American author Joseph Heller (1923-1999) released his famous novel titled Catch-22 in 1961 when the U.S.
was heading toward a nuclear confrontation with the former USSR.
The Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 was about a year away and people feared that the “Cold War” would soon get extremely hot. The term Catch-22 became a part of the vernacular and refers to “a paradoxical situation from which an individual cannot escape because of contradictory rules or limitations.” Catch-22 in Heller’s novel concerned fighter pilots who tried to pass themselves off as insane to avoid flying dangerous missions. The “catch” was that anyone trying to avoid combat duty could not possibly be crazy and thus was fit to fly the missions. Homeowners and businesses must often feel like the fighter pilots in Heller’s book when they are dealing with Catch-22 situations from residential or commercial HVAC systems. The most common dilemma is the decision to replace an old inefficient unit that uses ozone-destroying freon with a new Energy Star-approved system with eco-friendly puron refrigerant. Your energy bill will be lower, and you will get a hug from environmental activists, but the initial cash layout could wreck your family budget. A bigger Catch-22 with air conditioning is the conflict between staying comfortable and healthy in a temperature-controlled environment versus the energy consumption and use of carbon-based fuels it takes to maintain those conditions. A private homeowner can adjust the thermostat to save on fuel but that may not be possible in a large hotel or hospital catering to their guests. In 1962 Nikita Khrushchev and President John F. Kennedy managed to avoid a nuclear war. New HVAC technologies like geothermal heat pumps and other innovations will be needed to put the HVAC Catch-22 situations to rest.