Heatmaster: Cutting $150K+ in Support Costs and Delivering Customer Peace of Mind with BlynkHeatMaster is a Canadian manufacturer of premium solid-fuel heating appliances, celebrating its 25th year in business. Operating out of southern Manitoba, the company produces a range of wood stoves and furnaces that run on pellets, cordwood, wood chips, and agricultural biomass.
Their systems heat residential homes, greenhouses, vegetable farms, and commercial production facilities — wherever natural gas doesn't reach or where customers want genuine energy independence.
With around 110 dealers across North America and roughly 70% of customers in the United States, HeatMaster serves a market that values self-sufficiency.
We spoke with Andy Dell, Engineering Manager at HeatMaster, about how the team approached adding IoT to a product category that had never needed it before.
"I have personally had to fly out to furnaces — the cost of flights and hotel stays, travel in general — to troubleshoot issues that honestly should have been figured out if I would have had the right data." — Andy
Heatmaster furnaces are installed outdoors — typically 50 to 250 feet from the home. Before connectivity, the only warning a customer had was a red LED on a unit they often couldn't see from their windows. A furnace shutting down overnight meant waking up to a cold house — or for commercial customers, a frozen greenhouse and thousands of dollars in lost crops.
"During the worst weather is actually when you need the most amount of information from your wood stove. For a customer to be able to pull out their phone from the comfort of their home, not have to leave their family in order to go check where your furnace is at — that was really huge." — Andy
Beyond the user experience challenge, HeatMaster' dealer-first sales model created a significant engineering blind spot. By the time a customer issue traveled from homeowner to dealer to the engineering team, the information was delayed and often distorted. It was very important to access the source of the issue immediately.
With no prior IoT or app development experience, HeatMaster evaluated several routes: a local app development firm, a university project partnership, and a low-code IoT platform. The build-from-scratch quotes came back at approximately $150,000 and a two-year timeline — before any iteration or ongoing maintenance.
Andy saw that app development was only one part of the problem. They would also need to manage infrastructure, app store requirements, data processing, maintenance, and reliability.
The contrast became even clearer later. HeatMaster' marketing team made the opposite choice — building their dealer app from scratch with a local developer. After a year and a half in development, they had only just launched, and the real work of iteration was only beginning.
Blynk gave HeatMaster a faster and more practical path: a ready IoT platform, app experience, infrastructure, and ongoing support without forcing the company to build and maintain everything in-house.
Hardware: HeatMaster proprietary furnace hardware with connectivity module
Connectivity: WiFi
Software: Blynk IoT Platform, Enterprise Plan
Devices connected: 190 furnaces (first full heating season)
Implementation: Full solution shipped within 6 months including branded mobile apps
Using Blynk, HeatMaster built a branded customer-facing app that replicates the full control interface of the physical furnace display — accessible from anywhere, on any phone. Key capabilities include:
"The app got us away from that red light. Before the app, you would have to call family members to check on your furnace if you were going on vacation. The app does that for you now." — Andy Dell
Three things stood out for Andy and his team:
Reliability without internal overhead. With a seven-person engineering department running multiple product lines simultaneously, HeatMaster couldn't afford to dedicate resources to app maintenance. Blynk handles infrastructure, store compliance, and backend upkeep — letting the team stay focused on hardware.
Fast iteration at the pace of an R&D-driven business. HeatMaster runs aggressive development cycles, pre-releasing prototype versions to a select group of field dealers before general availability. Blynk's responsiveness matches that pace.
A platform that keeps moving. For a company that competes against significantly larger players through speed and proximity to customers, a stagnant technology partner isn't an option.
"I expect the companies that I work with to travel at the same pace that we're working at. Otherwise, we leave each other behind. I'm constantly seeing the emails coming from you guys with regards to new features rolling out — that's very important for us." — Andy
With a full heating season of connected data behind them, Heatmaster is now focused on turning visibility into action. Three areas are in focus:
Predictive maintenance. Using accumulated device data to detect anomalies and alert customers before failures happen.
Field technician enablement. Linking the customer and dealer apps to give field technicians direct device visibility and proactive support capability.
Commercial expansion. Connected visibility is becoming a prerequisite for larger deployments — greenhouses, production facilities, and other critical operations where downtime isn't an option.
Companies don't understand the amount of effort it takes in the background — the things you guys do that we don't see — just to make sure that things are healthy and up there, and all the policies are up to date. Just to be able to rely on Blynk to just keep things up and running, that's huge.
Andy Dell, Engineering Manager at HeatMaster
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