A new company with room to grow offers big opportunities for new employees.
Absolute Heat and Air, which opened in Springdale less than a year ago, has experienced workers and is ready to take off. Owner Chad Dewey helped his brother, Derek Dewey, start the first Absolute Heat and Air in Gainesville, Texas in 2006.
Chad Dewey moved to Arkansas to open the local branch of the company, employing 10 people in Springdale.
“ We hired what we needed at the moment,” Dewey said.“ We are serving residential, commercial, construction, retrofitting and bidding on jobs.”
The time was right to open in Northwest Arkansas, Dewey said.“ Heating and AC units have a 10 to 15 year life span,” he said.“ A lot of the houses and buildings were built in 2004 and 2005. They will need new units now.”
The time is also right for recent graduates to start a career in heating, ventilation and air conditioning, or HVAC.
“ The profession is undermanned. The demand is there,” said Terry Robinson.
Robinson is a technician at Absolute Heat and Air and has eight years of experience in the field.
Robinson went to college, but he said there were more career opportunities in a skilled trade like HVAC.
“ My wife has a master’ s degree,” Robinson said.“ I’ m making more than her. I’ ve got a degree in criminal justice, but I had to go to HVAC school to get a job.”
The Absolute Heat and Air team includes a service crew, a retrofit crew and a construction crew with a foreman.
Working in HVAC can be challenging.
“ It’ s not for the desk-bound,” Dewey said.“ You have to go up and down ladders, wrap pipes with insulation. Sometimes in heat that is tough for a lot of people.”
Absolute Heat and Air employees must be ready to respond to the challenge.
“ You have to be like MacGyver.” Dewey said.“ Sometimes it’ s field fabrication and coming up with creative ideas.”
The creativity comes in when fitting a system to the unique features of each house, explained Mike Neil, co-owner. The Springdale High graduate spent 16 years with another company before coming to Absolute Heat and Air to work in systems design and sales.
“ It’ s the same code and same equipment,” he said.“ You know the load you need. You have to fit it to the characteristics of the home per the money the homeowner has to spend.”
“ I’ ve worked on everything from an 80-ton unit, so big you have to have a ladder to get on top of it, to as small as a window unit,” he said.
Robinson said it’ s those challenges that keep his job interesting.“ I haven’ t seen it all in my eight years of work. I run into something new every day,” he said.
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