Odhav centre · 360 hours
HVAC & Refrigeration Service
Fourteen weeks of service work on window, split, cassette and ducted units, plus the small commercial refrigeration that pays the bills in the monsoon months. You braze until your joints stop leaking under nitrogen. You pull a vacuum to 500 microns and hold it. You charge by weight, not by feel. A scrapped 1.5-tonne ducted unit donated by a Naroda plant is the most-used teaching aid we own.
The skills, one by one
Refrigeration work punishes shortcuts. A joint that looks fine leaks in three weeks; a system charged by pressure alone runs badly for a year. So the practical hours are weighted heavily towards the four things that decide whether a technician gets called back or complained about.
Brazing that holds
Oxy-LPG torch handling, flaring and swaging, copper-to-copper and copper-to-brass joints, silver rod selection, nitrogen purging while brazing so you are not filling the line with oxide scale. Every joint you make gets pressure tested in front of you.
Evacuation and leak testing
Nitrogen pressure test and hold, soap and electronic leak detection, two-stage vacuum pump operation, micron gauge reading, pull-down to 500 microns, decay test, and why 20 minutes of vacuum is not evacuation.
Charging and diagnostics
Gauge manifold reading, superheat and subcooling, charging by weight with a scale, recovery into a cylinder instead of into the sky, and diagnosing undercharge, overcharge, restriction, and a dirty condenser from the pressures and temperatures alone.
Electrical side of an AC
Compressor terminal identification, run and start capacitor testing, overload protector, contactor and relay checks, PCB fault isolation on an inverter unit, thermistor testing, and safe metering on a live outdoor unit.
Refrigerants and the law
R-22, R-410A, R-32 and R-134a — pressure behaviour, oil compatibility, and why a drop-in swap is usually wrong. R-32 mild flammability handling, cylinder storage and transport rules, recovery-and-reuse practice, and the ozone and HFC phase-down rules that now affect what you will find in the field.
Ducted and cassette work
Filter and coil cleaning without bending fins, drain slope and blocked-drain repair, blower and belt checks, airflow balancing basics, insulation repair, and AMC checklist discipline — the paperwork the customer signs.
Week by week
| Weeks | Module | What it looks like |
|---|---|---|
| 1–2 | Refrigeration cycle and tools | Compressor, condenser, expansion device, evaporator — traced on a live cut-section rig. Tool induction: gauge manifold, torch set, vacuum pump, recovery machine, clamp meter, micron gauge, weighing scale. |
| 3–4 | Copper work and brazing | Cutting, deburring, flaring, swaging, bending without kinking. Brazing practice moving from horizontal to overhead joints, every one nitrogen-tested at 300 psi. |
| 5–6 | Evacuation and charging | Leak testing, deep vacuum, decay tests, charging by weight, recovery. Deliberately undercharged and overcharged rigs to read on the gauges. |
| 7–8 | Electrical and controls | Single-phase compressor wiring, capacitors, contactors, thermostats and thermistors, inverter PCB basics, fault codes on common Indian and Japanese brands. |
| 9–10 | Installation and service | Full split installation from bracket to test run — drilling, slope, drain, flare torque, pipe insulation, indoor-outdoor cabling. Then full preventive service on window, split and cassette units. |
| 11 | Ducted and small commercial | The donated ducted unit, deep-freezer and visi-cooler work, water cooler faults, and how AMC contracts are actually structured and billed. |
| 12 | Workplace block | Safety induction including working at height and cylinder handling, customer communication on a service call, call closure and payment collection, salary slip and paperwork session. |
| 13 | Field days | Three supervised days riding with a partner's service team on live calls in Odhav, Nikol and Naroda. You watch two, then you do one with the technician standing behind you. |
| 14 | Assessment and interviews | Employer-led practical assessment with third-party assessor, followed by interviews with at least two partner employers. |
Eligibility
- Passed 10th standard, plus one of: ITI in RAC, ITI in fitter or electrician, a diploma in mechanical or electrical, or one year of genuine field service experience
- Age 18 to 32 on the batch start date
- A two-wheeler and a valid driving licence — nearly every service role expects it
- Aadhaar and a bank passbook with a matching name
- No fear of heights or ladder work; outdoor units are rarely at knee level
Be honest with yourself about this
- March to June you will do four to six calls a day in Ahmedabad heat, on a bike, carrying tools. The incentive money in that season is real, and so is the exhaustion.
- Monsoon and winter are quiet. Fixed salary plus a smaller incentive is what you live on.
- Brazing burns happen while learning. Long sleeves, gloves and goggles are not optional at our bench and you will be sent home without them.
What you leave with
The Team SK trade certificate, an assessment sheet signed by a service manager from a partner firm, and where a seat has been confirmed, a placement letter naming your reporting branch, your joining date, your fixed salary, and how the incentive is calculated per call. We insist the incentive structure is written on the letter, because a verbal promise about incentives is where most first-year disappointment comes from.
Who hires from this batch
Authorised service franchises for major room-AC brands across east Ahmedabad; two AMC contractors handling office and hospital installations in Prahladnagar and Bopal; a Naroda pharma unit that keeps two utility technicians on its own rolls; and cold-chain operators near Changodar who need deep-freezer and reefer support.
Starting fixed pay in 2026 sat around Rs. 16,000 gross, with per-call incentive on top from March. Technicians who came in with an RAC ITI and cleared the assessment cleanly were offered Rs. 18,000 in two cases last season.
Fees, in full
- Course fee
- Rs. 12,500 total
- Instalment 1, at admission
- Rs. 5,000
- Instalment 2, end of week 5
- Rs. 4,000
- Instalment 3, before assessment
- Rs. 3,500
- Included
- Refrigerant, brazing rods, nitrogen, copper practice stock, PPE, assessment fee
- Not included
- Your own hand-tool kit if you want one at the end (about Rs. 4,500 at Ratanpole rates)
- Repeat assessment
- Free, once, with the next batch
This is our most expensive course because it is the only one where the consumables genuinely cost money. A trainee gets through roughly 20 metres of copper, a cylinder's worth of nitrogen and a fair amount of refrigerant learning to do this properly. We would rather charge Rs. 12,500 and let you make mistakes on our stock than charge Rs. 6,000 and have you make them on a customer's machine.
A note for people already working in AC service
We get a steady trickle of technicians with two or three years of experience who were never taught evacuation properly, because the shop they trained under did not own a micron gauge. If that is you, say so at counselling. We can put you on a short 60-hour evening block covering evacuation, charging by weight, inverter diagnostics and R-32 handling for Rs. 3,500, instead of making you sit fourteen weeks you do not need.