Every guide on the site, newest first. Each one comes from real jobs — read what you need, use what works. This was created from a field persons perspective and is not comprehensive but meant to be informative.
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How Much Does a Change Order Cost? (No Change Order Is Free)
I was in a preconstruction meeting on a job I’ll leave unnamed, and the team kept circling back to a question the owner had already answered. Finally the owner stopped the room. He said, more or less, “We have spent $2,500 on this conversation. We’ve already decided. Let’s move on.” He was right, and he…
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How to Price an HVAC Change Order (Small Extras, Floor vs Margin)
I worked the tinner trade for about four years and I have not taken a side job in fifteen. I manage projects for a general contractor in Salt Lake now, which means change orders cross my desk every week. I am the guy who reads them. The numbers here are Salt Lake in 2026 and…
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Sheet Metal Gloves: What I Wear and When They Come Off
I cut my finger buying the duct for a video about duct. Picked up a six inch elbow, spun it straight the way you do, and it came apart in my hand. Bled on the way to the truck. Took a picture of it because at that point it is either a picture or a…
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Which Tool for Which Job: What a Tinner Reaches For
You have the list. You know what goes in the bag. What nobody tells you is which one to reach for when you are standing in front of the work. That is a different question and this is the answer to it, sorted by what you are trying to do instead of by what the…
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Revision Clouds and Deltas on Construction Drawings
There is a cloud drawn around part of your duct run, and a little triangle next to it with a number in it. Something in there changed. That is what the balloon is telling you, and that is most of what it is telling you. This goes with how to read HVAC drawings on a…
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Whose Job Is It to Update the Drawings?
You are holding a sheet. Is it the current one? It probably says so. The architect marks the current drawing, and that marking is true as of the day it was issued. What it cannot tell you is what happened since. If an RFI answer came back, or the owner or architect issued a change…
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Getting an Area Ready to Hang Duct
Tomorrow is thought of today. Not tomorrow morning at six in the gang box with a coffee. Today, while there is still time to do something about what you find. Everything in this post is the answer to one question: when four guys walk into that area in the morning, does the work start, or…
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Equipment Schedules and Which Column Is Actually Yours
Somebody tells you to check the schedule. Which one? There are a dozen of them in that set. Lights have a schedule. Toilets have a schedule. Devices, electrical gear, mechanical units, exhaust fans, VFDs. The roof drains are on a schedule. So are the floor drains. That word does a lot of work on a…
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Why Your RFI Came Back Useless
You found it. You are the one standing there with a tape in your hand looking at a beam that is exactly where your duct is supposed to go. So you tell your foreman. And then the problem leaves your hands and you do not see it again for three weeks, and when it comes…
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Why You Never Set Duct Height Off the Floor
Here is something nobody tells a first year. The floor you are standing on is not the thing the building was laid out from. It is a finished surface that got poured to meet an elevation, and sometimes it misses. So when you pull a tape up from the slab to set a duct height,…
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Duct Elevations: BOD, TOD, and What the Number Includes
Here is a question worth two inches. A duct is called out at an elevation and that duct is going to have insulation. Is the number to the metal, or to the outside of the insulation? It is to the metal. Always, regardless of where the insulation goes. If you have never had to ask…