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Archive for February, 2014

Reasons to Consider a Reverse Cycle Chiller

Thursday, February 27th, 2014

Most businesses take up larger spaces than residential homes, and therefore they require air conditioning and heating on a more advanced level. One of the comfort systems that we recommend for business owners is the reverse cycle chiller, which works effectively in all temperatures and at a lower cost than many rooftop package unit heat pumps.

If you are interested in learning more about reverse cycle chillers, or if you want to schedule installation, call Comfort Flow Heating. We specialize in commercial installation, maintenance, and heating repair in Salem, OR.

What is a reverse cycle chiller? It works similar to a heat pump, except that it doesn’t heat and cool the air. Instead, it works on water. Its heat pump unit is connected to an insulated water tank to which it either removes or adds heat. The conditioned water is then pumped from the tank and to the various places where either heating or cooling is required.

Why should you consider a reverse cycle chiller for your commercial building? Here are a few reasons:

  • No backup burner required: If you use a standard air-source heat pump, it requires a backup burner to supply heat when the system switches from cooling mode to heating mode. This burner is important to make sure that the heat pump doesn’t continue to blow out cold air while the coils defrost. With a reverse cycle chiller, hot water from the tank defrosts the coils and removes the need for the extra burner. This saves energy and assures you’ll receive warm air instead of cold air when you want it.
  • Efficient operation in cold temperatures: An issue that air-source heat pumps can encounter is that when the temperature drops below freezing they will struggle to remove heat from the cold air. Reverse cycle chillers operate through water and do not have trouble with lower temperatures. Even when the temperature outdoors is freezing, a reverse cycle chiller can heat water to above 100°F. (Don’t worry about the water in the chiller freezing; the constant cycling through the system prevents this.)
  • Energy conservation: Reverse cycle chillers are a popular alternative when a geothermal ground-source heat pump is not possible. These chillers use up to 10% fewer kilowatts per hour than a geothermal heat pump, and because of their efficiency at providing heat, they require no supplementary source like heat strips that are often necessary for ground-source heat pumps.

A reverse cycle chiller may not be the optimal choice for your building, so let the professionals at Comfort Flow Heating evaluate your needs to help you select the best option for comfort for your workers, customers, and clients. We can provide heating installation and heating repair in Salem, OR for your company, and then deliver the maintenance to keep the system running for many years.

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3 Things That Happen During Furnace Installation

Monday, February 17th, 2014

The time has finally arrived when you must move out your ol’ faithful furnace and replace it with a new, more efficient model. Furnace installation is a major undertaking, one that requires expert installers to handle. You’ll need the installers on the job earlier than you probably think, since they can assist with the important steps of selecting a new unit and finding the right size to provide your home with energy-saving warmth.

We’ll give you a sense of what kind of work goes into furnace installation. At Comfort Flow Heating, we have many years performing heating installations in Salem, OR, and we can offer you the same quality service we’ve delivered to thousands of customers over the decades.

3 Things to Expect During Your Furnace Installation:

  1. Removing the former heater: The most arduous and lengthy part of the installation process usually doesn’t involve the new furnace at all. The installers must first remove your former heating system—probably a furnace—and dispose of it properly. They then must prepare the space left for the placement of the new system.
  2. Making the connections—plenty of them: Once your new furnace has been placed (and usually bolted to the floor), the technicians will connect it to the important parts of your home for it to function. Chief among these is your ventilation system, which will require hooking the furnace to the flanges on the ductwork. Sometimes the ductwork must be shifted around to make the connections. The installers will then connect the furnace to the power source. Making the link to the gas line is a job they will perform carefully. Wires from the furnace will hook up to your electrical power source (even gas heaters have electrical components).
  3. System testing: This is the final step of installation, but it is perhaps the most important; if the installers left your house after making the last connection, you would have no idea if your furnace was working properly or safely. The installers will turn on the furnace and measure the intake and airflow to see that operation is efficient. They will make sure there are no safety hazards. The installers won’t leave you with your furnace until they are certain it’s doing the job it’s supposed to.

These are only three very broad steps for the installation process. Installation starts many days before, with selecting and sizing the furnace, and there are many smaller steps necessary during installation, such as connecting the new air handler to the furnace. This work requires trained professionals; do not allow amateurs to take on this job, since it will lead to an improperly working furnace that might even be unsafe.

For professional heating installation service in Salem, OR, make your first call to Comfort Flow Heating. We’ve offered excellent service for furnaces since 1961.

 

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The Original Valentine’s Day Greeting Cards

Friday, February 14th, 2014

It’s hard to imagine Valentine’s Day without the traditional greeting cards, whether accompanying a gift of flowers and candy, or sent between children in a school room. For commercial greeting card companies, February 14th is as important to them as the December holidays, Easter, and Mother’s Day.

Valentine’s Day as a celebration of romantic love predates printed greeting cards by a few centuries. In fact, the reason that sending romantic greeting cards became popular was because of the most un-romantic thing you can imagine: a reduction in postage rates.

In 1765, Parliament authorized the creation of “Penny Posts” that used a uniform rate of one old penny per letter throughout Great Britain and Ireland. Printers took advantage of the ease with which people could send letters to each other on Valentine’s Day by crafting cards with love poems on them. Many of these verses were collected in 1797 in the book The Young Man’s Valentine Writer, which was a resource for the lover with a romantic soul but not the most confident poetry style.

By the mid-19th-century, the Valentine’s Day greeting card was flourishing across England. Although people still followed a tradition of creating handmade Valentine’s Day cards from lace, ribbons, and flowers, commercially produced cards now overtook them. In 1835, the English post office mailed 60,000 valentines. As production expenses dropped, the English card manufacturers branched out creatively with humorous and sometimes vulgar cards… many of which we would find startlingly familiar in the 21st century. One of the common jokes on these cards was to design them to look like marriage certificates or court summons.

Across the Atlantic, the United States was slower to embrace the popular British custom. It wasn’t until 1847 that a U.S. printer mass-produced greeting cards for Valentine’s Day. Only two years later, American journalists noted how rapidly people in the country had embraced the tradition, turning into a fad that has never died down. The woman who printed the first U.S. Valentine’s Day card, Esther Howland, is today recognized by the Greeting Card Association with the annual “Esther Howland Award for a Greeting Card Visionary.”

The greeting card industry certainly has reason to thank Ms. Howland. Her idea of going into business printing romantic greeting cards, which came to her after she received a traditional English valentine when she was 19 years old, now sells 190 million cards in the U.S. every year. That number doesn’t include the smaller exchange cards used in elementary school classrooms, which would swell the number to 1 billion. (Who receives the most Valentine’s Day cards each year? Teachers!)

Whether you send out Valentine’s Day cards—handmade, store-bought, digital—or not, we at Comfort Flow Heating hope you have a happy February 14th.

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Why You Should Choose a Company with a Long History for Heating Repair

Thursday, February 6th, 2014

When you are looking for a contractor for your heating repair needs, you should look for more than just a contractor with the appropriate licensing. Although you should rely on a contractor with NATE-certified heating repair technicians on staff (the only industry-wide accepted certification), you should make your preferred choice a contractor who also has many years of experience in the business to back up that certification.

We’ll explain why looking for a long-lived Salem, OR heating contractor is so important for your repair needs. At Comfort Flow Heating, we take pride in our long history of excellent heating service, and we believe you will find our work will live up to your high expectations.

Why a company with a long history is your best option:

  • Experience – Education (and NATE-certification) are very important. However, a contractor with the finest training available, but only a few months of hands-on work will be at a disadvantage compared to someone who has already spent years of providing heating repair. An experienced heating contractor can use a storehouse of knowledge to make every repair job the best it can possibly be.
  • Community trust – When you find a contractor with decades in the business, it is almost always a sign that the contractor has built up tremendous trust within the local community for honesty, reliability, and high-quality repair.
  • Technological development – HVAC technology has advanced tremendously over only the last 10 years, let alone 50. A long-lived company will know the importance of staying on the edge with the newest innovations, but will also know how to apply repairs to older models.

You will be hard-pressed to find a company with more experience in professional heating services in Salem, OR than Comfort Flow Heating. We have served more than 20,000 homeowners over more than 50 years in the business, and we have always remained dedicated to staying at the forefront of new HVAC technology. We not only hire NATE-certified technicians, we hire only the best. Don’t entrust your vital heating repairs to contractors with only a few years of work to their credit: call on Comfort Flow Heating.

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