A planned town that kept growing
Kanata started as Bill Teron's planned community on more than 1,200 hectares of farmland west of the city. Its first street, Tiffany Crescent, went in in 1964, and Beaverbrook and Glen Cairn are its oldest neighbourhoods. It became a city in 1978, joined Ottawa in 2001, and parts of it, Bridlewood among them, are still being built.
That gives Kanata almost every kind of system: houses from the 1960s that have been through several furnaces, and new builds still on the equipment they came with.
The most heating in the city
Of the five Ottawa locations in Ontario's Building Code, Kanata has the most heating degree-days, 4,520, and the highest ground snow load. In practice, the heating runs a little more over a Kanata winter, and more snow piles up against the house. That snow is what blocks the plastic vent pipes of a high-efficiency furnace and buries the outdoor unit of a heat pump. Brush both clear gently, as Enbridge Gas advises, and call if the furnace doesn't restart.
Beaverbrook and Glen Cairn homes
When a house from the 1960s or 70s gets a new high-efficiency furnace, the vent usually moves from the chimney to a side wall. If a gas water heater stays behind on the chimney, it may need a liner to draft properly. Thermostat wiring in these houses is often the original thin cable, which matters if you want a smart thermostat. None of this is unusual, and the technician will tell you before the job starts.
Newer homes in the north and south
In Kanata Lakes, Morgan's Grant and Bridlewood, the common calls are first major repairs on builder-installed furnaces and air conditioners, and upstairs bedrooms that run warm in summer. For a room that never keeps up, a ductless heat pump is often simpler than reworking the ducts.
Call (613) 801-3078 from anywhere in Kanata or Stittsville, any hour.