Be Ready For Edmonton’s Weather: Everything You Need To Know About Sherwood Park Boiler Maintenance
Have you ever woken up to a minus 30°C on an Edmonton morning and realize your boiler isn’t working? You’re not alone. Here in Edmonton, in areas like Sherwood Park, Beaumont, and Spruce Grove, boiler issues hit hard and fast, especially when they’re ignored until the dead of winter. Today, I’m sitting down with Adrien Hinse from Hinse Brothers Mechanical, and we’re talking about something every homeowner and property manager in the greater Edmonton area should know: Sherwood Park Boiler maintenance. When to maintain your boiler and when it’s time to replace it. If you want to avoid cold mornings, high repair bills, or worse, keep watching.
Got a quote for you. There’s nothing quite as expensive as a service you didn’t do until failure. Here’s an interesting statistic. The global industrial boiler maintenance market is expected to grow at 4.6% annually through 2034. Why does that matter to you in Edmonton? More demand means higher costs and longer weights. Staying ahead with routine boiler checks isn’t just smart, it’s financially strategic.
All right, Adrian, what are the most common boiler problems that you run into during Edmonton winters that could have been avoided with a maintenance check?
So, some of the more common problems that we have with boilers are like you said the routine maintenance not being completed. So, for an older older boiler system, you know, we want to make sure that the heat exchangers are clean, helps with efficiency. We also have a look at the pilot assembly and the igniter. Make sure everything’s working appropriately. The other thing too is we need we often have problems with pumps. Okay. So, if the pumps are old, worn out, you know, there’s a chance of failure if they’re the bearings are going, you know, we can have a look at those and replace where needed. Basically, we need to have, you know, a good once over of the system. check pressures, make sure your makeup water is working, this type of information.
Right now, how does Edmonton’s climate push boilers harder compared to other cities? And what are some local challenges that most people don’t realize?
So, due to our weather in, you know, in Edmonton or in northern Alberta here, we’ve get some pretty extreme temperatures. So, we’ve got issues such as freezing. you know, often there’s combustion air into the building. You know, we need to make sure those don’t end up freezing any condensate lines, that type of thing. Icing up of exhaust, right? So, we need to double check everything was installed correctly, and there’s no leaks in the venting or anything like that. Yeah. And make sure another thing too when it gets super cold is making sure that exhaust isn’t getting sucked into your intake, your combustion intake on the boiler.
How would that happen?
So, because the cold weather, it actually condenses the exhaust, so it sits a little closer to the ground. We’ve had a client, you know, she was actually a furnace, and she had her vent about 10 ft away. the wind was actually blowing the exhaust into a fresh air intake and setting off the carbon monoxide in the home. It’s really important. You know, people sometimes they’ll replace equipment, maybe it was inspected, maybe it wasn’t. We do need to check anyway and make sure it was all done to manufacturer specifications as well as local code. Right? So with that in mind, it’s really important for someone to come out if they have a boiler system or even a furnace to come out and have somebody physically inspect everything so that you know if anything does happen in the wintertime you know you can kind of catch it ahead of time.
Absolutely.
Yeah. Now what is a solid annual maintenance plan look like for homeowners in places like Sherwood Park or Stony Plain? Is it just once a year?
Well, we typically if you just have a heating system, once a year is pretty good for a regular maintenance inspection service. So, we’d usually like to do that, you know, early to midfall. Get everything any kinks worked out before the cold weather hits. If you’ve got air conditioning, we usually throw in or add a second service in the spring. Okay? And we can do proper testing once the temperature is warmed up. Test the pressures on the air conditioner. Give it a cleaning. Just basically check everything’s working properly, components aren’t worn out or making some unusual sounds, that type of thing.
Yeah.
And then if anything goes wrong, you guys are there to make suggestions and replacements.
Yeah. And quote a repair if needed. So, how would somebody know when it’s time to replace their boiler instead of continuing to repair it? Especially in older homes like around Spruce Grove or Beaumont.
Once an expensive repair is needed on an older boiler, it’s a good idea to have a look at a replacement rather than putting, you know, $1,000 component into a boiler system. Sometimes replacement makes more sense, you know. So, I usually I’ll give you options, you know, if we repair it, here’s what it’ll look like. here’s a potential life expectancy. If we replace it, you know, here’s your warranty. Typically, boilers come with a 5year parts and labor warranty and then 10year heat exchanger. So, it’s it’s a good idea to just weigh the options and I can help go through those with you, help you come to a decision on what’s best for your your home. Right.
Right. So, so rather than just, you know, trying to sell something to someone, you’re actually, you know, do your best to try and sus out what the problem is and then give them some some good options.
Regular Maintenance Helps You Prepare For Winter
Yeah. I want to make sure that you guys have all the information. So, I want you to be able to make an informed decision on, you know, what the benefits are for any direction that you presented with. Now, what are some of the key safety or building code factors that people in Edmonton should consider when doing a boiler replacement? So, boiler replacements in an older home in particular to meet HVAC codes. So, if we’re doing a major renovation, moving walls, you’re making some major changes in the home. Older systems don’t have like a fresh air. So, you don’t have fresh air coming in, which is it’s it’s nice to have that exchange of air in your home. That’s code. The other thing is air movement. So if you have a radiant baseboard heating system, you do today in today’s age, you need to have air movement.
So what does that entail?
We can do things in different ways. So we can do an HRV heat recovery ventilator. That’ll bring in your fresh air and you can use it to circulate the air in the home. Those ones typically we need to put in a preheat because it will exhaust stale air and use that stale air to warm up the incoming air and vice versa. It works for cooling. But when it’s super cold with our, you know, -30 -40 temperatures, you do need to help out that incoming air, warm it up a little bit, right? Other ways we can do it. We can size your boiler system to accommodate like a high velocity system or fan coil and we can actually introduce forced air into the home to complement radiant heating all sorts of different ways. And when we do that, it gives us the option to add air conditioning down the road or zone your system. You can, you know, if you say your basement is cooler or whatever, we can actually have a separate duct dedicated to each level, right? So, I would have to come do a site visit, assess the situation, and then come up with options for you.
Now, that kind of leads me to the next question. So, walk us through how you would choose the right boiler for a typical Edmonton home. Factoring the fuel type, factoring in efficiency, and
Yeah. So, the first thing I do is visit a site. I need the size of the home. I’ll do a heat loss calculation. See what we are required for heat. What kind of options you’re going to want. You know, do you want your boiler to heat your domestic hot water? Do you want a fan coil? Do you the different system needs? So, I’ll assess all that information. Also have a look at how we’re going to do the installation. So, does it work in your home? Like if your mechanical room’s in the middle of the house or middle of the basement, it often creates difficulty in venting it outside because we have to use high efficiency equipment now. It’s PVC vented. We’re not using the traditional chimney anymore. So, we do need to make sure that we have the ability to go up the side wall or maybe use that existing chimney stack to run it up through the roof.
Now, what does the cost breakdown look like for a replacement job versus going with ongoing maintenance for a boiler system?
So, with ongoing maintenance, you know, you may be a few hundred a year or something like that or odd repairs here and there when we were looking at it, but compared to after hours call outs or weekend callouts, the price goes up exponentially, right? So we have to our suppliers, you know, they’ll open the doors, but they won’t do it for free. They need they have a weekend charge as well. So it does pay to maintain your system, you know, regular hours, catch things before they become a problem.
Yeah, cuz nothing’s worse than minus 30° for 2 weeks and you’ve got a dead boiler. That’s you have a dead boiler. you’ve got a limited supply of equipment because everybody’s busy. You’ve got a limited supply of labor. So, there’s a lot of things to look at. The other thing, too, is it’s it’s a good idea to have, you know, some sort of heat in the home. You know, like some people in an emergency, you can use your stove to warm it up a little bit, some electric heaters, fireplace. It’s good to have some kind of backup plan. Yes. In the case you need to go for a day or two without heat.
Yeah, for sure. You know, whenever there’s a cold snap, it seems that all of the heater, all the plug-in heaters, all the radiant space heaters seem to be sold out. So, hopefully you have a couple of those kicking around if that should occur. We had a our furnace die out one time and it was of course the coldest week of the year, but luckily we had a fireplace, a wood fireplace. were able to kind of keep the house heated with that. So, it got us through till morning so we can get the parts and get it replaced. So, that was good. So, are there any newer technologies or boiler upgrades that are actually proving their value in Edmonton homes right now? Things like smart features, better fuel use, that kind of stuff.
So, with smart thermostat technology actually gives the homeowner ability to monitor the system from a distance. You know, if you’re away on vacation, you’re at work, you can get a notification saying, “Hey, temperature’s gone down 5° and there’s a call for heat, nothing’s happening.” You know, that’s pretty important to have. Different smart features, you know, that can increase the comfort level of the home, too. Okay. So, there’s variable speed equipment, fan coils that will, you know, give you a gentle breeze for heat rather than, just full tilt or nothing at all. And they do a better job of maintaining a consistent temperature in the home. Okay. Right. So smart features do that. It comes down to safety in a way you know what’s happening. You can monitor the home higher increased comfort levels and efficiency, you know, you’re not get a better efficiency from the equipment today, right? So, it uses less fuel.
Yeah. So, with a typical boiler, if it’s 70 or 80% efficiency, you’re losing that 20 to 30% of heat straight out the chimney. With a higher efficiency model, we can trap that heat and use it to heat the system. So that’ll be a condensing boiler. So it does have like condensation as a result of the heating and then we have to drain that down, pump it away to another drain.
Okay. So there’s some new technologies that just make it more efficient all around.
Yeah.
Nice. Now, if someone in Edmonton is shopping for a boiler repair or replacement, what questions should they be asking contractors to make sure they’re getting honest, safe, and skilled work?
So, one, are you pulling permits when you’re doing the work? We’re working with gas. We want to make sure everything’s done to code. It’s good to have an extra set of eyes come look. So, we’ll pull a city permit or whatever municipality you might be in. You can take comfort in that or have you guys been trained, you know, ticketed journeyman or, you know, we always will have like a combination. So, we’ll have an apprentice because we need to pass that information on to the newer generation, right? So, we want to always be training new people, but we also have, you know, somebody to run the job, right? Make sure everything’s being done properly, right? So, having a licensed, insured, covered, experienced HVAC technician or boiler repair company come out and do that. There’s easy ways to find that out.
All right, guys. So, if you are looking for a boiler maintenance or repair in Edmonton, Sherwood Park, St. Albert, Stony Plain, all the greater Edmonton area. Call Mr. Adrien Hinse with Hinse Brothers Mechanical for Sherwood Park Boiler maintenance. In my opinion, they are the best HVAC and plumbing company in the area. So, give them a call and get them out and they’ll give you a fair quote and make sure that your boiler and furnace system is working tiptop for this upcoming winter. Thanks so much. We’ll see you on the next one.