The heating placebo effect!......................(Starch)

ttekushan_3

Frankly, I think you are in contention for a Nobel prize. Eat your heart out, Al Gore!

John Starcher_4

I just received this email..........

from a client. Background: very small house with no workable crawlspace. Heating source was a pre-historic Sears LP wall furnace with a counterflow blower. No ductwork.

The heat loss showed a little over 30K btu at design conditions. We installed a high efficiency American Standard natural gas furnace with an attic duct system. I couldn't even give her a two stage or variable speed system without severely oversizing the furnace, so we went with the basic single stage model. The "quarterback" of the system was a shiny VisionPro 8000 series comfort control on the wall that she just loves!

It was, I felt, a pretty pedestrian system, but an upgrade over what she had nonetheless.

Here's the email I just received:

Mr Starcher:
I think you sold me an empty box with a magic thermostat attached.
I turned down my LP furnace, and turned up the new furnace today, just to see how it did.
And I can't hear a thing. A furnace cannot possibly be this quite and still be running.
(Oh sure, the house still feels warm, but that's probably just a physchological effect of seeing the glowing numbers on the thermostat screen).
How will I ever be able to sleep with all this quiet!

My reply:

It's known in the heating trades as the heating placebo effect! The concept was developed at the Pentagon, and a directive was issued to all heating contractors last year to begin implementing these new systems in an attempt to reduce consumption of fossil fuels. I am not supposed to share this with ordinary civilians, but you seem to be a nice person and I know I can trust you to keep this to yourself.

Simply put, we install a sheet metal box that to the naked eye appears to be a furnace. Bogus ductwork is then attached to the box, to give the appearance of an actual forced air system. The key, though lies in the "special" thermostat, which emits a warm, soft, glowing display to lull the occupant into a false sense of comfort.

Test cases found, in the most extreme examples, that the inside temperature of some homes was actually sub-zero. The occupants, however, were basking in bathing suits in their living rooms, completely unaware of how uncomfortable they actually were.

We are encouraged by the increasingly positive test results (yours included!) that we continue to see. We feel that we can sell enough of these systems over the next decade to reduce our country's dependence on fossil fuels to nearly zero by 2020.


Always nice to get feedback from a satisfied (and comfortable!) client!!!

Starch

Paul Fredricks_9

Great

I love it!

We put an intellicon on a customers furnace, but the tech wasn't sure about the wiring so he left it unconnected, the furnace still operating. I went back the next day to wire it in, and the customer told me it was all set and didn't need anything done to it. The furnace has never been more quiet and it doesn't short cycle any more. (I did go downstairs and hook it up anyway, just to be honest)