A 30-year HVAC Time Capsule

First, my sincere congratulations to Contracting Business magazine on its 80^th Anniversary!

In the July 1994 50th Anniversary Issue of CB, I wrote a retrospective article as if it was written 10 years later, in 2004. Here we are 30 years later, and I thought it would be fun to look at those predictions and see where I was close, and where I was really off base.

While this editorial can’t possibly cover them all, I’ll highlight some of the most prescient along with outcomes from this little time capsule.

Comfort and Society

One of my predictions was that by 1999 widespread improvements in indoor comfort and health in commercial buildings would increase employee productivity by 25%. Absenteeism would be down 50%, and health insurance claims would be down 30%. All the while energy consumption would be down 50%.

Similar improvements were predicted for the residential sector. Sad to say I really missed the mark on that one, and honestly it might be 2040 before we see these kinds of numbers. Lots of work to do!

The article also predicted fiber networks would become ubiquitous in commercial use. Interestingly it wasn’t until the early 2000s that fiber started becoming available to everyone through cable networks.

Part of that vision was that video communications would be readily available. In a separate article that year, I imagined HVAC technicians would be able to use a handheld video device to communicate with a master tech or service manager back at the office and show them what they were seeing.  While smartphones were around for a while, the first true video phones weren’t introduced until 2010 – 16 years after the article was published!

These innovations changed the way we work today and have allowed our industry to make great leaps in service quality and diagnostic abilities.

IAQ and Other Innovations

In the editorial, I imagined a world where indoor air quality (IAQ) would become a major focus as “hundreds of thousands of customer service and data processing jobs would be with workers based in their homes, reducing the need for commercial office space.” Well, COVID helped things along. I don’t think anyone predicted that back then!

I also envisioned these changes would stimulate an increased focus on humidity control, comfort, and IAQ in homes as people would be living and working in those environments. For some reason, I was moved to insert the following sentence:

“Because of poor outdoor air quality and a resurgence in street violence, Americans would spend much more time indoors, and air conditioning would be required by code in government-assisted housing. By 2004 98% of homes would have air conditioning.”

Innovations at AHR

Here are some of the new products I believed (in 1994) that would be introduced at what is now called the AHR (Airconditioning, Heating, and Refrigeration) Exposition:

“A major equipment manufacturer who recently merged with a controls company introduced their hybrid thermoacoustic/dessicant heat pump rated at 25 SEER. The unit requires no drain as condensed moisture is vaporized and vents through a 1-in. PVC pipe.”

Possible? Maybe…

“A controls manufacturer introduced their new wireless Enviro-Zone system which allows homeowners to create fully programmable environments or moodscapes. These new systems can control lighting, odor/fragrance, air movement, humidity, temperature, visuals, and sound. The systems incorporate the latest in visual relaxation, and noise cancellation technologies, and can be controlled by voice, TV/PC, or remote.”