Peter Baker is talking about the first waterless geothermal system he installed two years ago. At that point, he had been in the heating business for some 26 years, 10 of them as the owner of a heating/refrigeration business. Later, he headed a Lennox-owned company, and, after five years with Dearie Contracting, he was at a crossroads in his career.

"I had some concerns about Lennox as a corporation in terms of businesses in Canada being guided from the U.S.," he says, "and I was thinking that it was time for me to move out and run my own business again."

He worked regularly with local custom builders and was asked to install a geothermal system in one client's home. That introduction to waterless geothermal systems put him on the road to creating a company in 2004 that specialized in installing such systems.