On 27 January 2016 the Finnish member association FINVAC arranged in Helsinki a half-day seminar on the impact of CE marking and EU regulation on HVAC industry and profession. The seminar was attended by 100 participants: Product manufacturers, system suppliers, HVAC designers and consultants, HVAC inspectors, contractors and construction clients. The topics presented by the speakers included introduction to the legislation process in EU, Ecodesign Directive and Regulations, Construction Products Regulation, market surveillance, and points of view of national legislator, test house and product/system supplier.

A very lively discussion followed all presentations, indicating a huge confusion among the practitioners and need for reliable, practical and well-structured information. FINVAC had just established their own “EU Regulations” webpages, similar to those of REHVA but in Finnish. The seminar brought some new information within the field and revealed needs to update the webpages – actually this information will be useful also in updating REHVA’s EU Regulation pages.

HVAC people will need a strong “wake-up” about the Construction Product Regulation (CPR), and also more facts about Ecodesign and Labelling. Different pieces of EU legislation bring different requirements to the same product, maybe also contradictory requirements although no such cases have yet been revealed. And even if such contradictions were not yet known, the number of new regulations is huge, new ones will appear all the time, and everyone is confused.

REHVA and the Member Associations have a big challenge: how to forward all the new information to HVAC practitioners and their clients about European regulations and what the regulations will mean in real practice.

Picture: Professor Olli Seppänen, President of FINVAC, giving his opening address to the seminar audience (picture by Tiina Strand)