Eklund Innovation Center Dedication for Our Tumwater WaterDrop DHWP Systems

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Eklund Innovation Center Dedication for Our Tumwater WaterDrop DHWP Systems

At the end of May, Small Planet Supply gathered with a small group of friends and colleagues to celebrate the official opening of the Eklund Innovation Center. The Eklund Innovation Center presently serves as the assembly plant for WaterDrop DHW plant systems and is named after Ken Eklund. Ken was dedicated to saving the planet and working to find ways to increase energy efficiency, harness natural energy and reduce carbon to protect the planet he loved. Ken was instrumental in working to bring SANCO2 heat pump water heaters (back then they were manufactured by Sanden) from Japan.

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Fresh-r: Smart Ventilation that Automatically Adjusts When You Need It

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Fresh-r: Smart Ventilation that Automatically Adjusts When You Need It

Small Planet Supply is excited to offer Fresh-R HRV systems to our customers. These systems are of particular interest to our customers who want to add an HRV to an existing build or as part of a retrofit, as they are designed differently than other HRV systems. Fresh-R eschews tubing in walls or ceiling as a way to distribute fresh air within a home. Instead, it uses de-centralized in-wall units or on-wall units to bring air in and out of your home and some grills or forward ventilators on interior walls to ensure fresh air is received in all rooms of your home.

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Earth Day Action: Big and Small Changes to Decrease Your Carbon Footprint at Home

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Earth Day Action: Big and Small Changes to Decrease Your Carbon Footprint at Home

So, while the debate rages on regarding whether there is anything we can do individually to impact climate change, I’m going to write this blog with the assumption that what we do as individuals can help the planet by making changes in our home. Many or our customers are already super committed to reducing their carbon footprint, so I’m mostly singing to the choir. However, since we all eat and need clean clothes, I thought I’d focus on these two areas for this year’s Earth Day blog post.

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Messana Radiant Ceiling Panels Equal Space Heating and Cooling Magic for You

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Messana Radiant Ceiling Panels Equal Space Heating and Cooling Magic for You

Small Planet Supply is excited to offer a new heating and cooling option for our customers. We now carry Messana’s Ray Magic Radiant Ceiling panels. These panels handle room temperature regulation in a different way than most people are used to seeing radiant panels used. These radiant source panels are hung from the ceiling and then covered with drywall to provide an unobtrusive heating and cooling solution. Paired with a heat pump which flows hot or cold water through a matrix of channels, these panels operate similarly in principle to other radiant sources. While radiant is familiar, this less familiar way of providing radiant may inspire some questions. We’re providing some answers to a few common questions here.

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Zehnder: Exterior Maintenance Keeps Clean Air Flowing

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Zehnder: Exterior Maintenance Keeps Clean Air Flowing

Recently our Zehnder Commissioning Agent Steve Lamberg reported an issue at some of his customer maintenance calls: Zehnder units not getting any supply air because the exterior ports were clogged. Dust builds up on the metal grill, then there is some moisture, and the result is a paste that prevents supply air from getting in.

While this may not be an issue for some of our customers, we wanted to ensure that all Zehnder owners are aware of this maintenance step and check their outside ports, especially the supply ports, as part of their usual seasonal maintenance. If you check your exterior ports and they are dirty or clogged, here is what to do.

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Heat Pumps Will Save Us: These Myths Get in the Way

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Heat Pumps Will Save Us: These Myths Get in the Way

With legislation and subsidies putting forth an effort to rid modern homes of gas burning heating, there is thankfully more attention now being put towards combating climate change. One of the stalwart warriors in this push for electrification is currently the humble heat pump. While this modern marvel of heating and cooling technology might seem like a rather new player in the field, but this technology has been developing and maturing for the last 150 years. Public perception of this technology is dubious for a vast majority of consumers, leading to hesitancy in adopting this highly efficient method of heating and cooling. Dispelling some of the myths and misconceptions around heat pumps can hopefully lead to more widespread adoption of this wonderful technology.

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Climate, Carbon and Cork: Using ThermaCork to Decrease Embodied Carbon in Your Build

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Climate, Carbon and Cork: Using ThermaCork to Decrease Embodied Carbon in Your Build

ThermaCork continues to be a very popular product with Small Planet Supply customers. Between the natural beauty and impressive insulative value, there is certainly a lot to love about this 100% natural product. One great thing not everyone is aware of though is how ThermaCork has a less than zero carbon footprint. This negative carbon footprint is an important part of the fight against climate change and ThermaCork is a great way to help bring down the overall carbon footprint of a building.

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SpacePak Systems: Where Running Hot and Cold is a Good Thing

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SpacePak Systems: Where Running Hot and Cold is a Good Thing

Small Planet Supply is pleased to bring you another option for heating and cooling spaces in your home. SpacePak is our newest addition to our hydronic products. SpacePak and their parent company Mestek have been providing quality products made in America for over 70 years. While these two companies offer a variety of HVAC technologies, Small Planet Supply is only focused on providing the best heat pump hydronic systems that SpacePak has developed.

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Three Reasons to Use A Better Weather Barrier

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Three Reasons to Use A Better Weather Barrier

Whether you’re a home builder or not, we’ve all seen it before: The typical paper or plastic house wrap bedecking unfinished new homes going up all around us. If you’re not familiar with the home building process, you might wonder what purpose this serves, and if you are a home builder you might already know that this house wrap is used to keep air penetration to a minimum, which means a less drafty finished home. Air penetration isn’t the only thing you need a house wrap for though, you also need it for weather proofing against driving rain and protecting your building’s structure. Low-cost wraps can often fall short in these areas. Read on to learn about why these three high performance weather resistive barriers are a better choice for your next build.

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Three Types of Filters that Help Your Zehnder Keep Indoor Air Clean

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Three Types of Filters that Help Your Zehnder Keep Indoor Air Clean

From the moment outside air enters the system, a Zehnder system (and its filters) are designed to keep air contaminants from entering your home, while efficiently recovering heat (or cooling) from the air exiting your home.

Do you know every level of filtration available to you for your Zehnder recovery ventilator? If you’ve recently installed one of these units, or purchased a house that included one already, you hopefully know of (and are changing) at least the in-unit filters. These two filters, one for supply and one for return air, do the brunt of the filtration work to keep your unit running efficiently and delivering the cleanest air, but there are a few other filters that complement the system.

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Spread the News: Prosoco Cat 5 Has Your Airtight Project Covered

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Spread the News: Prosoco Cat 5 Has Your Airtight Project Covered

Have you ever wanted to air and weather seal a building in one continuous barrier with no seams or fear of tearing the wrap membrane? It would certainly save a lot of time and energy. And saving time on a job means saving money on labor costs. A continuous air barrier also does a better job at keeping the building airtight which translates to better energy use and savings for heating and cooling, as well better longevity for the structure by protecting what is inside behind it and the walls.

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Five Building Trends We're Seeing as the World Opens Up

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Five Building Trends We're Seeing as the World Opens Up

The last month has seen an acceleration in the easing of Covid restrictions around the United States, and Canada is poised to start opening up soon. While we were all in our own Covid hibernation bubble, some pretty monumental shifts have occurred that will affect how we live and build both short and long term. Here are some of the things we’ve being seeing that may impact how you build.

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Five Reasons to Use KlimaGuard Building Tapes

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Five Reasons to Use KlimaGuard Building Tapes

Small Planet Supply has provided KlimaGuard building tapes for the budget conscious builder since 2019. Since then, KlimaGuard has been popular with homeowners and builders interested in eco- conscious and net-zero buildings.

Our newest products expand this line of building tapes allowing it to be used in even more applications. If you haven’t joined the bandwagon yet, here are five reasons to try KlimaGuard on your next project.

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Prosoco: Build Whether the Weather is With You or Not

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Prosoco: Build Whether the Weather is With You or Not

We don’t talk too much about Prosoco in our blog. In fact, this is the first time we’ve featured Prosoco air and water barrier products in one of our blog posts. It’s high time we corrected this oversight, since building airtightness increases into your project is as important as choosing the right mechanical system for your build.

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SANCO2 Heat Pumps: A New Generation for The Electrification Era

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SANCO2 Heat Pumps: A New Generation for The Electrification Era

If you’re familiar with SANCO2 heat pump water heaters already, you know about the many great benefits they bring to the field of domestic water heating. Highly efficient with COPs approaching 5, hot water provided at ambient temperatures down to -14F, and of course the namesake CO2 refrigerant which is the lowest polluting and safest refrigerant on the market. SANCO2, previously made under the name of Sanden is now under the new flag of ECO2 Systems, and the new 4th generation of heat pumps is coming to market under that name. Worried about the changes? You shouldn’t be!

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SkyCool: Small Planet & SkyCool Starting Residential Trials Soon

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SkyCool: Small Planet & SkyCool Starting Residential Trials Soon

Last December, one of our blog posts featured our assembly of Sky Cool panels at our Tumwater, Washington warehouse. SkyCool is a passive cooling panel that improves the efficiency of any air conditioning or refrigeration system. In some circumstances, these panels can even replace an air conditioning unit. SkyCool estimates an 80% to 90% reduction in energy use for cooling if it is used to replace an air conditioning system. Understandably, the blog drew a lot of interest from a number of high-efficiency residential builders interested in using in using the panels for cooling. However, at the time of the blog was posted, SkyCool was limiting use of the panels to commercial applications.

Full Panel Production Opens Door for Single-Family Residential Projects

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New Installer Training Module for SANCO2 DHWP Installers.

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New Installer Training Module for SANCO2 DHWP Installers.

Small Planet University has just released its latest course, “Certification Course for SANCO2 Water Heating Plant Installers”. This course is largely focused on providing information for plumbing contractors to install a SANCO2 DHWP system as well as giving a high-level overview of system configuration concepts which can be useful to architects, engineers, utility teams and more.

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Painting and Staining ThermaCork - A “Near Year” Update

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Painting and Staining ThermaCork - A “Near Year” Update

Do you have a project that you think would be perfect for ThermaCork, but the only thing holding you back is the color of finished product? If you have ever wondered about the viability of painting, staining, or sealing our ThermaCork Façade panels, hopefully the results of this ongoing backyard test can answer your questions.

If you’re just tuning in to this test, you can find the original article here, and there is a quick recap on the methodology below. If you’re returning to see the results after the last check-in, feel free to skip ahead!

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SANCO2 101: The Fundamentals of Game Changing Hot Water

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SANCO2 101: The Fundamentals of Game Changing Hot Water

Our past blog posts have highlighted using the SANCO₂ heat pump water heater for combi-system (using SANCO₂ to perform both space and hot water heating) and multi-family applications. This blog post focuses on the basics of the technology that makes SANCO₂ a brilliant choice for energy-efficient hot water heating in most homes.

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