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A response to recent refrigerant news coverage. Sell on value and consumers will upgrade their units.

There’s really nothing you can do to control what is posted online about your company, but it is important to devote some time to Googling your company name to see what’s out there. If you find you’re the recipient of many one-star reviews, you may want to take a closer look at your business practices. But if you have a one-star review that has little or no merit, there are ways to combat that.

Ventilation. Ventilation. Ventilation. The three most important words in the HVAC business. OK, maybe the three words should really be airflow, airflow, airflow. But, no matter how you slice it, the air has got to go in, the air has got to go out, and the air has got to move around. Just for fun, let’s say that the V in HVAC represents all the air, no matter which direction it is going.

Silent night? The eve of this past Christmas Eve was hardly silent and calm in the HVACR industry. For on that day - Dec. 23 - the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) published in the Federal Register two proposed rules that launched a double barrel of initial confusion, then consternation, and now concern.

May I share one simple sales concept that has sometimes served me well? Only sometimes, because sometimes I forget to abide by the concept - we have two ears and one mouth, listen and talk in a two-to-one ratio. Yes, very simple. Listen twice as much as we talk.

Items have no place in an economic stimulus package. Personal opinions don’t count in science.

Chicks dig the V, or so I heard a few years ago. In other words, a slim waist with big shoulders is nearly the equivalent of a good “gun show.” Across the years, my V has turned into more of a U, and the guns have always been a bit on the scrawny side. You might call the current economic condition a bit scrawny, which also calls to mind the shape of economic recoveries.

Resist the urge to repair that 10 or 12 SEER system again.

As we all know, the final three months of last year sent the economy into its worst downhill slide in a quarter-century. But, I’m not here to repeat all the bad news from the dark side. Instead, I’m here to look at the positives. In my estimation, it’s the best solution for contractor owners everywhere.

In smaller refrigeration applications in Europe, the refrigerant isobutane is commonly used. That is not the case in the United States because the refrigerant has an A3 safety rating due to flammability issues. But now a major manufacturer of refrigeration equipment is attempting to change the equation in the U.S. And that could make the already complex refrigerant marketplace even more interesting.