Happy Father’s Day: A Tribute To My Dad, Tom Senior

Paying tribute to my dad this Father’s Day. His integrity, traditions, quality craftsmanship and legacy live on through Blue Frost Heating & Cooling’s customer service every day.

Tribute to my dad: We just called him Senior

Father’s Day is June 19, 2016. My dad, Thomas Wangler Senior, is gone. Born in 1944, he left us at the young age of 62 in 2007, but his integrity, tradition, quality craftsmanship and legacy live on through our family-owned business at Blue Frost Heating & Cooling. All he taught us is passed on through our service to our customers every day and is a tribute to my dad. “Thanks, Senior.”

Tribute to my dad: Senior starts his business

He started doing Union sheet metal work all the way back in the early 1970’s when I was born. He hung gutters, put on new roofs and did duct work. (Roofers replace, repair and install the roofs of buildings using a variety of materials, including shingles, bitumen and metal). From there he decided to get into a very specialized line of work called air and hydronic systems balancing. He started his own business doing that in 1975. Basically, air and hydronic systems balancing is where you get into the real high-end commercial kind of mechanical work. After the guys are done installing everything, you go in and set up all the different vents and water pipes and everything so that the rooms are actually the right temperatures at the right times and have enough fresh air and exhaust air. We do stuff like that today. For example, the University of Chicago Hospital had to have us certify wings every 6 months so that if you opened the door to a whole wing of people with tuberculosis or something, the air went in and didn’t come out. That’s what air balancing kind of is – pressurization. We’ve done a lot of really good public work – The Harold Washington Library, Dirksen and Federal Building, all kinds of schools.

My dad starting his own business was obviously part of the same reason I like being self-employed. Nobody would or ever will work me as hard as I work me and not be in jail. There is no other employer who could do to me what I do legally. At the same time, I’m able to be there for all my kids’ stuff like he was. I don’t miss music concerts. I don’t miss Christmas shows. I don’t miss a thing. All of my kids’ stuff, I’m able to be there for which is nice. And he was always that same way.

Tribute to my dad: Junior starts his business

When I decided to start my own company in 1992, it was really just because of the age I was at. I was a whole 21 years old. Obviously, at that age, my dad was the dumbest person on the face of the earth for about 7 or 8 years there. Then looking back later on, I actually realized how wise he really was. We ended up with a really interesting but very good relationship.

My dad really relied on me to do a lot of the sheet metal work, because I was really good at it. He taught me, and I picked it right up. He‘d have me doing all these little projects and could eventually leave me alone. I could do a job, and he could do a job.

I started my business trying to really bring that quality of commercial work and specialty work to the residential market. I got my first residential job in 1990 working at a company that did new construction and what I saw was atrocious! I couldn’t fathom how people were supposed to raise their families in these homes with such poor air quality and inadequate duct work. I could clearly see that it just wasn’t right. I knew the energy bills were going to be higher and thought, “That’s money families could be saving for college.” I knew that I could get into the residential market and carve out my existence kind of quickly and successfully just by doing quality work for people who really understood that and wanted it.

Tribute to my dad: Blue Frost Heating & Cooling, it’s a family thing

When Dad retired, he came to work here at Blue Frost Heating & Cooling as the delivery guy. He was the go-to guy for parts pickup and miscellaneous shop tasks. It’s kinda cool that in the beginning he was teaching us everything, and at the end he was helping us. We were helping him, then he was helping us.

I’m a quirky kind of guy who cares about comfort, efficiency and quality in the home for families. It’s what Dad expected in the commercial world, and it’s what I expect now in the residential world.

Making sure your HVAC systems run optimally the way they were designed to work requires the expertise and experience of a team of technicians. We know testing, adjusting and balancing inside-and-out. That’s what Blue Frost Heating & Cooling can do for you and your family because of the way Dad lived his life, worked his business and taught his family about how things matter.

Blue Frost Heating & Cooling’s service to our customers is a tribute to my Dad. Quality craftsmanship means greater energy savings, comfort, fewer service calls for you and your family. Call Blue Frost Heating & Cooling at (630) 444-0860 today.

Thanks to Senior, we take our service to our customers seriously.

Happy Father’s Day!

Blue Frost Heating & Cooling

Conveniently servicing Batavia and the surrounding Chicago Area

We are located at 416 E. Wilson Street in Batavia.

Call (630) 444-0860 today!