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Found 105 results for the keyword(s) ‘Heating’

  • Article

    Ductwork that moves air best

      The best way for air to move through a duct is to have a straight duct with a smooth inside wall and a round form will have the smallest surface area to cause the air to slow down. That straight smooth round duct is what is considered the benchmark for good ducting. Everything else is measure...
  • Article

    Booster fans for the heating in the back bedroom.

    When you just can't get enough hot air to come out of that back bedroom floor grill and you have tried everything (like balancing your heating system), there is still hope. We took a look at two fans on the market designed to boost that hot air. The first, and the easiest to install and use is ...
  • Article

    Balancing Forced Air Heating & Air Conditioning Air Flow

      Some rooms are colder than others, or a forced air system works well for heating but not air conditioning.  Although such problems may require repositioning ductwork, or adding booster fans -- the first thing to check is that the ductwork is balanced and balanced differently for the two differ...
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    WHAT IS A SEALED FURNACE ROOM & WHY IS IT NOT RECOMMENDED?

    Traditional furnace rooms are nothing more than a partition designed to hide an ugly furnace. They are neither sealed nor insulated, and they obtain combustion air from the house through door or wall grills of the open floor joist area. Sealing off the drafty leaks in a house and introducing a sy...
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    WHAT IS OIL DOWNSIZING?

    One morning the oil furnace and boiler companies woke up to discover they were the Canadian bad guys -- everybody was condemning oil burning heating and the government was even paying people to scrap them. The oil furnace and boiler companies had to admit that they had been pretty contented and l...
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    OVERVIEW:Improper exhaust fans can pollute your home -- could even kill you

    More and more people are asking for powerful kitchen range hoods or bathroom exhaust fans. The logic appears simple, increase the power of the exhaust fan and get rid of pollutants quicker. In more and more modern homes which have been weather-stripped and sealed against cold air leaks and heat l...
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    Pro: Electronic Thermostats & Baseboard Heaters

      OLD BASEBOARDS Baseboard electric heaters are notorious for providing uneven heat -- cycling hot and cold -- with thermostats that are quite unreliable. Whether looking at them for the whole house or topping up the heat in difficult to reach corners of the house, most contractors see baseboar...
  • Article

    Tankless water heaters

      More and more we are seeing tankless water heaters, both for replacing our regular hot water tank and for hot water radiant heating. Do they work? Where did they come from? Are they proven technology or new gadgets? MOST OF THE WORLD IS TANKLESS Actually, we may want to ask: "Where have we b...
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    The Spiro Vent -- never bleed a radiator again

    When air gets into hot water radiators, either from new water in the system or even from problems with seals, it can make noise and reduce the heating effectiveness of the system. That running water noise is actually caused by a big air bubble at the top of a radiator and the water falls through ...
  • Article

    A window that is warmer than the insulated wall

    I have always said that as far as the cold getting into your house is concerned, a window is always the coldest part of a wall. But no longer. A company called Prelco from Riviere-du-loup, Quebec has produced a window called Prel-Therm that actually plugs into your electrical system. That's right...
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