A few days ago I drove past a local high school where a sign in front read, “Order your yearbook this week.” That’s when it hit me that despite the cold, rainy weather that has plagued most of the country this winter and early spring, warm days and sunshine can’t be far away. In Florida though, some Chamber of Commerce weather during the first quarter drove sales up 40% over the same period last year. So despite fears of $5.00 a gallon gas, nuclear fallout, political unrest and a stagnant housing market, consumers seem to be shaking off the economic woes of the last few years.

With that said, I’ve spent much of the last month speaking with many of you in person or on the phone. Some of what I’ve seen and heard is indicating that the solar pool heating market is actually contracting instead of growing. We constantly monitor ours, as well as our competitors’ websites for traffic. In some cases, visitors are off as much as 80% from last year.

We all know that our products need to be marketed and both of our main competitors seemed to have lost some focus in solar pool heating. Fafco is still heavily pushing their unglazed SDHW unit. I was in attendance at last fall’s Solar Power International in Los Angeles when Freeman gave a presentation saying the future of solar thermal in this country was going to be SDHW in big box stores. UMA / Helicol is going around the country setting up distributorships to handle solar electric systems, SDHW products as well as their solar pool heating products.

While Aquatherm participates in number of non-solar pool heating markets, they are what I call “at an arm’s length” OEM level. Our main focus has always and continues to be residential and commercial solar pool heating markets. I view all of this as an opportunity – a moment in time to build presence and market share just not for ourselves, but for our entire distribution and dealer network.

Dave Sizelove, President

A “P.S.” nugget – I was training a new salesman last week when he asked me “how is the Helicol product made in one piece?” “It isn’t” I said, “but their literature says it is”, he replied. I guess a mistake I often make, is that like most of you, we have the curse of knowledge. I know it isn’t and can’t possible be made in one piece, but he didn’t know that and point made… neither does your customer. I went on to explain that each one foot section has 40 individual tubes and with headers that are molded over them, then each one foot section is thermally butt-welded to the next. That means a four foot collector has a total of 168 separate components with 320 individual tube connections, six thermal butt welds and four o-ring connections! And a SunStar collector has ten thermal welds including the four end square-to-round adapters. It’s good to get out of the office.