Software for the yard running construction heaters.

A construction heater is the unit a rental yard lives or dies by in the cold months — the thing that keeps a pour from freezing, thaws the ground ahead of a footing, and lets a crew keep working when the weather says stop. The class covers more ground than people expect: direct-fired units that throw cheap open-air heat, indirect units that pipe clean dry air into an occupied space, and glycol ground-thaw units that warm the dirt from below through hose loops. They burn fuel fast, they ship with a pile of ducting and accessories, and they all come back at once when the cold breaks. EquipFlow runs heaters the way the yard that built it runs them — dispatch, fuel and standby billing, maintenance, and return inspection on one record per unit.

Built inside Rental King, right now.

Rental King is a heavy-equipment rental yard in Odessa and Midland, TX. They run construction heaters, manlifts, forklifts, light towers, generators, compressors, and water trucks on MSA contracts through the Permian Basin — 24/7, oilfield pace. EquipFlow was designed and first deployed inside that yard. Every feature was tested against their live operation before it shipped. The product runs there today.

Heaters are a feast-and-famine, fuel-hungry, accessory-heavy rental, and every part of that is where money slips through the cracks. Fuel that never makes it onto the invoice is gone; ducting and hoses that walk off and never get charged are gone; a unit sitting idle on a job through a warm spell earns nothing if the standby days are not marked. The hour meter ties maintenance and billing together, so it has to be captured the same way every return. When dispatch, billing, maintenance, and inspection all read from one unit record, the dispatcher quotes the right rate with the right accessories, the mechanic services against real run hours, the fuel and standby lines land on the invoice, and the bookkeeper closes a busy winter month without reconstructing it from memory. That single-record discipline is what keeps a seasonal heater fleet from leaking its best revenue exactly when it is busiest.

Construction Heater specs the rental record tracks.

Every number below is a sourced specification range. The render layer is the only path these values reach the page — they live on the unit record, not in a dispatcher's head.

Max heating capacity

170,000-750,000BTU/hr

Fuel consumption (diesel, high fire)

1.29-2.89gph

Heated air volume

1,594-4,800CFM

Onboard fuel tank capacity

14-119gal

Running current (120V)

7-17.6A

Max ducted supply distance

50-100ft

How EquipFlow handles construction heaters on the dispatch board.

Heater demand is seasonal and spikes hard the first cold week, so the dispatch board is built to handle a wall of overlapping winter orders rather than a steady flow. Each unit shows on the driver-by-hour view with its delivery window, on-site status, and due-back date on one responsive screen at any hour. Accessories are where heater dispatch goes wrong: a unit sent without the ducting, the thermostat, the remote sensor, the glycol hoses and blankets, or the external generator an indirect unit needs is a wasted trip in weather that already has every truck moving. The dispatcher confirms those line items on the rental record before the truck rolls. Fuel level at delivery is noted on the same record so there is no argument later about how full the tank went out. Because the same heater class books out fast in a freeze, the board flags conflicts at assignment, not at the gate.

Billing construction heaters — MSA, standby, and site-level tax.

Most oilfield and contractor heater demand runs on MSA terms, so the negotiated rate override lives on the customer record per equipment class rather than in a sheet the dispatcher keeps in their head; a heater rental created for that account picks up the right rate on its own. Fuel is the wrinkle that plain equipment billing misses — a heater burns through its tank in a way a forklift never does, so refills and fuel surcharges ride the same invoice as the rental rather than disappearing into a separate ledger. Winter rentals often run by the week, and when a unit sits on site idle through a warm spell or a job hold, standby is billed at a rate separate from active days; the dispatcher marks it and the invoice carries both lines without a month-end rebuild. Delivery, pickup, and accessory charges ride along too. Tax jurisdiction is set on the delivery-site record, so a unit that crossed a county line still bills the right rate. Invoices post to QuickBooks Online on close.

Maintenance on construction heaters.

Heater PM is hour-meter driven, not calendar driven, because a unit running around the clock on a curing job stacks hours in days while a yard spare waits out the off-season untouched. The hour reading posts when the return inspection records it, and the maintenance module advances the PM clock from that reading so the next service lands on real run time. Heater service is its own discipline: the burner nozzle, the flame sensor or photocell, the fuel filter, pump pressure, and the ignition electrodes all drift with hours and dirty fuel, and a fan motor or limit switch that fails leaves the unit dead on a job in the cold. Combustion has to be set right — a unit running rich sooting up its own heat exchanger is both a fire risk and a callback. Work orders, parts, and meter history live on the unit record, which is also where a soot or duct-damage charge from a return inspection becomes a repair ticket.

Construction Heater return inspections.

Two inspection rhythms apply to a heater. While it is on rent, the customer runs the operating check — fuel level, clear air intake and exhaust, ducting routed without kinks, and carbon-monoxide awareness in any enclosed space — and that responsibility sits with them. The yard's own control is the return inspection: before a heater comes off rent, the driver runs a mobile-web checklist on a phone with no app install, records the hour-meter reading, and attaches required photos that cannot be skipped. Heater-specific checks carry the weight here — fuel tank level and whether it came back with water or contaminated fuel, soot or scorching at the burner and heat exchanger, condition and completeness of the ducting and glycol hoses, blower and guard integrity, and any cracked housing or melted cord. The inspection ties to the rental record before the truck leaves the site, so a dispute over a sooted exchanger or a torn duct has photos and a timestamp behind it.

Common construction heater classes in the field.

The product, the same way it runs for construction heaters.

The sections below are the EquipFlow modules that matter most when running construction heaters — each links to the full feature detail.

Operator guides for running construction heaters.

Field-tested playbooks that go deeper on pricing, dispatch, billing, and maintenance for fleets like this.

• Adding a New Equipment Category to Your Yard →
• Compressed Air Equipment Rentals →
• How to Forecast Equipment Demand →
• How to Manage Parts Inventory for Repairs →

What you give up running construction heaters in EquipFlow.

EquipFlow is a web app, so the return inspection needs a signal to load. On a remote winter pad with no coverage, the driver cannot finish the mobile inspection at the site; most yards run it at the yard on return instead, which means the fuel reading and photos land a little later than ideal. There is no built-in telematics or remote burner-monitoring integration today, so run hours and fault codes are not pulled automatically — the hour meter is read at return. And the rate logic is built around the MSA, fuel, and standby model the oilfield runs on; a yard with an unusual fuel-billing or flat-rate-with-fuel-included structure should bring it to the demo so it gets scoped honestly rather than forced.