United States. In the last three years orders for air conditioners and heat pumps have decreased during the month of April, a trend that has been repeated systematically and that in 2008 was no exception. In addition, the dispatches of furnaces and water heaters during the first months of the year have fallen compared to the same period of the previous year, as expressed in the report presented by the Institute of Air Conditioning, Heating and Refrigeration (AHRI), trade association representing manufacturers of equipment for these items.On the other hand, the orders for heat pumps for the fourth month of the year were 149,287, which meant a decrease of 9% for that month, if the figures of this same period of the previous year are taken, a reduction of 5% was presented, since this year there was a total of 584,618 shipments.
Moving on to hot air furnaces, these had a decrease of 19% last April with a total in sales of 136,561 units of gas furnaces. Oil furnaces, on the other hand, totaled 2,738, which implies 28% less than in 2007.
In the case of heaters without ventilation, a total of 4,225 were shipped in April 2008, representing an increase of 45 per cent compared to 2008; however, cumulative sales for the first four months showed a decrease of 2 per cent compared to 2007.
Moving on to water heaters, we find that for these equipment the decrease in April was 3% for electric heaters, while for gas heaters it was 7%, and in total they have had a decline of 8% compared to total sales last year, this in the residential area. In commercial gas heaters there was an increase of 15% with a total of 8,134 equipment, while with 6,013 units electric heaters also increased their shipments by 18%, these results lead to an overall increase of this product of 7% in cumulative sales of the year compared to 2007, gas heaters are also positively profiled with an increase of 2%.
In the annexed table AHRI announced the state of the industry in April 2008.
