It’s winter, temperatures are below freezing and your customer’s boiler just gave up the ghost. It could take a few days to a few weeks depending on the type of unit before you could order and install a new unit. What is the customer supposed to do until then? You certainly can’t ask them to tough it out – what if the pipes freeze? If it’s a school or critical-care facility, heat is a necessity.

There are a few options you can implement. You can place electric heaters around the building, but this could be impractical for many applications. Or you can call on a company that specializes in portable heat pumps.

Like portable air conditioners, heat pumps can be put in place to remedy a situation quickly.

According to Ken Swanson, president of Spot Coolers, the technology to convert portable coolers into portable heat pumps is fairly simple. Indeed, all it takes is a reversing valve.

“If you put the unit in a 70-degree room and put it on cooling you’ll get 50-degree air out,” says Swanson, whose company rents and sells portable solutions for commercial buildings. “If you turn it from cooling to heating you will get 100-degree air out all within a five-minute period of time.”

For many contractors, portable heat pumps are another tool to help solve their customers’ problems.

If a job requires ordering parts that are on backorder, portable heat pumps can be placed on site to “seamlessly” provide heat until the problem can be properly fixed.

Indeed, if a building loses heat or they have a cold snap that the heat can’t keep up with it – you have to keep the building warm and you have to keep the pipes from freezing or you risk losing a valuable customer.

And by utilizing a portable solution you don’t risk losing business. Contractors can think of portable solutions as emergency help when all else fails.

“We don’t try to take their customers, we support everything they do,” notes Swanson. “When they can’t solve something, they can call us and we can help – the pressure is off.”

Another benefit of a portable heat pump, it’s clean, safe heat that is more effective than strip heaters. The units can be used in any setting. Somebody can put a towel or robe on it and it won’t start a fire – it doesn’t use fuel, so it’s not going to be combustible, which is perfect for many applications.