Diary Entry #3 – Back at It

 So… it’s been a while since my last update.

I could give you a neat excuse, but the truth is simpler: summer happened. When you work HVAC in Colorado, July hits like a freight train. One week you’re sipping coffee in a quiet shop, the next you’re juggling emergency calls, attic sweats, and explaining for the hundredth time why putting a box fan in front of a return vent isn’t “basically central air.”

Between work, training my new apprentice, and trying to keep my own systems (home and business) running smoothly, the blog took a backseat. And honestly? That’s just how this trade goes sometimes—real life gets loud.

But I’ve missed writing these updates. This little corner of the internet helps me process the chaos, share what I love about this work, and maybe convince a few people that the trades are worth jumping into. So I’m going to try harder to make time for it, even if it’s just quick tips or short thoughts from the field.

Oh—and I finally set up a Twitter profile. If you want quicker updates, random HVAC thoughts, or the occasional rant about bad installs, you can follow me here:
👉 https://x.com/hvac_diary?s=21&t=LjEBYkSoc3AGVMDPJG2RdA

Thanks for sticking around. Now, back to the good stuff soon—because the cooling season isn’t slowing down anytime soon.

— Riley

Diary Entry #1 – Starting Something Different

Well... here we go. My first blog post. No filters, no fancy graphics (yet), and definitely no polished logo—just me, Riley, sitting at a worn desk after a long install day, staring at a screen instead of a blower motor.

I’ve been in HVAC for over a decade, and I’ve gotten pretty good at troubleshooting a fried circuit board or figuring out why your house is 68 downstairs and 82 upstairs. But this—this whole blogging thing—is a new beast. This is me stepping into a world of links, headers, image uploads, and figuring out what the hell a favicon is. Spoiler: I don’t know yet.

I started this blog because the stories we live out in the trades don’t get told enough. HVAC isn’t just tools and ductwork and “your filter’s dirty.” It’s problem solving. It’s building trust. It’s crawling into hot attics and cold crawlspaces because someone needs to be comfortable in their home—and someone has to know how to make that happen.

And the people doing that work? They’re not all what you expect. Some of us are women. Some of us run our own businesses. Some of us started out scared to hold a drill and now lead crews, fix complex systems, and train the next generation.

So while this page doesn’t look fancy yet (believe me, the logo is coming—just as soon as I figure out how to make it not look like it was drawn in kindergarten), I hope it becomes something useful. A place where:

• I can share stories from the field

• You can get a better idea of what HVAC life is really like

• And maybe, someone out there who never saw themselves in the trades realizes that yeah, they can do this too

This is the start. It won’t be perfect. But it will be honest. And full of heart.

Catch you on the next call.

— Riley