John Gordon remembers a time when almost all mechanical appliances and devices were rekitted and repaired, rather than replaced.

Now operating as the “Old Air Conditioner Expert”, he has a lifetime’s experience working with electrical appliances going back to a time when tradies had to be able to fix just about anything.

“I’ve been in business for 50 years and I’m about to celebrate my 80th birthday; when I came to Dubbo from Coonamble, I was an electrician,” John revealed.

“I had never experienced air-conditioning until I was 25 and I could see I needed to specialise in something more than just ‘wire-jerking’, so I trained up with Western Heating and Cooling,” he added.

At a time when air-conditioning was almost exclusively restricted to the largest, most-modern commercial buildings, he even then understood the future potential of the technology in helping make our lives so much more comfortable.

“I saw it was going to be the next big thing though, in this part of the state, shopping centres were about the only places you’d see it; there was very little air-conditioning going in domestically.

“The first coolers introduced were the roof-top evaporative units – ‘swampies’ – they were very good at cooling large areas for a small amount of money,” John explained.

At the time though, most genuine, refrigerated air-conditioners were ugly, noisy, window-mounted units plugged into wall power sockets that only effectively-cooled a small area, usually one room.

“Then Carrier with their Quietline model, and EmailAir, introduced reverse cycle air-conditioning that made it practical for almost anyone to own; this made life a lot more comfortable for Australian families.”

With the slogan “An old A/C requires an old tradie – and John’s the man to get it done!” Gordon can fix almost any unit on the market. He explained that his skills were taught at a time when keeping machinery and appliances operating, without costly replacement parts, was the key to a good trade.

“I did my training in the days when you repaired everything, you didn’t have access to replacement parts most of the time,” John said.

“Therefore, when I look at air-conditioning units that need work, my trade is based on repairing everything because, for many of these older units, replacement parts are not easy to obtain,” he concluded.

For more information, call John on 0429 823 184, or email: johntgordon3@icloud.com