Imagine living through the Canadian winter without a furnace, or enduring a summertime heat wave within the concrete confines of building without air conditioning. You could invest in an ax for chopping firewood, several packs of batteries for a portable fan, or you could get a heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) expert on the scene. HVAC technicians install and service the systems that keep places toasty during cold snaps and breezy through scorchers. And these climate-controlling workers are in demand.

“There has been additional demand for these [HVAC] jobs because the work force is getting older,” says Glenn Walsh, chief instructor of the Heating, Ventilation, Air Conditioning and Refrigeration Technician Program at the British Columbia Institute of Technology.“Plus, people are getting used to air conditioning in their cars, and perhaps wanting it in their homes. Refrigeration and air conditioning is prevalent everywhere, so more units, more demand, and more maintenance.”

The demand for heating and cooling systems, and the required maintenance work to keep them humming, have grown across the country despite the global economic slowdown. Governmental regulations and incentives to create more energy-efficient buildings have spurred a healthy demand not only for new construction projects, but also for retrofits. Buildings both old and new need trained HVAC workers to install and service heating, ventilation and cooling systems, and it’s work that lets you boast both your brains and brawn.

“You get to do all sorts of work with your hands, since HVAC is a pretty broad field,” says Royce Rapozo, who graduated from Toronto’s George Brown College with a diploma in heating and refrigeration in 2009.“You end up servicing different equipment, but you also have to be able to troubleshoot in different situations and solve new problems every day.”

Rapozo is currently completing an apprenticeship that he secured with the United Association of HVAC and Refrigeration Pipefitters, Local 787. He admits that the work can at times be demanding on the body.

“There can be a lot of physical work, but if you’re doing mainly service jobs there’s usually less labour, but a lot more troubleshooting. If you get into construction, there are a lot of installations and more physical work.”

In addition to the hands-on work, a lot of travel could be thrown into the mix. HVAC service technicians can have up to ten calls a day, and those requests can be scattered across a city.

If testing your mind and body daily doesn’t provide enough satisfaction, there’s always the positive feeling of knowing that at the end of the day, you’ve helped people. “You get a sense of satisfaction in fixing people’s problems, and for mechanically inclined people, it’s a chance to make a good living,” says Eric Montford,operator of Northwest Residential Heating and Cooling in Winnipeg.

New HVAC workers’ salaries range from $35,000 to $40,000 a year, depending on the company and the type of work being done. As with most careers, earning potential increases with years spent on the job, and experienced technicians can warrant $55 an hour for their services.

There’s also room for advancement into the roles of business owner, project manager, or estimator.

“Those management-type jobs would have lots of office work, less work in the field,” says Montford. “Constant updating with new technology is always needed to advance, but just using the internet is a great way to stay up to date.”

If you’re a technically inclined problem solver with a physique that can handle travel and manual labour, check out a HVAC training program at a local college to help you establish the fundamentals needed to break into the HVAC field.

Keep a smile in your toolbox

Corny as that sounds, there’s an often-overlooked skill that great HVAC technicians possess: customer service.

“[Technicians] represent a business wherever they go, so they have to be presentable to the customer and be able to talk with the customer,” says Glenn Walsh, chief instructor of the Heating, Ventilation, Air Conditioning and Refrigeration Technician program at the British Columbia Institute of Technology.

“The mechanical stuff, we can teach that, but any customer service-related experience will often be beneficial to our students’ success.”