Paul from Ottawa

Since the start of this year's heating season (Nov. 2012), our 30 year old furnace started acting up for the first time since we bought our house in 1999. We called Holmes Heating since they were the installers of this existing furnace, which had been purchased by the previous homeowners in 1983. We figured if the one they installed before lasted through all these 30 years, they couldn't be too bad! When their service technician Neil showed up (ahead of schedule!), he fixed the problem quickly and efficiently - demonstrating everything that was happening (a stuck exhaust vent damper and finicky blower fan controller) and basically giving me a quickie HVAC course right there in my basement. I quickly agreed with his recommendation that we finally replace our "antique" - having gotten much more service from it than could have been reasonably expected. The next week, Dave the sales guy came by and explained all the options available to us. We went with his suggestion to replace our 9 year old water heater as well, especially since that would allow us to close up our conventional chimney and the associated outside combustion air intake pipe (since the new more efficient units would only need smaller PVC air inlet and exhaust pipes). A few days later the installers, Andrew and Jason, showed up on schedule in the early morning and had everything installed and working by the end of the day. They explained the workings of the new systems, cleaned up everything and took away the old furnace and water heater at no charge. So far (first week or so) everything is working out great. The new water heater works fine - and although the new high efficiency furnace takes a bit of getting used to compared to our old behemoth (which absolutely belched out the heat when it was on) - it certainly maintains whatever temperature we request at the thermostat. It's also nice that our basement is no longer the warmest place in the house (even after plugging all the registers there) - presumably because the old (now removed) exhaust pipe is no longer acting as a "radiator" as half of our heating energy escaped up the old chimney. All of the individuals we dealt with from Holmes were amongst the most professional, friendly and effective home service people we've ever had the pleasure to deal with. Overall, the whole experience went way better than we had expected or could have hoped for. We would not be inclined to write this review were it not for the desire to see that people doing a job well done get their well-deserved accolades. PS - We went with the option to rent both units, which is why the Approximate Cost is only $100 - the monthly rental fees for both the furnace and water heater.