Peter Powell

A hardly classic recovery. A deluge of economic issues related to health care, tax cuts, tax credits, and environmental challenges. And even the issue of dry shipping R-22 condensing units. From broad based to very specific, these are some of the issues facing wholesalers - as well as others in the HVACR industry.

Call it the coming together of the front and back. The most recent Food Marketing Institute (FMI) Energy & Store Development Conference was, for the first time, a combined meeting of what had once been the Energy & Technical Services Conference and the Store Development Conference.

If reclamation of refrigerant is to be a key factor in preserving supplies of HCFC-22, that is an axiom yet to be wholly embraced by contractors. While the reclamation sector continues to show activity, it is not what many forecasters thought it would be - or should be - by now.

“I believe that NATE is at a crossroads in its evolution within our industry,” Peter Schwartz, the new president and CEO of North American Technician Excellence, told an audience of technicians and manufacturer representatives at the 73rd Annual Conference of the Refrigeration Service Engineers Society (RSES).

As I was working on an end of year 2010 story about possible HFC refrigerant mandates, I remembered that many years ago when I was working on the old, now defunct RSC Magazine I was doing a story on the phase out of CFCs under the Montreal Protocol mandates.

When it comes to weather in the Upper Midwest, locals will contend that summers are brutally hot and winters bitterly cold. That may be one reason designers of commercial buildings have traditionally kept them airtight and relied totally on mechanical HVAC to maintain comfort. But there are other ways to deal with such climate challenges.

Milwaukee Electric Tool Corp. took its 3rd Annual New Product Symposium on the road this summer. Instead of hosting at its Brookfield, Wis., headquarters as in the past, the rollout moved from the suburbs to downtown Milwaukee and the Harley-Davidson Museum complex.

The magic moment of Jan. 1, 2010 when HCFC-22 equipment would no longer be manufactured ended up being magical for only a few months. By the middle of 2010, a number of manufacturers had begun to ramp up production of such equipment and dry-shipping them without the refrigerant.

Whether or not you believe in global warming or any other such predictions, here’s the truth: More and more folks are accepting it.

Pardon me for banging my head against the wall. But high schools seem to still be “pushing” four-year colleges as the top option over vocational training. It’s a topic the HVACR industry has been talking about since long before I came into the industry 25 years ago - and still it goes on.