Capacity planning means knowing, before the season starts, how many installs and calls your company can handle each month, and matching your marketing to that number. Most heating companies have the problem backwards: they spend the same every month, drown in January, and go quiet in July. A plan built on the real shape of the heating year fixes both ends.
The demand curve, from public data
Statistics Canada's monthly natural gas distribution table reports residential gas deliveries by province and month. Gas use rises and falls with heating load, so the curve is a decent stand-in for when homes need heat most.
By our calculation from that table, here is how concentrated the 2025 heating load was:
| Province | Share of 2025 residential gas delivered Nov–Mar | Peak month ÷ lowest month |
|---|---|---|
| Manitoba | 77.9% | 13.4 |
| Saskatchewan | 74.7% | 10.4 |
| Ontario | 72.9% | 8.6 |
| Quebec | 71.3% | 11.9 |
| Alberta | 71.0% | 7.9 |
| British Columbia | 68.1% | 6.3 |
| Canada | 72.1% | 7.4 |
These are our analysis of the published monthly volumes. The table ends with December 2025 and is now marked inactive, so it gives a recent full year, not a live feed.
The supply side: your crew and your phones
Demand is only half of capacity. The other half comes from your records:
- installer hours available per month, after holidays and training
- installer hours per job, by equipment line
- calls answered and missed, by month and by hour of day
- service calls versus installs, because a no-heat call in January displaces a planned install
Put the two side by side and the gaps show up. If Manitoba-style concentration means nearly four-fifths of your heating demand lands in five months, a crew sized for the average month will be short every winter.
What the plan delivers
- A capacity calendar showing expected demand and available hours by month.
- Hiring and training windows, timed so new installers are ready before the peak, not during it.
- Phone coverage triggers, such as adding after-hours answering when weekly calls pass a set level.
- A marketing calendar: maintenance and tune-up campaigns in the shoulder months, cooling and heat pump campaigns where they fit, and heavier paid search held back for the weeks you can actually serve.
- A shoulder-season list of work to sell when demand dips, such as maintenance agreements and planned replacements.
A worked example
Say your four installers have 140 hours each in a typical month, 560 in total, and an average install takes 10 hours. That is 56 installs a month at full use. If your own records show December to February enquiries at three times the July level, and no-heat service calls take a third of winter hours, winter install capacity drops to about 37. Any marketing that brings in more planned installs than that in January is buying frustration. The fix is to sell those jobs in October and May instead.
Where heat pumps and cooling fit
Heat pumps change the curve a little. A heat pump customer may call in July about cooling as well as in January about heat, which spreads some demand into summer. If heat pumps are a growing share of your installs, your own monthly records will show a flatter curve than the gas data, and the plan should follow your records. That is one more reason to keep both sides of the comparison on the same page.
How results are measured
We measure the plan by three numbers on your scorecard: missed calls in peak months, installs in shoulder months, and spend per booked install across the year. A good plan lowers the first, raises the second and steadies the third.
Common mistakes
- Cutting marketing in summer, then paying peak prices in October to refill the calendar.
- Hiring in November, when new staff need training at the worst time.
- Treating a mild-coast province and a prairie province the same way.
- Letting no-heat service calls quietly crowd out the installs you sold.
The gas season guide shows the arithmetic step by step. We are a marketing and consulting service, not a contractor, and dispatch stays with you. Call, text or email to talk about your busiest weeks; the quarterly review keeps the calendar current.
Frequently asked questions
Why use gas delivery data if I also sell heat pumps?
Because, in most provinces, it is the most useful monthly public signal of heating load we have found. It tracks how cold the months were and how hard heating systems worked. We combine it with your own calls and installs, which capture everything else.
What about provinces with little natural gas?
In Quebec and Atlantic Canada, gas customers are a small or tiny share of homes, so the curve is a weaker guide. There we lean more on your own monthly records and on electricity and program timing.
Can you predict the first cold snap?
No one can reliably. The plan sets triggers instead: when calls cross a level you choose, the extra phone coverage and paid search budgets switch on.
Do you schedule our crews?
No. Dispatch stays with you. We give you a capacity calendar and the marketing that fills the quiet months.