Farmington HVAC company installs three free furnaces for local families

Winter will be considerably more comfortable this year for three local homeowners, thanks to an annual furnace giveaway program presented by a Farmington company.

Officials at Robbins Heating & Air Conditioning Inc. announced in a Nov. 21 news release that free furnaces were awarded to and installed for three local homeowners this year, bringing to a close this year’s giveaway program, a project that began in 2019.

This year’s work means that 10 furnaces have been donated and installed over the program’s five years.

This year’s winners include a single mother with four children, an injured oilfield worker and a great-grandmother who serves as a crossing guard at an elementary school, according to the release.

“It was kind of interesting, all the different situations we had this year,” Robbins Heating & Air Conditioning owner Michelle Robbins said of the backgrounds of the three homeowners the company was able to help. “That made it kind of fun.”

Robbins said when a team of company employees sifted through this year’s nominations for the program, the three eventual winners stood out. Their status as worth recipients was solidified when team members later conducted home visits to follow up on the nominations, she said.

“It definitely felt like they were the right ones to win this year,” Robbins said.

One of the furnace recipients had been forced to crawl down into a cellar to turn their furnace on and off, while another’s heating situation was so bad they sometimes had ice built up on the inside of their windows, the release states.

The new furnaces were installed in each of the homes by Nov. 22, Robbins said.

A total of 69 nominations for the program were received this year. That figure was a slight reduction from the approximately 80 nominations the program received each of the previous two years, but Robbins said this year’s nominees seemed to be much more qualified than many of those in the past. She had put out a plea when this year’s nomination process began in the middle of October for nominations be restricted to those truly in need, not just folks who were looking to increase the value of their home with a new furnace.

“I’m so grateful for our community,” Robbins said. “We were hoping for an increase in the quality of homes over quantity, and we definitely got a bunch of people who really do have a need they can’t fill.”

Robbins said only a few of this year’s nominees did not meet the intention of the program.

Several other local companies contributed to the program, including M&R Plumbing, Chick-fil-A, Majestic Electric, Aspen Leaf and San Juan Signs.

Robbins has said the program is extremely popular with and meaningful to her company’s employees, who largely have assumed management of it.

“Our installers expressed how cool it was to be a part of something like this,” she stated in the news release. “Our team is thrilled to help ease their burdens. It is because of the generosity of our employees and many local companies that we can give this gift.”

Mike Easterling can be reached at 505-564-4610 or measterling@daily-times.com. Support local journalism with a digital subscription: http://bit.ly/2I6TU0e.

This article originally appeared on Farmington Daily Times: Three Farmington families receive free furnaces