With the weather heating up, the no-cool calls are pouring in, and the long hours are beginning. And, because it’s summer, those long hours can often be required in sweltering conditions. So during this time of year, it’s especially important to make sure every employee is educated on the hazards of working in the sun and heat.

HVACR instructors are facing a host of challenges these days, from teaching with new technologies to recruiting for full enrollment to dealing with funding cuts. Yet many are rising to meet these challenges with success and are optimistic about the future.

While many in the industry still use the term votech, or vocational/technical, to describe the educational programs that prepare individuals to enter the HVAC trade, that term is being increasingly discarded. Instead of votech, educators and administrators are using the phrase Career and Technical Education, or CTE.

I just returned from the annual HARDI fly-in in Washington, D.C. Distributors from around the country converged on Capitol Hill for a jam-packed day of lobbying on behalf of their businesses.

In late March, instructors from around the country gathered at the annual HVACR & Mechanical Instructor Workshop. At the three-day annual event, which was hosted by the Air Conditioning, Heating & Refrigeration Institute (AHRI), they shared their experiences and brushed up on industry knowledge and skills.

On April 14, President Obama signed into law House Resolution 4 (H.R. 4), which repealed an unpopular provision of the new health care law that would have created a paperwork burden for many small businesses. The passage of H.R. 4, which repealed the 1099 reporting requirement, was the culmination of months of effort by small businesses across many industries.

There are many stereotypes about stodgy old HVAC contractors who completely ignore social media. But there are progressive contractors who are using online social tools to grow their businesses. Here are three contractors I’ve stumbled across who have impressed me with their mad skills in social media.

Extended warranties have long been considered another potential source of revenue for contractors, but many companies that offered these programs in the past have not succeeded in the market. Nowadays there’s a new player seeking to change the extended warranty market.

Randy Mathern has been in the business for 36 years. But it wasn’t until 2001 that he decided to start his own company. To get started, Mathern decided he needed to become an expert in a progressive technology, and since geothermal technology had been around for a little while, he decided to jump into it.

I keep hearing buzz about how much money the federal government could save if it eliminated and consolidated duplicative programs. In response to this, a senator from North Carolina recently sponsored a bill that would combine the DOE and the EPA.