A quick Google says it takes 4 years to get a license to be an HVAC technician in my state.
I understand large installs at businesses are a different problem, and granted I've only ever installed a mini split, but that was hardly rocket science. And home installs are likely what most people are thinking of here.
In Japan you can get minisplit's installed for $1k a unit, here you regularly find quotes over $10k. Something's gone wrong somewhere.
In Australia the going rate last time I got one installed when I was supplying the unit (this was back in 2019) was AU$540 (US$350) for a simple install (exterior wall of house etc.), because electricians just get an extra qualification and there’s a lot of competition.
I bought the 3.5KW unit online for $1080 including delivery (USD$702) so it was $1620 (US$1050) all up. I expect with the recent inflation it might cost more like $2000 (US$1300) installed for one that size and maybe $3500 (US$2275) for a bigger unit (8kW).
The splits themselves are mostly all Japanese brands that we have here (Mitsubishi Electric, Daiken, Panasonic, etc.) as well as some Korean (LG, Samsung), but Chinese ones are starting to appear in the market too. But they all seem very cheap compared to buying one in the US, before the installation there which just seems astronomically expensive to us.
> A quick Google says it takes 4 years to get a license to be an HVAC technician in my state.
A flat time mandate for HVAC tech certification seems really out of place. And a 4 year path of any sort seems excessive for a technician. I couldn't find anything like that. Most results I found were in the 6-12 mos range - which is often spent employed.
WV was an outlier with a 2000hr requirement. How I have seen (non-hvac) 2k requirements get satisfied are thru a HS VoTech (my son) or 18-24mos doing paid tech work toward the official certification (electrician techs do this).
I can't find a state that requires anything a like a 4yr college degree, where life is put on hold to focus on that. And then 4yrs of living and school expenses are investments that need to be earned back. Not for any trade tech.
"And a 4 year path of any sort seems excessive for a technician"
Its not excessive if the purpose is job protection.
See also any career that involves interning (law, accounting, …)
It’s a air-conditioning system. It’s dead simple you could learn it in an afternoon watching YouTube videos.
HVAC technicians do more than just install mini-splits.
Yeah, and they’re also not doing rocket science
> In Japan you can get minisplit's installed for $1k a unit, here you regularly find quotes over $10k.
How much does the unit cost? What work does it take to install it? How large does it need to be to support your home?
What are the energy needs of your typical home in Japan vs your home town?
Those are the key factors, not how many years someone spends in tradeschool.
Why would those be dramatically different anywhere? It's the same few choices of mini-splits from the same few Japanese/whatever conglomerates across the world, with known cooling abilites (measured in the same units, BTUs) and with known energy consumption (kwh) (and power in watts). The hotter the place you live in, the more power it's gonna draw, and the more BTUs you'll need. Also the bigger the room, the more BTU you'll need.
Fujitsu and Mitsubishi both have popular units that are basically the same the whole world over, with minor regional changes. There really isn't that much variation though. There are obvious differences, a mini-split in a hot part of the world is going to be working harder than a mini-split in a cooler part of the world. Humidity will differ as well.
It's a large home appliance. You need a pair of strong people to drive over to the customer's house, bring it in their house, locate the right place to install it, unbox it, support it, wire/pipe it up correctly, and then give it power. The Big Mac index gives the difference in price between Japan in the US to be $5.79 vs $3.11 in JP (in 2025), and meanwhile $1k vs $10 is, well, 10x.
There's something at work here, but it's not due to variations in the difficulty of unboxing a large metal thing, drilling holes, running some tubing and then powering it on.
The units themselves are not significantly more expensive nor any more difficult or time consuming to install.