Articles by Peter Powell

Once a year, the consumer magazine Cooking Light gets involved in building what it calls a FitHouse that focuses on “a healthy and balanced lifestyle” as well as “green building standards.”

Refrigerant manufacturers through late April and early May announced larger than previous increases in the per pound cost of R-22, by far the most widely used refrigerant in air conditioning. Some sources in the industry are speculating that a 30-pound canister of R-22 that cost around $75 in late April could be near $125 once the increases are eventually passed along to contractors.

When former President Bill Clinton stepped to a podium in New York City to convene the C-40 Large Cities Climate Summit, he was, in effect, opening the door for expanded opportunities for HVAC contractors in areas ranging from the installation of new energy-efficient equipment to major retrofits, with a special emphasis on performance contracting.

Opponents of the Kyoto Protocol present the economic argument which seems to say that Kyoto may be a good thing environmentally - but at the expense of the economy.

Integrating CO2 into industrial refrigeration, trying to hit mandated energy-efficiency targets on a tight budget, and checking the mechanical integrity of a system as painlessly as possible were topics covered at the 2007 Ammonia Refrigeration Conference & Trade Show.

Problem: Data centers are getting more demanding to the point of at least one comfort cooling provider saying typical “room cooling is an ineffective approach for next-generation data centers.” The answer may be “row-oriented and rack-oriented cooling architectures.”

The most important sound for International Institute of Ammonia Refrigeration (IIAR) Ammonia Refrigeration Conference & Trade Show conference attendees were words spoken at business and committee meetings, in technical presentations, and at workshops and panel discussions.

Yet another indication of how constantly changing the world of refrigerants is - and will likely continue - is reflected in the recent announcement that two major refrigerant manufacturers will be working together to come up with a new refrigerant that one sector of the industry is clamoring for.

Besides renovations, “This Old House” on public television is also a show to take note of some interesting and unique technologies.

Coding systems that can easily be read by a scanner are common today, but it still is not true in the HVACR industry. The NEWS interviewed several wholesalers and contractors (and spoke informally to a number of others) to find out why our industry is not up to speed with the swift scans of supermarkets and highways.