WarmlyYours Weekly Remodeling and Radiant Heating News

Here is the latest news from the WarmlyYours Weekly Radiant News for this week! We are your one-stop source for all things radiant and the home remodeling industry!

This week's featured articles:

"Share Your Story: WarmlyYours Radiant is a General Contractor’s Dream"

I normally don't do customer surveys or feedback because I am too busy running my own business. I'm a general contractor, and I'm usually checking on jobs, talking to customers, doing estimates, and getting materials to the job sites. And, because the economy is slow, I can't afford a full time person to take care of my paperwork, so that means I'm busy into the night a lot also. My time is limited in order to stay on schedule, and in the construction business, very few jobs go as planned. As a contractor, I depend on my suppliers to answer their phones or return my calls. And, I took time to write this testimonial because I was amazed and very pleased by the professionalism, promptness, help, and follow up by the people at WarmlyYours Radiant. Read More

"Tech Tips: Ground Fault Protection for Floor Heating"

Electric radiant floor heating is a heating system that consists of electric cables built into the floor. The electric cables or mats warm your floor and are controlled by a thermostat that has a GFCI installed in it for optimal safety and comfort. If you have radiant floor heating and an imbalance within the electrical currents occurs, the GFCI in the radiant heat thermostat will automatically and instantly disconnect the electrical lines from the radiant heating system. The WarmlyYours thermostats are GFCI protected and a GFCI breaker is not necessary. And, we recommend only one GFCI device on the circuit be used to provide power to the heating element. Read More

"Housing Starts Rebound 1.5% to 699,000 in January"

January housing starts rebounded 1.5% to 699,000 annualized units. The reading was much stronger than the 675,000 expected by markets and comes after December starts were upwardly revised to 689,000 units (was 657,000 units). Multi-family starts rose 8.5% to 191,000 units in January, partially offsetting the 27.9% drop in December. Single-family starts, in contrast, fell 1.0% to 508,000 units in January though after surging 12.0% the month before. Starts were up across all regions, excluding the Midwest, which fell 40.7% after a December 79% surge. The headline figure was stronger than expected, and comes after a large upward revision in December, to suggest an even firmer trajectory than markets had earlier thought. Read More

"The Layered Approach to Home Heating"

Most homes in the United States are designed with central heating systems which distributes warmth to every room in the living space. Larger homes frequently have multiple systems, each handling specific zoned areas. However, in both cases each room is directly affected by only one heat source. These systems are usually designed to heat the rooms they are responsible for to 72 º F on the coldest day of the year in the last ten years. In actual practice they have often been oversized in order to guarantee this heating capability. Over sizing not only makes new systems more expensive to install, but also forces them to operate inefficiently, break down more often, and cost more to operate. Oversized heating equipment also creates uncomfortable draftiness and large temperature swings in the house. Before the era of tightly constructed homes, it was not uncommon to install furnaces that had two to four times the necessary capacity. When designing or replacing an existing system, homeowners should insist that contractors use correct sizing calculations before signing a contract. Read More

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Besides providing you with radiant heat education, we seek to bring you the best in product and customer experience. Read what our customers are saying about us:

Why Our Customers Bought WarmlyYours…

• "...Ease of installation and excellent shipping times."
• "...Recommended by the tile contractor..."
• "Great sales support and technical service."

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Look for our "WarmlyYours | Weekly Radiant News" every Monday!

• Take a look at the latest Radiant News here.
• Missed last week's edition? Read it here

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Share Your Story: WarmlyYours Radiant is a General Contractor’s Dream

Each month we continue to award our customers for their winning “Share Your Story” submissions! And, we have found this to be an extremely helpful process; it’s a “gut check” of sorts, helping us continually align our products, support, and services to ensure that we always meet your needs as our customers.

We love when our trade professionals contact us through this program to share their own experience with us. To hear back from a happy trade pro customer, affirms our efforts to offer the very best in products, services, and education, here at WarmlyYours Radiant.

This month, we received a great story from Michael Ferreira, a general contractor who owns and operates his own business in Winnetka, California called, Ferreira Construction. Take a look at his story about his positive experience with WarmlyYours Radiant services and products. We’re glad we’ve made it easy for him to sell radiant heating to his customers!

Good Service Keeps Life Simple

I normally don't do customer surveys or feedback because I am too busy running my own business. I'm a general contractor, and I'm usually checking on jobs, talking to customers, doing estimates, and getting materials to the job sites. And, because the economy is slow, I can't afford a full time person to take care of my paperwork, so that means I'm busy into the night a lot also. My time is limited in order to stay on schedule, and in the construction business, very few jobs go as planned.

As a contractor, I depend on my suppliers to answer their phones or return my calls. And, I took time to write this testimonial because I was amazed and very pleased by the professionalism, promptness, help, and follow up by the people at WarmlyYours Radiant. They don’t simply sell their product and move on to the next sale; they were there for me at every step, from ordering to installation. Not only were they helpful and pleasant to do business with, but also their product is very easy to install, works great, and is very affordable compared to the other traditional floor-heating competitors. And I have to mention, their warranty is simply unbeatable!

I now have a floor-heating product that I can offer to my customers that they can actually afford. WarmlyYours … It's a pleasure doing business with you guys!

Thanks,

Michael Ferreira

Ferreira Construction

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If you enjoyed this story, you may enjoy reading about last month's “Share Your Story” winner, James and Anne Church, "My Own in-House Spa" or read through all of our winner's stories!

We’d love to hear your story, too! Share it with us!

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Tech Tips: Ground Fault Protection for Floor Heating

What is Ground Fault Protection?

Ground fault protection or ground fault circuit interrupter (GFCI) is a device designed to provide protection and to prevent electrical shock by breaking the circuit once a difference in currents between hot and neutral wires occurs.

A GFCI is constantly monitoring the amount of electricity that is flowing into a circuit and also monitoring when the current is lost. So if the amount of current flowing doesn’t return back to the GFCI unit, it immediately stops supplying power. By immediately cutting off the power, this saves you from electric shock or electrocution.

Developed in the 1960s, the GFCI became a success soon after it was developed into a commercial product by a handful of companies, including several circuit breaker manufacturers. The GFCI was first required by the National Electric Code (NEC) to be installed for underwater swimming pool lighting fixtures, because backyard swimming pools were becoming very popular. In subsequent years, the NEC made it a requirement to have GFCIs in other areas of your house, especially in locations where people would be standing on earth, cement ground, or near water. Just 25 years after the GFCI was first introduced, the use of electricity had doubled but the number of accidental electrocutions in the U.S. had dropped in half in that same time period.

So why is ground fault protection important and necessary for electric radiant floor heating?

Electric radiant floor heating is a heating system that consists of electric cables built into the floor. The electric cables or mats warm your floor and are controlled by a thermostat that has a GFCI installed in it for optimal safety and comfort.

If you have radiant floor heating and an imbalance within the electrical currents occurs, the GFCI in the radiant heat thermostat will automatically and instantly disconnect the electrical lines from the radiant heating system. The WarmlyYours thermostats are GFCI protected and a GFCI breaker is not necessary. And, we recommend only one GFCI device on the circuit be used to provide power to the heating element.

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission believes that by installing GFCIs in every home in the United States, more than two-thirds of the approximately 300 electrocutions occurring each year could be prevented.

So, when you are shopping around for electric floor heating, be sure that the product has GFCI protection as a standard. Here at WarmlyYours Radiant, protecting our installers and customer is top of mind when we develop and sell our products. And that's why we ensure that our floor heating and snow melting products are GFCI protected and come with all of the important safety certifications such as, C/UL/us and UL listings, as well as RoHS compliance.

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WarmlyYours Weekly, Your Source for Remodeling and Radiant News!

Here is the latest news from the WarmlyYours Weekly Radiant News for this week! We are your one-stop source for all things radiant and the home remodeling industry!

This week's featured articles:

"Industry Intel: Improved Housing Market Report"

With reports of an improving housing market the industry breathes a sigh of relief. Yes, we all remember the housing market crash of 2008, a record low that everyone in the industry felt deeply. But, thankfully, new reports show that recovery and restoration is on its way. This year, only two months into 2012, the number of housing markets showing significant improvement has nearly doubled. The National Association of Home Builders/First American (NAHB) Improving Markets Index (IMI) revealed that they have seen an addition of 40 new metros and that 76 markets are improving. Read More

"Seven Steps to Turbo-Charge Your Efficiency"

Let’s face it, one of the most valuable commodities in any busy person’s life is time. No matter how much we may wish for it, making more of it is simply outside the reaches of modern science. So how do you stretch more time out of your finite resource of the same? Efficiency. In short, we may not be able to create more time, but we can turbo-charge the limited time we have. Read More

"Ben Bernanke on Housing"

Ben Bernanke, Chairman of the Federal Reserve, spoke to the National Association of Home Builders meeting in Orlando, FL today. Housing continues to face difficulties and is a key factor in the currently weak and disappointing economic recovery. Bernanke pointed to too much supply in housing due to vacancies and continued foreclosures across the country. He noted that foreclosures put downward pressure on home prices. At the same time, demand for housing is soft due to unemployment, uncertain job prospects and the lack of willingness of potential buyers to commit to buying a home. Bernanke also cited the availability — or lack of availability — of mortgage credit as a key factor. Given all of these, housing may no longer be seen as a secure, must-have, investment. The speech cites various factors facing housing and how this is reflected in and weakens the overall economy. Read More

"Energy Efficient, Icy Floor Solutions"

It's been a rather tame winter in the U.S., especially here in the Midwest, and though the temperatures have yet to drop to a frigid point, even 30°F degree weather can take its toll both inside and out. And, cold, icy floors in the early morning hours are like an unwelcome friend who barges in unexpectedly. Many homeowners just cringe and resign themselves to deal with the cold floors, but with electric floor heating your problems are solved, and your feet are happy again. warm feet with radiant heat. One of the biggest misconceptions is that your floor covering choice limits you from warming up your icy floors. Though ceramic tile is the most common floor covering used with electric floor heating, as identified by EnergySavers.gov, you can heat virtually any floor covering by adding radiant heat. In fact, we like to pride ourselves on having the right radiant solution for every area of your life. Ceramic, stone, hardwood, floating wood, laminate, carpet, and, yes, even that beautiful marble floor! You name it and it can be heated! Read More

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Besides providing you with radiant heat education, we seek to bring you the best in product and customer experience. Read what our customers are saying about us:

Why Our Customers Bought WarmlyYours…

• "Great product!!!"
• "…Our designer and contractor had used your product before and endorsed it."
• "Good reputation, so we felt we were buying a good product."

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Look for our "WarmlyYours | Weekly Radiant News" every Monday!

• Take a look at the latest Radiant News here.
• Missed last week's edition? Read it here

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