Heating and Cooling Is More than Just a Comfort Issue

Hot in the winter and cold in the summer. That's what we need from our heating and cooling systems. The best possible scenario is such that it should be done with lowest total energy usage and cheapest of all possible costs. At least, that's what we hope for if we're using the most efficient of all available heater and air-conditioning options. These days, the advances in heating and cooling systems are well beyond what they were a generation or two ago. That's for sure. The days of exorbitant costs and energy sucking units are, for the most part, well in the past. There are energy conservation models of various heaters and air conditioners that are able to accomplish just that.

In some places across the country, and the world, the need for properly heated and cooled homes and offices is as important as maintaining the health of its occupants. Schools, hospitals, and nursing homes are in dire need of an effective and affordable climate control system that's able to accomplish these goals. So, it's not just about comfort, but a health issue, as well. Imagine if your children are forced to attend a school without adequate heat during the winter or air conditioning during the hotter months of the year. What if your elderly relatives find themselves in an inadequately heated or cooled facility that raises their stress levels and contributes to an overall decline in health? These may be somewhat extraordinary circumstances, but the point can be measured and assessed within these parameters. It is of paramount importance in some situations that a fully functional climate control system is able to effectively and efficiently regulate the temperatures of a building and its occupants.

The hearth has been a common image of comfort for centuries, even millennia. The magnetism of the hearth as a gathering place is twofold: there exists a place for cooking, a simple pleasure, and warming one's bones, an essential function of survival. The hearth is the advent of what we now know as a heater, warming the interior of a dwelling place for the comfort of and security of a certain family or communal gathering. When it comes to cooling conditions for structures, the only source for centuries was elaborate fans and ice rooms that could circulate swaths of cold air throughout spaces. The ability to cool a building, large or small, was quite an undertaking and very expensive in some of the more equatorial regions and southern states of the U.S. Modern heating and cooling systems are able to heat and cool massive structures without much fanfare, which is somewhat taken for granted. The fact that modern technology has allowed effective and efficient heating and cooling of our contemporary structures is a nod to what we as humans have been able to accomplish for controlling our environments, in winter or summer.