What got you into this game?

[Greengrocer]

How or why did you you guys enter the Frig, A/C game?
For me it was my dad. He used to work for Frigidaire (GM) in Stag Lane, London. Did his time in what they called the "glasshouse" assembling Metermiser compressors after WWII - one of the 1st rotaries if I'm not mistaken.
When I got to 16 I had no idea what I wanted to do (not work wise anyway). So dad got onto the GM/Frigidaire apprenticeship. 36 years later I'm in the A/C contracting business with a guy I did my apprenticeship with - spooky.:)

[nike123]

I was recruited by one small manufacturer of water cooled duct air conditioners to figure out automatic control at new units and service the electric on installed ones.
Then I started slowly to fix refrigeration circuit also, and I get attracted with challenge.
Then we worked on some bigger projects and I learned a lot on refrigeration .
Now, I am more in HVAC and refrigeration then electro mechanic engineer

[taz24]

Born into it.
Suckled on ammonia and with r11 in my veins.









My dad was a fridge man and he ans a partner had their own company, so from the age of about 10 it was always known that I would follow my dad.

taz

[US Iceman]

My story is similar to taz. My grandfather started in the business back around 1930 or so. After I was big enough to know where to NOT stick my hands I started working with him on just about anything that produced cold.

[LRAC]

I drifted in to the trade i didn't even know how the fridge at home kept things cool, never bothered looking actually or didn't care you know the sort of thing, put food in it goes cold.

I was on the car rally scene as a mechanic for Roger Clarke and his brother Stan Clarke, good guys they were, thought i loved my job as a stage mechanic. The cars came in wrecked and i was one of the team who got the vehicle back on the track.

After three years of hard slog and the weather conditions on stages(no pampering in them days) i'd had enough but didn't want to go back in a main dealers workshops. I seen an advert for "somebody who could use spanners and liked travel" that was it and 25 year later i'm still a crap engineer :D

[Chunk]

I left school and worked as a trainee electrician up to the point when i was expelled from college for throwing a soldering iron at my drunken tutor.

My dad was a service manager at Direct Refrigeration and asked if i wanted a couple of weeks work helping out doing maintenance at our local university,they forgot about me and i ended up staying for 11 months and they put me through my apprenticeship.

Refrigeration wasnt my first choice,but my Grandfather,great uncle and my Dad all do it so i guess i was born into it.

[taz24]

Refrigeration as a trade is sort of like the elephant in the living room, Everybody knows about it but nobody pays attention to it. It can be one of the hardest trades to get into and there is a lot of father - son, uncle - nephew family friend type connections.
Once people are in fridge they very rarely leave it..

Cheers taz

[taz24]

My story is similar to taz. My grandfather started in the business back around 1930 or so. After I was big enough to know where to NOT stick my hands I started working with him on just about anything that produced cold.


Isn't that the way ;)

You soon learn mighty fast which bits are hot and which bits will pull your fingers off :o

Cheers taz.

[Karl Hofmann]

The voices in my head made me do it :eek:

I'm not really a fridge man but have always had a strong respect for the ability to make things cold.. So when I found myself out in Dubai building refrigerated trucks, I thought that it would be worth while learning a little about all this black magic..

[US Iceman]

Hey taz.

Yep, you learn fast because sometimes you only get one opportunity. Also, being the smallest person on the job also meant I was placed into those hard to reach areas (which were sometimes hard to get out of):D.

[Lowrider]

I've done a higher technical education as a chemical engineer while working for a small plumbing company for money.

After finishing my education as a chemical engineer I started off at a small firm doing anything needed, heating, ventilation, cooling, plumbing and so on.

Then I moved to a larger firm and started training for HVAC whilst doing commisioning and troubleshooting all equipment.

After that I went to an even larger company, for a short while.

No work at Trane in the Netherlands. I started as a chiller service engineer and gradualy moving towards Building Automation Systems Project Engineer.

I'm still doing courses to enhance my knowlegde!

[Andy AC]

I was in the right place as the right time. I was 19, just finished a BTEC national diploma in engineering, pottering about doing a bit of labouring for a builder friend. Wasn't really sure what to do, about christmas time that year I got a phone call from one of my younger cousins and he told me to ring the father of his best mate at school.
It turned out that he had just had a hernia operation and the guy that worked for him regularly turned round and said he didn't want to travel/ commute any more. - (we live on the Isle of Wight) In the new year, there was a mass of work to do, so he needed help asap.

I said yes, the next thing I knew I was spending the week installing a great big water chiller at some m.o.d. base near swindon in a wind tunnel. The chiller was used to cool a rolling road which at the time the Reynard Indy car racing team were testing a scale model of their car, and it was all top secret and high security, which I thought was pretty cool - I want some more of this.

We used to do all sort of maintenance work - change blades on guillotines in metal shops, change lift cables on car lifts in garages, but mainly it was sub contract install/maintenance on split a/c's mainly all on the mainland.

My boss ended up closing his company and went to work for a company in Bournemouth that we done a lot of workfor, which left me very little option but to go with him. He ended up doing project management and I became senior engineer.

The company specialised in dehumidifiers as well as a/c install and repair, so I ended up teaching myself about the refridgeration side of things. Eventually they put us through Eastleigh college (at night:mad:) which really opened my eye's, and explained a few things;)

After a few years commuting to the mainland every day and travelling half way round the country, I got fed up with it as by then I had a wife and kids, but never saw them, only at weekends. So about 5 years ago I quit and joined a local father & son fridge firm on the I.O.W.

I was employed to look after the a/c side of things and be backup fridge engineer for the father. About 2 years later, the old man retired and the son emmigrated to Canada, so I went self employed and now spend my life doing the a/c work for the company we used to install for + some of the fridge stuff I used to do.

I really love my job, I'm still learning stuff every day, not so much on the air con, installing it is a piece of cake and they don't go wrong any more, well hardly ever. But the fridge side of things I find fascinating although very greasy and $hitty.

It's a great job , I wouldn't want to do anything else.

Andy

[andrei122]

haloo guys!!!

same like taz but My dad was underground driver and not a fridge man.
p.s. sorry for my english(i am romanian)

[albionharley]

I left school not having the faintest idea what i wanted to do. I ended up in a leather factory in Walsall. One of my biggest achievements is that i stuck it for 18 months. A friend of my Dads worked for Prestcold in Birmingham and happened to mention thay were looking for trainees. The rest as they say is history :D

[deu58]

Hi all,

Pushing a vacuum cleaner,

I was in Denver Colorado in 1983 and things were not going so great, I had a little 4 hour a night janitorial job in a downtown high rise, One night this guy comes on my floor and tells me he will be doing some plumbing work in the lavatories, I finished my work and decided to take a look what he was doing, He needed three hands so I just jumped in and started helping the guy out,

After all was done I helped him clean up and put everything away and he took me out for a beer, He asked me if I had any engineering experience, I had worked engine rooms in the US Navy and had been to 600 psi boiler school while in the service,

This guy was to become my best friend while I lived in Denver, The night shift was supposed to have two guys on it but one had quit and this guy was all by himself, He got my name and told me to call the building chief engineer the next day

Called the C/E the next day and and he said come on in and lets talk, One of the nicest men I have ever met in my life, He asked me some steam questions and I answered satisfactorily,
He then says to me well we do not have any boilers here so what do you know about refrigeration? I said to him that I have this big white box in the kitchen that I put warm beer in and cold beer comes out and that is about all I know about refrigeration,

He hired me on the spot, Loved that job and all the people I worked with but economics led to our jobs being contracted out several years later or I would still be there

deu58

[750 Valve]

I laughed at a bloke in school who became a fridge repair guy... couldn't think of anything worse.

Then i applied for an electronics trainee position at Fujitsu, they told me as I was a little bigger framed I would be perfect for lugging round the air conditioners in the factory.

Worked there for first 1 and 1/2 years of apprenticeship till I saw the light and took up a position at a commercial refrig company, 5 years doing beverage dispensing and general commercial fridge and i moved into supermarkets, 7-8 years in supermarkets and now its off to a major dairy products manufacturer to move into mechanical engineering.