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If you play golf as poorly as I do, you stay away from golf tournaments. No need to embarrass myself. As the saying goes, “Momma did not raise no fool.”

I know a lot of you are thinking that consolidation has been a dead issue for several years, with only the occasional acquisition of an HVAC contractor making news. The latest acquisition was of Goettl Air Conditioning by ARS. Who will follow up with the next big acquisition news?

Last Monday’s Breaking News on The NEWS Website references an AP-Yahoo! News poll, that $4 per gallon gasoline is not only causing Americans to drive less, it’s also causing them to cut back on their air conditioning use. Suffice it to say that the price of gasoline is on everyone’s mind.

Payback is a much-maligned topic these days. Some people say it is coming back in vogue as a selling tool, others say there is no way that a payback story can work. Payback years are like prunes; one never really knows how many are too many until it is too late.

“Simply put: HVAC performance testing is quickly becoming a necessity.” Or so says an article by Jim Bergmann that will soon be appearing in The NEWS. The part I am not so sure about is “quickly.”

Does the name Joe Groh ring a bell? He has been in our industry for several years. He told me last week about a bicycling accident that has left him with no feeling in his arms or legs.

In his July 7 commentary, Time’s columnist Joe Klein encouraged Americans to “Kill your air conditioner. Solving the energy crisis requires sacrifice. For the good of the country, we should be sweating.”

Let’s all write Arik Hesseldahl, a writer for BusinessWeek.com, and inform him how much the HVACR industry needs employees. We all have to get the attention of the national and local press in order to spread the word of this industry’s labor needs.

If what I heard from HVAC contractors is true, then sending techs and installers into hot attics makes a lot of good business sense, in spite of the inherent health problems associated with hot attics.

Back in the 1950s this business was all about comfort. We didn’t know anything about saving money. Comfort was all there was.