is right for you. Think you know it all? You can take one of ACHR’s quizzes on an HVAC topic of your choice here.
HVAC.com
The HVAC.com blog is an easy-to-use repository written in simple language. Blog entries are titled to answer pressing questions, and their resource center includes installation guides, maintenance guides, videos, and manuals. Most of the posts are aimed at consumers, but can still be a valuable resource for HVAC technicians to pass on to their own potential clients.
HVAC technicians can also use the blog to take the temperature of the current market, with information on the best brands for air conditioners and furnaces. Over the years, the HVAC.com blog has won awards from the Better Business Bureau and Inc.
Reddit’s HVAC Community
If you’re looking for infinitely scrollable, vaguely amusing, and intermittently helpful HVAC information, the HVAC community on Reddit is an easy addition to your social media feeds. Since its inception in 2010, it’s grown to over 67,000 members, making it one of the most active HVAC communities on the internet. Its age and its size mean that there’s a lot of noise to sift through, but the search function here is a more reliable resource than if one were to broadly search the internet, and the answers can be incredibly specific.
If an HVAC technician is looking for information that’s too niche for a generic blog post, the Reddit HVAC community probably has them covered.
Heating Help
HVAC technicians working with heating should tune into Heating Help, an informative blog that’s blossomed into a vibrant online community. Dating back to 1997, Heating Help is the brainchild of industry expert Dan Holohan and his wife, Marianne, who eventually handed the reins to their daughter, Erin. The blog’s family-run nature infuses every aspect of Heating Help, which has grown to include a systems help center, a museum on heating history, and even a regular podcast (Dead Men Tales).
The blog’s tagline is “Answers in Minutes” and HVAC technicians working in heating should have the blog bookmarked. In each post, HVAC technicians get the thoughts of a wizened industry veteran, which are both humorous and informative.
Buildings
As part of the built environment, HVAC doesn’t exist in a vacuum. HVAC technicians need to understand the ways in which trends in architecture, building, and construction impact the installation, upgrading, and maintenance of HVAC systems.
Buildings is a hub for facility managers and building owners, and the news in this sector is often relevant to HVAC technicians. HVAC technicians can rely on Buildings for meaty content: trends in energy savings, solar-powered HVAC, and adjustments to the built environment due to Covid-19 are all covered here. Buildings has a digital magazine, a news desk, a podcast, and also a resource center with whitepapers and case studies.
HVAC Product News
It’s not the most scintillating subject matter, but for HVAC technicians staying up to date on what products are available, it’s useful reading. Alongside product information on new tech rollouts, readers will get conference news, regulatory updates, and even scholarship information in the form of press releases. It’s not the only blog-related resource an HVAC technician will need, but it’s a useful one to keep close at hand.
EB&L Edition
EB&L Marketing is a full-service HVAC marketing firm, and its president, Elaina Wellstead, runs EB&L Edition, the firm’s blog on HVAC marketing. For more than 25 years, Wellstead has worked exclusively in HVAC marketing, helping HVAC technicians, contractors, and distributors increase their bottom line. But despite the ties to the firm, the EB&L Edition is very much a blog with a warm, personalized tone.
HVAC technicians can learn about load calculations, the implications of Covid-19, and the pros and cons of different HVAC systems and marketing methods. Wellstead grew up around residential HVAC technicians, and more and more HVAC technicians are growing up in their careers with Wellstead’s blog.
HVAC Know It All
HVAC Know It All is a blog created by Gary McCreadle, a licensed refrigeration and gas technician. But this isn’t a consumer-focused blog: HVAC Know It All is for those who live and breathe HVAC. HVAC technicians who log on can find expert guides to niche problems related to sealants, coolers, compressors, and just about everything else. The blog posts are helpfully tagged, so HVAC techs can quickly search for their topic of choice.
For those on the go, HVAC Know It All also has a regularly updated podcast, which includes interviews with other HVAC experts.
Arista
Arista is one of the largest HVAC companies in the New York City metropolitan area, with a fleet of over a hundred trucks. Most of their posts are targeted at the general consumer, but there’s still plenty to absorb for HVAC technicians: this is what an enormously successful HVAC business’s blog and website looks like.
Arista’s blog readers can find informative posts about how Covid-19 is impacting HVAC, how different service contracts offer long-term value, and how to avoid the most common mistakes associated with HVAC systems. Arista won a Top 100 HVAC Blog Medal in 2019.
