The Australian Refrigeration Council (ARC) have released their August 2018 CoolChange newsletter.
The August 2018 edition of CoolChange focuses on: new risk management plan (RMP) templates that are available for the RTA online application, the ARC’s regional visits, the importance of face-to-face compliance education, the ARC’s free promotional materials, a statement from the Federation of Environmental Trade Associations (FETA-UK) to not charge R32 systems designed for R410a, A-Gas’ Rapid Recovery service, the ARC Director’s induction into the ARBS Hall of Fame, RAC apprenticeships taking off, ARC reaching out to property managers, how to be well equipped for a commercial freezer room, and a tech tip on refrigerant identifiers.
The article on new risk management plan (RMP) templates that are available for the RTA online application emphasises the benefits of the new pre-populated template, which provides businesses with a generalised RMP for refrigerants. Businesses can tailor the generalised RMP to suit their needs. The template can be viewed and downloaded from here.
The article on the ARC’s regional visits highlighted the visits that ARC field officers have been paying to businesses and technicians in regional and remote areas over the last three months. In those three months, the field officers visited the NSW South Coast (Eden to Batemans Bay), the ACT, WA (Esperance and surrounding areas) and QLD (Gladstone and surrounding areas). The article states that the trips focused on ensuring automotive licence holders are working to the codes of practice, ensuring that refrigeration and air conditioning training providers were able to deliver quality training, ensuring that restricted licence holders are working within their licence entitlements, and visiting local councils and checking the processes for refrigerant recovery.
The article on the importance of face-to-face compliance education emphasises the benefits that a visit from an ARC field officer can provide RAC businesses. The article on ARC’s free promotional materials highlights the materials that the ARC can provide to ARCTick Licence Holders, some of the materials are only available for certain types of licences.
In regards to the article on a statement from the Federation of Environmental Trade Associations (FETA-UK), the statement was originally issued earlier this year after FETA-UK were advised of instances of R410a being completely removed from an air conditioning system and being recharged with R32. The statement outlined the issues with these actions, including the fact that manufacturers have stated that A2L refrigerants are not suitable for retrofit.
The article on A-Gas’ Rapid Recovery service outlines how the new service, which is currently operating in Victoria and NSW, allows contractors to sub-contract refrigerant recovery to A-Gas. The article on the ARC Director, Mark Padwick’s induction into the ARBS Hall of Fame provided details of Padwick’s distinguished career in the industry.
The article on RAC apprenticeships taking off highlighted the increase of RAC apprenticeships in Far North Queensland and NSW, which was announced at the May 2018 meeting of the National Refrigeration and Air Conditioning Training Alliance (RACTA).
The article on ARC reaching out to property managers focuses on the ARC emphasising the importance of using RAC licensed tradespeople to property managers, when they need to repair or maintain RAC systems under their care. The article on how to be well equipped for a commercial freezer room provided a list of the equipment a technician may need when working on these freezer rooms.
The tech tip on refrigerant identifiers outlined a story from an ARC field officer on their experience with dealing with the potential for misdiagnosis from refrigerant identifiers.
ARC’s August 2018 CoolChange newsletter can be read in full here.
Image via Pixabay.