Heatinghelp Survey Results

Uni R_2

Thanks Chris

Chris, I just tried to come up with some questions that I
thought might interest the various people that post here.

The SurveyMonkey tool could be used by Dan in the manner you propose. It's pretty reasonable - $20/month with an allowance to do up to 1000 responses a month. You can link to it, and also return back here from it or redirect elsewhere. The data is instant except for open ended questions, which is always messy. It might be good if Dan could park the results from this one. If he wants, I'd also give him a spreedsheet with the raw data because unfortunately I used my wife's shared work account to do this survey so I'll be erasing the results soon.

This little experiment totally changed how we are doing a major corporate survey (well actually a set of surveys). Nothing like a real application to test something. I found the results here quite interesting.

Uni R_2

Results

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Demographics

N=278

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24% Urban - 54% Suburban - 22% Rural


52 people from both Mass & New York, 18 Penn, 14 NJ, 12 Canadians, 1 UK


40% in their 40s, 27% in their 50s, 21% in their 30s, 5.5% each for the 20s and 60s -- 3 people in their 70s and 1 person under 20

99.2% Male (only 2 women responded but one is a pro and chose Cleaver-Brooks as her favorite boiler!!!)

65% contracter/installer/tech - 10% Mfr/Sup/Dsgnr - 25& Homeowners and interested people

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Professional Page (results filtered for contractor/installer/tech only)

N=171

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37 Work alone, and the avg shop size was 13 skewed by some of the larger firms (13 were from firms with between 20 and 200 employees)

23% Listed on the Find a Professional, 54% not, 23% thinking about it

31% find this site useful for leads, 22% rarely, 47% not

30% use Propress - 11% are thinking about it

34% have worked on solar

89% residential / 11% commercial

47% are steam experts, 28% aren't really and 24% aren't

48% are radiant experts, 44 understand it well, 8% aren't

Worst months: Oct (32%), Nov (18%), Dec (11%), Jan (9%)

Best months: May (1 vote), March (2), Feb (3)

Supplier Satisfaction - 14% extremely satisfied, 56% satisfied, 25% neutral, 4% not, 1% extremely not

Favorite source of telephone support was a tie between Buderus and Tekmar which I must personally add also support this forum very well. Kudos!

(of the pros, 34% Service, 36% Install, 30% other variations and combinations)

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General Questions of Everyone

N=278

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Nobody checks here very seldom, 31% a few times per week, 43% almost daily and 26% several times per day

10% never post, 28% rarely post, 27% seldom post, 27% post often and only 5% think they are frequent posters

67% have purchased products directly from HeatingHelp.com and a further 5% intend to

Favorite fuel was NG with 134 votes, followed by oil at 78, LPG with 7, and wood and electric with 5 each

Favorite boiler was Buderus with 48 votes; 41 Burnham, 33 Viessmann, 30 W-M, 10 both HTP & Lochinva, 7 Peerless

Best value boiler was Buderus with 45 votes; 33 W-M, 32 Burnham, 14 Lochinvar & Viessmann, 12 Triangle Tube, 11 HTP

Favorite pump was Grundfos with a whopping 101 votes and Taco also had 77 votes; 23 B&G, 2 Armstrong & Wilo, 1 Sterling

Favorite indirect water tank was the HTP Superstor with 44 votes. Triangle Tube had 36 votes and W-M had 32 votes (same tank essentially in most cases); 20 Buderus, 19 Viessmann, 15 Crown

Favorite ZCVs were Honeywell with 68 votes; 58 Taco, 20 Caleffi, 18 Erie

Favorite PEX was Wheezbo/Wirsbo/Uponor with 88 votes; 18 Rehau, 13 cheapest with an O2 barrier, 12 Viega, 7 Zurn, 6 Kitec/IPEX, 5 both Vanguard and Watts Radiant

HVAC company with best web site - 1st Taco, 2nd Honeywell, 3rd Heatinghelp.com

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Now the fun stuff - Nominations/Naming Names

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Most helpful for answering homeowner's questions?

Brad White (Steamhead and Hot Rod get honorable mention)

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Most helpful for answering questions from the pros?

Brad White (ME, Hot Rod and Steamhead get honorable mention)

(Brad White may have only been one person's choice for the best indirect but people sure made up for that in the nominations section)

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Name the poster that you think would be most likely to win a Jeopardy show?

Tie between Brad and Constantin (ME and MikeT(Mo) get honorable mention)

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Name the poster who regularly posts the nicest install pictures?

Ron Jr! (honorable mention also for Hot Rod, Josh and heatboy)

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Name another person from here that you would trust most doing an install in your own home?

Hot Rod (Honorable mention also to MadDog!, Mark Hunt/Darin Cook and Steamhead)

Others deserving mention from multiple votes here are Ron Jr, Clammy, JCA, Josh, Brad, and our host Dan Holahan. Others indicated that they would be happy to have any of the pros here do an install in their home. High praise indeed!

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Who thinks outside the box best based on what you've read in here?

Hot Rod!

Mark Eatherton also scored very well, although he might have gotten a couple of extra votes from people voting for themselves! ;-)

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Thanks to everyone for responding

kevin coppinger_4

Very Cool...

Thanks for doing this...kpc

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Bob Sweet

Nice

You should also get an honorable mention for thinking outside the box. Very nice Uni R

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J.C.A._3

Uni R

I think this is a wonderful experiment.

Where did you get the "Base" and text for such a survey?(if you could tally all the votes from a few days of responders, I bet it would help us all in the long term)

I think it should be done once a year, or added to the "find a professinal" portion of the site....to ask the folks that find us in that manner, if it can be done reasonably.Dan? Chris

Uni R_2

Best New Product / Most Desired

Burnham Megasteamer garnished the most votes for best new product of this past year.

Honorable mention should also go to the runner up Lochinvar Knight, as well as, Tekmar TN4 and Burnham's MPO.

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For the product that you'd most like to see, I'll just post the various responses. There seems to be a theme of smaller mod-conds, oil-fired-mod-conds and smaller circs with variable speeds.

2 stage gas regulators as a option on home boilers from manufacturer

2 stage res. oil burner

30,000 BTU modcon

90+ PVC vented gas fired tankless water heater

a true rating system for boilers based on a sample house not afue

a way to post run on secondary circulators

an oilifer moderating condensing boiler

automatic insulated window blinds, to better collect solar energy

b&G delta P circulator

Boiler installing Robot

Buderus wall hung condesning oil bouler

co-gen

computer to hook to a burner for history report

condensing industrial boiler

condensing oil

condensing steam boiler

controlled circ

Cordless copper tubing cutter

Delta P Circs

Diagnostic interface for residential

Digital Refrigerant manifold with micron gage

direct vent steam boiler

dual fuel residential burners

Extremely Effiecient Easy to Clean Oil burner

flue gas feedback and varible oil nozzle/combustion air

blower motor (for oil)

fully modulating beckett burner

gas mega steam

GB142 boiler 50k btu's

High Eff. Oil Boilers

high end boilers without high end problems

HOME OWNER FRIENDLY STATS

Hydrogen Fuel Cells

i dont know

Internet connectivity for 'logic' controlled boilers

Larger wall mounted expansion tanks

laser drill

Low loss header block for two heat sources.

low mbh mod-con

Low sulpher fuel oil

Lower output and/or higher turndown ratio mod-cons.

LWCO with built in High limit

Mega-Steam with a gas gun

Micro add-on boiler

mod con oil boilers

modulating fire oil burner

modulating oil boiler

modulating oil fired residential burner

More flexible design software

More intelligent outdoor reset controls

Oil fired Mod/Con boilers

oil fired modulating burner

Outdoor reset modulating steam pressure Control

packaged modulating economizer equipped steam boiler

Plug and Play solar

press. diff. vs pump

Pressure Differential Pump

pro press un crimping tool

residential variable speed circs

Self carrying boiler

Small (50,000 btu) wood gasification boiler

SMALL MOD-CON

smaller mod cons

Smaller mod/cons

Smaller Mod/Cons with SS HX

SMALLER MOD-CONS

Smaller Mod-Cons, 25-35 MBH range.

smaller pumps

smart internal bypass

Spirovent low loss header

Steam humidifier

strap on flow meter

Threaded circ flanges (no-nuts)

Titanium pipe wrench

ultra low gallon flushing toilet

Unbelivible high efficienty heating equipment

Variable speed pump

variable speed pump w/delta-t

variable speed pumps

Variable speed pumps

victaulic for steam

Wall hung oil boiler

Wiring Gutter & integral relay box

x-ray glasses

Weezbo

That certainly is enlightening *~/:)

the Boiler installing Robot.The Platinum pipe Wrench,the self carrying boiler,X-Ray glasses and i dont know , i must admitt ,Do sound like something i...( for one had not thought of and yet)... would find quite useful from time to time

Steamhead (in transit)

Hey, Burnham...

the MegaSteam appears THREE times:

First as the Best New Product,

Twice more from people wishing you offered it with a gas burner!

Build it and it will SELL!

To Learn More About This Professional, Click Here to Visit Their Ad in "Find A Professional"

Couderay

survey

Great idea,and lets keep it updated if possible

clammy

wow

All i can say is WOW i would have never thought that my name would show up for anything except a wanted poster , at least 20 or so years ago and to think my guidence counsler said i would be a ditch digger i know the world needs them too .I kinda feel honored i guess some times hard work and long hours and sticking to your guns approach does work .Thanks for the info what a great pool peace and good luck clammy

David Sutton_6

Clammy....you eraned it!

Tombig_5

Survey

Thanks for the effort put into the survey. Very enlightening. Kudos to all the "winning" posters. They all deserve the recognition. We're all winners at this great site!

Supply House Rick

I missed one question

Was there a "who can drink the most scotch in one sitting contest" question?

My vote: Mark Hunt

*no one else is even close*

Uni R_2

Yanno Rick...

If you'd have suggested that question when I was asking for questions, I'd have gladly put it in. Maybe next time... ;-)

Were all of those extremely satisfied contractors yours? I'm thinking that if this is done a next time, we should get nominations for outstanding manufacturer's rep and outstanding supplier.

jimmy_5

bump

J.C.A._3

UniR

What was the outcome of the favorite new tool ? Inquiring minds want to know. Chris

Uni R_2

Chris - no outcome...

That question wasn't part of the survey. Closest question was favorite new product and that went to Burnham Megasteam with mention going to the runner up Lochinvar Knight, as well as, Tekmar TN4 and Burnham's MPO.

Ted_9

Tekmar

really though the TN4 system is excellent.

Massachusetts

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J.C.A._3

Maybe...

Next time? JCA