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Had a licenced plumber out to get a heatpump gassed & commissioned as per the required paperwork these days that require you to use a trained, qualified and licenced tradesman.
He was fiddling around silver soldering the return pipe when I left him in the morn. When I returned in the arvo he was still working on the same pipe.
I asked him was there a problem and he (among other things) tells me he has gassed and had it leak three times and now he was out of R22 and would have to go get some more.
He took off and I looked at the mess he’d made and chopped off the lot and silver solder a new section in.
he came back and after looking at my ‘not to shabby’ job he admitted that he had done very very little gas work.
I ended the day giving him bronzing and silver soldering lessons about too hot in my workshop and we called it quits on the money for the job he signed the paperwork for the compliance paperwork.

Are even our trades getting dumber with all these flatpacks and pre-assembled stuff.
They seem to have all become ‘fitters’!
I just hope it’s because I’m in the sticks .......amd all the good trades are in the cities .......but I’m guessing not!

Or it could really be that the good trades are in the cities! *hehe*.

Not too push another wheelbarrow of mine too hard, but I think we need National accreditation schemes, National education and standards and testing schemes, and National legislation about standards compliance. EG: Abolish the States and have one Parliament and one Senate, and put some of the $50 billion we’d save into training.

With just these sorts of situations in mind, I’m thinking plumbers should be required to have a day or 2 workshop test each year to keep them up to date on latest materials, methods, and brainstorming some of the “older” more practical techniques as well. Does anyone know if they are required to attend something like this on an annual basis? The world is changing so much, with new environmental standards and technologies, that this sort of legislative approach to standards might even become global one day.

This guy was from town Arthur and was charging me $120/hr ...he apologised and said that he hadn’t had much experience with acetalene gas in windy and exposed conditions and would be okay in the workshop. 
I had warned this guy and even offered to solder the pipe before he came but he gave me the ‘got to be licenced’ routine. 
Dave, I think 99% of these heatpumps/airconds now come with ‘quick fit’ couplings and don’t need bronzing/silver-soldering.  And I think that’s where they have no need of some of these skills you came to expect from tradies. As long as they know which paperwork to use then they should be okay.
There is probably too much duty of care problems with teaching some of these meat head kids about something as dangerous as acetalene in a school situation now.
It would be hard enough getting the apprentise to remember the blue stuff before the red stuff I’m thinking.