Today's video I Want to talk about three ways that the HVAC industry is hurting the environment. Some of those you may not have known, we all know about the refrigerant changes or at least most folks should know about them. With the phase out of 410A and I know some people get oh, it's phased down, not phase out. Let's be honest, it's going to eventually be phased out.

So I say phase out. Let me go through the three and talk about the first one being Mercury and thermostats. Now this is something that we don't see as much anymore, but it's still prevalent today and that is. A lot of older thermostats.

used to have mercury in the thermostat, allowing it to send electricity through when it would reach temperature and it was this bubble that would kind of bounce back and forth in that system, but it was literally Mercury That is bad for the environment. It's bad for you. It's bad for it to get into the water stream and so on. And because of that, it should not be disposed of like you would other products.

If you have an Old Mercury thermostat, just contacting a local heating and air professional, they should be able to take that for you and dispose of it where it needs to be disposed of. but these thermostats are still around. In fact I Just saw someone do an article the other day of how this is still a problem where folks are just throwing them away and they don't realize the damage they're doing to the environment, but also to them and their neighbors. Number two, Carbon Footprint and Bigger units.

With the standards being raised with a lot of heating and air systems where they'll say hey, it needs to be, you know this much efficiency. we're starting to see systems that are getting bigger and bigger and bigger It used to be when efficiency didn't matter so much and electricity wasn't so expensive and so on. We would see people have systems that they could almost put them in the back of their car. I Mean they were small enough, especially some of these ton and a half or two ton systems.

They came up not even to my hip And now we have systems that are almost as tall as me trying to meet some of these standards. And you might say, well, why does this matter? Why are they making them bigger just to meet standards? Well when they have a certain efficiency rating that it has to reach one of the ways they can get there is having a larger coil for air to be pulled across and that makes it to where the system literally has to be larger in size. Now heating and air manufacturers can do different things like doubling the coil and things like that, but in reality it's still going to be a larger system and the carbon footprint when these systems are disposed of. You've now got all of this material that years ago we just simply didn't have and it's something that I think a lot of folks don't consider.

I Remember talking to one of the guys that designed the dike and fit at Griffin Air? We are a Daikin dealer and that I can fit. That was something they considered? They said, hey, we don't necessarily need to have the most efficient system on the market, but we do want to have a communicating inverter system that is really efficient. It's quiet and all the other things the inverter systems come with, but it's also going to have a smaller carbon footprint and the fit is significantly smaller than a lot of the other competitors. A lot of folks will look at the ratings and not consider well.

it's because we've got this system with all this great technology and it's super efficient. but it's got this small small size and that's part of the reason I think they called it the fit I've never actually heard them say that, but I think that might be why it can be fit in a lot of places that a lot of other systems can't And then finally, number three, the refrigerants. We are seeing other countries already make changes to the refrigerants that we're seeing introduced to the market now. Force 410A is being phased down or phased out.

It's going away because of the high Gwp rating and years ago we saw the phase out of R22 It was an Hcfc and other CFC refrigerants that they've done away with where refrigerants were harmful to the ozone layer and because of that, they were done away with. As time goes on, we're seeing different refrigerants coming out. A lot of them may have a lower Gwp meaning it's lower global warming potential, but they might be a little more flammable. and I think that's one of the things they're looking at is finding something that can be a good long-term Solution that's got a lower Gwp, but maybe not quite so much higher flameability.

And it's this game that they're playing trying to figure this all out. And let's be honest, a lot of cases it's all about money. They want to make sure that you know somebody makes a profit off of all this. and that's just the world we live in unfortunately.

So that's my big three things that are hurting the environment in the HVAC industry. and I just real quick. before you go, want to touch on a few things that we're seeing that are improving as we speak: Things that are coming out every year and one of those being the refrigerants that we're seeing in other countries where they're experimenting with some of these refrigerants that we haven't even seen here in the U.S It's interesting how we've always kind of had a front row seat where we get to see other countries try these refrigerants out and then you know before we actually adopt them, we're not always the first to the the party. if you will or somewhere in the middle, there's Asian countries that are way behind us and they don't care about hurting the environment.

But then we see European countries that are way ahead of us that are doing things to try to, you know, make the environment better. and I don't think that's necessarily A Bad Thing regardless of what your political views are or what you think about climate change or any of that, but just trying to make sure that when they're producing products, that it does things to the environment that aren't going to hurt our grandchildren. if that makes sense, it's just you know it's that type of thought process and I think that's actually a good thing obviously. but I will say that it's also not necessarily a bad thing that the U.S isn't always first to Market because if there is a safety issue or a recall or something else that's wrong with some of these products, Well, we get to not necessarily be the first in line.

We get to let them try it out and then we'll eventually get it. Another one we see is a big push for electrification and you're seeing products and Technology be offered that's never been offered before that strictly run on electricity, some of those inverter technologies that we see coming out. Some of the things that we see with the Vrv Technologies and I think other brands call it Vrf, but at Griffin Air, you know we're a Daikin dealer and Dyken created all of this. They were the first in line creating the technology that all these other companies use today.

But ultimately with this Vrv stuff and the inverter stuff, we're going to see more and more electrification and things being offered in parts of the country that it never could be offered. I Remember years ago the further north you went, the less heat pumps you would see they were useless. But these days we see heat pumps being able to operate at temperatures where it's super cold, there's snow on the ground, and they're still being able to use very little electricity and other utilities saving that. Obviously the homeowner money, but this push for electrification.

so that way you know they're not burning fossil fuels and things like that as well. And then finally, we have seen a lot of folks lean more with the solar and we're seeing things with this electrification where folks can just put solar panels on their roof or somewhere else on their property and they can heat and cool their home without using any utilities. In some cases that the solar can still heat and cool their home, allowing them to save a lot of money on that front. That's not something we do at Griffin Air, but we have seen more and more customers lean towards the solar technology and I think it's going to just continue that way you know as I Remember growing up as a kid when we would hear about some of these you know Technologies coming out and they were trying to not burn so much coal and not you know have so much nuclear technology and not all these things that hurt the environment.

So they were coming out with wind turbines and solar panels and all these other things that we saw come out and now here we are years later where you know we actually see homeowners saving significant amounts of money by looking at some of these Technologies And it's kind of cool to see. And I think you know decades from now it'll just be the norm, right? We'll see folks be able to if nothing else, heat and cool their home at no it costs to them at all from a utility standpoint, so it's kind of crazy. Let me know your thoughts. have I missed any Is there things that are hurting the environment that the HVAC industry is responsible for or things that are being improved in the heating and air industry that you know of that I didn't touch on I'd love to hear about that comment down below.

Always love seeing those comments on that. Thanks for watching! Please hit that subscribe button. We'll see you next time.