Temporary heat

Mark Walnicki

This applies to emergency no-heats:

Say it happens that a customer of yours is without heat. It's late, (during on-call hours), the tech shows up, and it's evident a replacement is the best and/or only option. Therefore, any time and effort the technician spends restoring heat with the existing heating plant is completely wasted, as the installation crew is there to install a new heating plant within 12 hours.

But you're there to give them heat. How do you do it temporarily, safely, with minimal down-time for your technicians?

Unknown

Temporary heat

if it is not possible to get the existing system running in a short amount of time with a minimum of parts or labor.
What we often did was loan them electric heaters for use until we could replace the existing system. You keep these heaters in your shop for just such emergencies.

If the systems is gas and has a self generating system (Powerpile)do the following;

Needs a circulator on forced hot water or power failure and boiler is real old and your going to replace next day if it has a manual switch on the aquastat relay put it on manual, open the flow check valve and run it on gravity. It will cycle on high limit. Or if zone valves put valves on manual.

If it is forced warm air (self generating) and it is possible to isolate the blower compartment away from burner area. A piece of duct work works. Remove the blower compartment door (motor will not run)attach duct work to blower door area and again run on gravity.

B. Tice

Temp heat

I have electric heaters, also have a 30 gallon electric water htr. The water heaters been on a job for 2 weeks now as I had to order a domestic coil for an older unit. A big plus for goodwill, believe me.

Anthony D.

Mark I recently bought 5 of those electric ceramic disc heaters for this very purpose. First tried in my own house. My wife thought I was crazy when I shut the switch off at the boiler, but ran them all night from about 5 pm until the next morning. Put one in each room through out the house. Works great!
Then Saturday, one of our technicians got stuck without an oem part, so we gave them the heaters and returned with the part on monday morning. Really takes the pressure off.

The type I bought had safety switches to turn off heater if overheating or tipped over. The thermostat is digital LED readout and automatically changes the fan speed and even shuts it off when satisfied. Got them at the Home Depot for about $70 each (there were less expensive types, but these looked better to me)

kevin

a contractor..

I used to work for used a direct vent lp furnace st up to heat up the houses we were building. we cut out a piece of plywood for the window ,ran smoke pipe out, ran in a lp hose, a temp. tstat, and plugged it in....ran well... a bit combersome 5'x 2'x 3' but could work... kpc

Mark Walnicki

Thanks guys

I'm starting to buy electric heaters for the heating techs. to have on their trucks, and a few extra to keep at the shop. Seemed too simple somehow, and I wanted to double check for any other ideas before I made the investment.

The feedback is greatly appreciated.

Chauncey

when you are really in trouble, turn on all of the electric

lights. It has been known to stop the place from freezing up.