David McIlwaine, president of HVAC Distributors Inc., Mount Joy, PA, and Chrissy Nardini, president of American Metals Supply Co. Inc., Fenton, MO, recently spoke with MDM as part of an MDM interview series featuring association presidents. Nardini will replace McIlwaine as president of Heating, Airconditioning, & Refrigeration Distributors International at the association’s annual conference, “Turning Up the Heat on Recovery,” Nov. 1-4 in Orlando, FL.

MDM: This has been an interesting year. What are some of the issues that HARDI members have been dealing with over the last year?

David McIlwaine: Other than the general economic malaise, many of our members are tied to residential new construction markets. And in many areas, those markets collapsed 50 percent or 60 percent or more. That definitely provided challenges to our members.

In general as an industry, we’re going through the phase-out of the R22 refrigerant …