Hi All,
Driving through the town of Bethpage one day recently, I saw a sign on a
shop window that had a ‘.com’ attached to it.
The website was ‘heatinghelp.com’ and I couldn’t get the site out of my
head.
Which, of course, meant that it was ripe for a bit of
research. And it also meant that if the
site was interesting enough, it might make for a good blog entry.
And so here we are!
So, what is HeatingHelp.com?
Great question, glad you asked.
Heatinghelp.com has a tagline of ‘Answers in an hour’. Basically,
readers can submit questions and professional heating contractors, plumbers and
others have the choice to answer your heating and heat related questions. Note that there is no soliciting on the
site, so heating professionals are offering there advice free-of-charge.
The site bills
itself as being ‘loaded with information about heating systems, both new
and old…we have a bulletin board called ‘The Wall’ which is the place where you
can post questions and comments about any sort of heating system. Heating professionals offer free advice and
opinions'…one caveat, in order to ask a question, readers need to open account –
which, again, is free.
Users who are looking for heating professionals to do work
would be well-advised to visit the ‘Find a Professional’
section. Users can search for
professionals by zip code and by distance.
When a search is done, users will find a brief introduction to the
company, an example of how a completed job was done, contact information (name,
address, phone number and/or email address), and the organizations’ heating
specialty.
Another part of the site that is noteworthy is the section
under ‘System’s. This menu includes
options like ‘Central
Heatings’s Forerunner’, Geothermal,
Heat
Pumps, Hot
Water, Solar,
Steam and Warm Air.
Click any of the links above to go to that particular page on HeatingHelp.com.
There is also a search box at the top right side of the
homepage where users can just type in a search term. Note that search terms can
be anything from a heat related topic, to the name of a manufacturer of a
boiler to a general heating term. For
example, when I entered the manufacturer name of ‘Burnham’,
about 9 results came back. That is an eminently readable number of results to
go through. In addition, within the
results the full-text Owner Manuals were included!
Note that this could be a very helpful resource if a
homeowner purchased a house in which the prior owner didn’t leave the owner
manual for the boiler. How cool is
that?
But wait. There’s
more! Buried somewhat deep in the
website is a very, very helpful resource called, ‘The
Library’. The library contains pdf
scans of old heating books and antique trade magazines that the owner of
HeatingHelp.com has collected for 40 years.
The library contains pdf scans of much of that material as well as
material submitted by friends. Very
cool. Where else can you find the Beacon
Boiler Reference Book from 1959-1972? (Click
here for that link by the way.)
There are also
videos on the site! Users can search
for videos on topics as varied as biomass, district heating, heat pumps, hot
water heating, passive houses, solar heating, storm heating, warm air heating,
water heating and more! Videos can be searched by manufacturer
and by topic! Wow.
There is a tab across the top of every screen and one of the
options is ‘Resources’. Click on this link to see what the
choices are…. Specifically though
there are options for ‘Professionals’,
‘Homeowners’,
‘Dan’s
Archives’ (he’s the owner of the site), ‘Virtual
Tradeshow’, and ‘The
Library’ (described above). What an
amazing amount of information the site has!
For example – yet again – under the option ‘Homeowners’, users can find
articles like ‘ Advantages of An Electric Floor Heating System’, ‘Air Filters’,
‘Best Insulation tips for 2012’, ‘Find a Contractor’, ‘General Guidelines for
Flood Cleanup’ and much more….
So there you have it.
Virtually a whole world of heating related information available at your
fingertips – all from HeatingHelp.com.
Enjoy the site and the advice!
Regards,
Stu
