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Gas engineers are moving into air conditioning in growing numbers, but should they be?

On one side, Thomas Milham, an experienced air conditioning engineer with more than 20 years in the industry. On the other, John Cruickshank, a plumbing and heating engineer with around 30 years of experience who has now moved into air conditioning himself.
With hotter UK summers, growing demand for domestic air conditioning and more heating engineers looking for additional work, the two trades are beginning to cross over more than ever.

But that raises a controversial question:
Can you really complete a five-day F-Gas course and call yourself an air conditioning engineer?

Tom and John debate whether experienced plumbers and heating engineers already have many of the transferable skills needed for HVAC, including pipework, electrics, condensates and working with pressures, or whether getting the qualification is only the very beginning of learning another trade.

They also get into:

• Gas engineers moving into domestic air conditioning
• Can you really become competent after a five-day F-Gas course?
• F-Gas qualifications vs real-world experience
• Why installation and fault finding are completely different skills
• Are experienced AC engineers right to protect their trade?
• Why some heating engineers see air conditioning as a new business opportunity
• Whether domestic AC could become a race to the bottom
• Gas boiler installs vs air conditioning installs
• How much money you can actually make fitting AC
• Warranty differences between boiler and air-con manufacturers
• The mistakes new engineers make when entering refrigeration
• The cost of setting yourself up properly for air conditioning
• Heat pumps, renewables and the future of heating and cooling
• Whether gas, plumbing, renewables and air conditioning could eventually become one trade

One of the biggest arguments is whether F-Gas is becoming too easy to enter compared with gas.

The lads discuss how someone can potentially complete their F-Gas qualification and start working on domestic split systems relatively quickly, while becoming a gas engineer involves qualifications, portfolios, supervised experience and a probationary period.

But this isn't simply air-con engineers vs plumbers.

Tom acknowledges that good heating engineers can bring strong transferable skills into HVAC, while John argues that anyone moving across needs to treat it as learning an entirely new trade, not something they suddenly know because they've passed a course.
And the opportunity is clearly there.

They discuss rising demand for domestic air conditioning, stock shortages during hot weather and why more gas and heating engineers are looking at AC as another way to stay busy throughout the year.

The conversation eventually becomes much bigger than gas vs air con.

Could the future engineer simply be trained across heating, cooling, ventilation, refrigeration, heat pumps and plumbing, rather than these remaining completely separate trades?

John believes that over the next 10 to 15 years, that crossover could become increasingly normal as renewables and HVAC continue to grow.

If you're a gas engineer, plumber, heating engineer, air conditioning engineer, HVAC engineer, refrigeration engineer or apprentice, there's plenty in this debate to disagree with.

👇 Let us know in the comments:
Should experienced gas and heating engineers be moving into air conditioning?
Or does completing a short course risk people entering a trade before they've built enough real-world experience?

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