Safe and Effective
It's not just a Good (Marketing) Idea -- sometimes it's the Law ...
… e.g., when it comes to Inducer Pumps.
A friend was COMPLAINING1 about their furnace not coming on during the recent sub-zero weather in Southern Indiana. This person, not being so technically/scientifically enlightened as myself, mistakenly thought that this furnace non-operation was neither Safe nor Effective. So I had to explain:
In 1993 an HVAC company, which happened to have a patent on an Inducer Pump for gas furnaces, paid some congress-critter a mere pittance to insert a law into some thousand-page continuing-budget-resolution, requiring that all new gas furnaces have an additional small pump, an Inducer Pump, to increase their Safety and Effectiveness2.
And to further ensure this Safety and Effectiveness, most furnace control boards have an interlock which prevents the furnace burner from coming on unless the Inducer Pump is first operating.
I sincerely hope that this public service announcement will INDUCE my friend to now have a nice warm feeling about the Safety and Effectiveness of their furnace when it fails come on during future cold-snaps3.
While some people may think Complaining is a waste of time, this is not true: one must rather know WHAT to Safely and Effectively Complain about, e.g., things like Eclipses:
Whether an Inducer Pump increases the Safety and Effectiveness of gas furnaces is debatable. Whether they substantially increased profits for a specific HVAC company and HVAC service-people is not debatable; nor is it debatable whether inducer pumps increase the cost and reduce the reliability of new furnaces. So, looking at the Big Picture, Inducer Pumps help all HVAC companies and all HVAC service-people.
Of course one should expect more such extreme cold snaps in the future due to Global Warming (/s = sarcasm).
Heh. Nice one, Tim.