The pandemic undoubtedly took a toll on our economy, as many of the small companies in our area did not survive the lockdown.
- The pandemic was an unprecedented event that nobody saw coming and some supplier owners were left to fend for themselves.
There was some help from the federal government in the form of a stimulus, but some companies still suffered grave consequences and had to permanently close their doors. While some companies did not survive, there were others that thrived and even saw growth during the pandemic. The heating and A/C industry has been slowly growing over the years, but it did see significant growth during the lockdowns. With more people now working from home, it meant they were using their heating and A/C units more than before. And as with any equipment, the increased use led to more malfunctions, not to mention that during quarantine we experienced some of our warmest weeks, so a lot of heating and A/C units broke down in that timeframe. Personally, I have an older heating and A/C unit, and sure enough it broke down about three weeks after I began to work from home. The capacitor, which is an electrical component responsible for starting the heating and A/C unit, had malfunctioned. Prior to that incident, I had never had an issue with our unit. Turns out that the capacitor is sensitive to heat and will fail from direct sun, or if the device is running too hard. So, it was inevitable for that malfunction to happen during the pandemic. Therefore, if our device broke, there were tons of other units that experienced issues in that timeframe. This means that work increased for heating and A/C companies all over the country.