TACOMA, Wash. — If you’ve been putting off installing air conditioning, waiting could cost you. Even with Wednesday’s pause to most countries, President Donald Trump’s tariffs are poised to drive up the price of plumbing and HVAC services just as demand heats up.

Some businesses like Harts Plumbers, Electricians, and HVAC Technicians in Tacoma are facing uncertainty due to tariffs and are preparing to potentially pay more to get the products they need to do their jobs, which in turn could impact customers.

Harts has seen some price increases and are preparing to potentially need to pay 10-25% more for some products and equipment.

“Almost all of our vendors have come up and said, we don’t know what’s going to happen, we can’t honor any prices. So, you know, we’ve had to go and say, ‘Hey, we can only honor our prices for 30 days because we don’t know what’s going to happen in 30 days from now,’” said Dan Hartsough with Harts Services. “There’s some definite increases that are going to happen in some of our bigger equipment, like the water heaters and the furnaces, but we’re still trying to figure out what that increase going to be.”

He said furnaces, air conditioners, water heaters, and boilers are some of the equipment expected to go up in price due to tariffs.

“Even the stuff that’s put together here in the United States, lots of those things have parts that are coming from China and from Canada and from these places that are going to be affected,” said Hartsough.

He said Harts has not had to raise prices in two years, but with costs expected to rise, that will likely change.

“When you’re a smaller company, you go out, you feel bad about raising your price to your customer. If you don’t raise your prices though, you just slowly go out of business,” said Hartsough. “So, that’s kind of the fear for the smaller companies. It’s just making sure that they can stay on top of these price increases because margins are really tight in this industry.”

Todd Allred, the Executive Director for the Plumbing-Heating-Cooling Contractors Association of Washington, which is a non-profit, said right now everything is up in the air, and contractors and businesses are not sure what to expect.

He said the two main concerns contractors have are price increases and supply issues.

“That’s the concern, is that the industry wouldn’t be able to get the materials it needs to make sure that people’s water is on and their heat is working,” said Allred.

He shared advice for consumers.

“If a consumer is considering a project like an ADU in the backyard, remodeling a bathroom, building a house, pull the trigger on it now before costs get out of control,” said Allred.

Harts is hoping that the increases are less than they are preparing for.

“I’m hoping for as small an increase as possible, so as little of an impact on the community and our customers as we can,” said Hartsough.