Coolheat Blog

A qualified point of view…

A message from our Senior Sales Consultant, Graham Parker….

I saw a television advertisement recently for a major brand of heat pump. The advertisement stated that the unit would be installed by an “authorised installer.” A couple of days later, whilst mowing the lawns - I thought to myself - does authorised mean “qualified”?

The situation regarding heat pump installation in New Zealand is just crazy!

Example - if you had a visit from an Electrician, Plumber or Gasfitter to your home, you would expect that person to be fully qualified - in fact it would be perfectly justified for you to ask for proof. Whereas is in New Zealand it would seem that just about anybody can install a heat pump.

A heat pump system is exactly the same as your fridge (ie/ it circulates refrigerant throughout the system) and if for some reason the unit a) did not have enough gas, b) was not up to pressure or c) had a small leak - only a qualified Refrigeration Engineer can solve the problem.

At Hartnell Coolheat anybody who comes to your house will be either a qualified Refrigeration Engineer or a qualified Electrician. We pride ourself on that fact because we realise the importance of this issue.

It is interesting that despite persistent lobbying, successive governments just don’t seem to want to create a legislation to make it illegal for an unqualified person to handle refrigerants.  Interestingly, in Australia they have already fixed the problem - it’s called ‘ARCtick’. The ‘ARCtick’ logo identifies business’ with a Refrigerant Trading Authorisation and technicians with a refrigerant handling licence.

Funny what you think about when mowing grass - but if the above helps some people in Canterbury to do some homework on who is installing your heat pump then we might have a few less cowboys causing real concern within the industry!

Graham Parker

Tags: electrician, heat pump intsallation