What Do All of These Acronyms Mean? Part I

In the HVAC and Commercial Refrigeration industries, you will see a lot of acronyms. And it starts right away with HVAC–Heating Ventilation and Air Conditioning. We receive a lot of questions regarding those acronyms and what they mean, so we’re going to break it down for you!

NSF stands for National Sanitation Foundation. They provide services such as standards development, testing, certification, auditing, inspection, consulting, and training services for companies in food, water, and consumer products industries, among others. In most states and counties within, a product must have the NSF seal of approval, otherwise it cannot be used. They can provide a business with the Global Food Safety Initiative certification, the Marine Stewardship Council certification, and organic and gluten-free certification through QAI (Quality Assurance International). As we mentioned, in the most of the United States, foodservice equipment, nonfood compounds, and bottled water/beverages, must receive that NSF seal of approval to be sold or used in commercial establishments. Therefore they have to conform to the NSF commercial food equipment standards. The NSF Consumer Products Division even tests and certifies the appliances that are sold in commercial establishments. So everything in your kitchen has the NSF seal of approval! Including the food, dietary supplements, cookware, bakeware, big and small appliances, even personal care products! Needless to say, the National Sanitation Foundation is an integral component of any industry that distributes a product to a consumer. Any company in our industry has to be familiar with the standards put in place by the NSF and can only use equipment that is NSF-approved!

UL stands for Underwriter Laboratories, which is a testing laboratory of products and materials and worldwide safety consulting and certification company. UL works with everyone from manufacturers to retailers to service companies to consumers. They provide safety-related certification, testing, validation, auditing, inspection, advising, and training services to a variety of clients. UL is also approved by the U.S federal agency OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) to perform safety testing. UL is an organization working for global safety through careful research and investigation, thus preventing or reducing loss of life/property and promoting safe living and working environments for everyone. Similar to NSF, many products have the UL seal of approval and are providing consumers with peace of mind, including those in the HVAC industry. So it’s important to us that our products and services have that UL seal of approval. We want our products to provide our customers with the same peace of mind and we hope that knowing more about the organizations that approve our products will instill that confidence in you as a consumer.

Tune in to the blog next week for an explanation of why our employees are EPA certified and why that’s important!

Information and Image Sources www.nsf.org www.ul.com