The Early Years

It was 1976. The Arabs had a chokehold on oil. Energy prices  were rising. And no one knew what the future  held.

County agent Jerome Hardy had moved back to his hometown in  1970 to pursue his farming and cattle interests. To cut costs  he decided to put a heater vent in his  fireplace; but, wife, Margaret  vetoed the idea. She didn’t want wood trash, smoke and ashes tracked  through the house.

So, Jerome tried a different approach. He began tinkering  with  the idea of putting the heating unit outside and moving the heat  to where it was needed. After a lot of trial and error, brainstorming  and improvising, his idea began to  take shape.

Jerome’s initial effort was encouraging and his enthusiasm was  shared by neighbor, cousin and fellow cattle farmer Bobby Smith.  They put units in their  homes. Both families enjoyed an immediate and dramatic decrease in heating costs and liked the fire outside,  making it safer, cleaner, and easier to service.

It wasn’t long  before neighbors and friends became interested  and inquired about having one for their own use.

Jerome and Bobby looked after the farms and tended their cattle,  but continued  to tinker and experiment with the heater. By 1978,  Jerome had changed the design, taking it in a new direction and  raising its productivity potential to new levels.