The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and Department of Labor (DOL) recently proposed to change the rules for union elections. The proposed rules, which have stirred up political controversy across the country, are being debated by the HVAC community.
The Department of Energy (DOE) is in the midst of creating guidelines that could become the standard to which contractors must be certified to do work involving federal funds. However, a coalition of industry organizations says the guidelines are flawed.
On Aug. 3, members of the Air-Conditioning, Heating & Refrigeration Institute (AHRI) visited more than 20 Congressional offices as part of AHRI’s inaugural lobby day and Congressional reception.
After being in the HVAC industry as a contractor and a rater for 30 years, I’ve seen a lot of things that have been done wrong. But really, there has never been a system in place that required contractors to do things correctly - and verified that they had. All that is changing with the Energy Star for New Homes version 3.
There have long been cries from the business community that excessive federal regulation can strangle a company’s ability to compete and thrive in the market. But lately lawmakers actually seem to be paying attention. HVAC is a heavily regulated industry, and each facet of the industry is engaging with government in different ways to alleviate the effects of regulation.
Heating, Airconditioning, Refrigeration Distributors International (HARDI) held its fourth annual legislative fly-in in mid-May. According to Talbot Gee, executive vice president and COO of HARDI, the 2011 fly-in was HARDI’s largest, with more than 60 members attending nearly 200 meetings on Capitol Hill in one day.
Carrier Corp. recently filed a petition with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), formalizing a request to reclassify a residential condensing unit as a subsystem of a system to extend the manufacturing prohibition to dry R-22 condensing units. The petition urges EPA to reconsider its current position and to issue a new rulemaking.
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has published a final rule establishing federal test procedures for walk-in coolers and freezers. In the rule, DOE adopted by reference Air-Conditioning, Heating, and Refrigeration Institute (AHRI) Standard 1250 (I–P)–2009, ‘‘Standard for Performance Rating of Walk-In Coolers and Freezers.”
The “Implementation of National Consensus Appliance Agreements Act of 2011” (S. 398) bill, recently introduced in the U.S. Senate, would enact into law several consensus agreements that would set new federal efficiency standards for residential furnaces in two regions, for central air conditioners in three regions, and for central heat pumps in one, national region.