Winter time can be a great time. Winter speaks to warm cocoa by the fire, holidays with family and friends, and sleeping in more on the weekends. But if your a company responsible for keeping the heating on during work hours, it means commercial heating maintenance is a priority. You have to prepare for winter by ensuring the systems will work. Nothing is more important in winter than the heating. You might be okay in parts of California but if you in New York or Chicago, then you really have to be on the ball. When temperatures reach freezing, make sure you heating is working in the building.
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This suburban Chicago basement was uncomfortably cold with inadequate heating vents providing little control over the room temperature. Resting on a cold concrete slab, the basement became an unused, unliveable room in the house. The homeowner, Heidi, decided to take matters into her own hands and turn the room into a liveable space for the whole family to enjoy time together.
To accomplish this, she installed an Environ II radiant floor heating system under her new free-floating laminate floor. When asked how she first learned about floor heating, Heidi responded “I lived in Germany where most houses have radiant floor heating, so I know all about warm floors.”
Before the flooring contractor installed the laminate wood, Heidi’s husband, Terry, first covered the entire basement floor with a layer of cork insulation . Then he laid out the Environ II radiant floor heating system right over it, all in one day! “Because the concrete slab acts as a heat sink, WarmlyYours recommended we install cork to maximize energy efficiency.” Terry added “Putting in the warm floor was much easier than I thought.”
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Tempo went hunting for the Chicagoan who has the lowest carbon footprint. We found him: Ken Dunn, who rides his bike year-round, eats homegrown vegetables and otherwise leads a sustainable lifestyle.
By Nara Schoenberg | Chicago Tribune reporter September 23, 2008
Ken Dunn, who is considered the greenest person in Chicago, eats discarded or expired food that he stores in his refrigerator. (Tribune photo by Zbigniew Bzdak / September 2, 2008)
How green is Ken Dunn?
Greener than the social worker who last year commuted 16 miles a day by bike in the dead of winter.
Greener than the woman whose rooftop solar panels generate so much electricity she donates the excess to Commonwealth Edison.
Greener than the Chicago apartment-dweller who composts his own urine and excrement.
And in an age when Hollywood celebrities are flaunting their hybrid cars and brandishing their reusable shopping bags, Dunn, who grew up on a Kansas farm, whittled down his carbon footprint the old-fashioned way: by riding a beat-up old bike, air-drying his clothes, eating the vegetables he grows in his backyard and heating his home with a wood-burning furnace.
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