Our History

Heat-Line was co-founded in 1988 by inventor and entrepreneur Lorne Heise and his wife, Robin Heise. A master commercial and industrial electrician, Lorne previously owned and operated Carnarvon Electrical Contracting Ltd., a successful electrical business serving the Haliburton Highlands in Ontario, Canada. Through this work, he became acutely aware of how winter conditions limited the use of seasonal cottages and affected both families and local economies, prompting the search for practical freeze-protection solutions.

Alongside Lorne’s technical innovation, Robin played a critical role in building the business through administrative, financial, and strategic leadership. From the company’s earliest days, she provided essential operational support, business planning, and financial oversight, helping guide the growth of Heat-Line from a home-based venture into a successful and enduring enterprise.

The search for reliable freeze-protection technology began and a partial solution was found; self-regulating, conductive-polymer heating cable. With the support of the Canadian Standards Association (CSA) and constant experimentation and learning; the art of in-pipe freeze-protection was being perfected. Ideas and experiments soon became the essential core of the company which now leads the way in freeze protection, Heat-Line a Division of Christopher MacLean Limited. The original product Heat-Line® was a complete system, including the water pipe, for installation in new building projects.

The idea of pushing a heating cable system inside an existing shallow buried water-pipe was even more significant as it was soon realized there was a huge market awaiting this innovative approach. This prompted the development of Retro-Line®. The largest selling product to this day. Retro-Line is a compact easy to install system. It’s compact size and weight make it very economical to ship in comparison to the pre-piped Heat-Line® product which must be skidded. Further to this, these products were the first to be able to be safely insulated rendering energy efficiency and savings to the highest levels.

New markets continued to appear and this is when superior quality, external freeze protection systems entered the research and development stage and Paladin® systems for water pipe and roof and gutter freeze protection were developed.

In 2000 Heat-Line took a bold step by opening an assembly plant in a forest setting adjacent to Stanhope Airport, located in the heart of the Haliburton Highlands. It was at this time the company had made the decision to develop a superior roof de-icing system and EDGE-CUTTER®, a heat conductive aluminum roof edge flashing was invented to be used with the Paladin® for Roof system.

Paladin® for Roof and EDGE-CUTTER® won Best New Product awards, including the Best New Canadian Product Award from the Canadian Hardware & Housewares Manufacturers Association and the Best New Product - Home Improvement award at the Canadian Hardware Show.

The continued growth and development of heat trace and heating cable systems remains constant at Heat-Line. Heat-Line continues to innovate, developing new products for applications to solve the needs of our customers. In 2014 as a result of many years of research and development, Heat-Line released a new line of heating cable systems for in-pipe tracing of black water, sewer pipes and mains. The Retro-DWS® and Retro-FM® were designed for applications where freezing of sewage and septic pipes occurs, and the pipes cannot be accessed externally to apply traditional heat tapes. Similar to other Heat-Line developments, these products have proved to be very successful and are still fast growing even to this day.

In October 2018 Heat-Line was pleased to celebrate its 30th Anniversary. As the founders of Heat-Line, Lorne and Robin Heise, could not be more pleased to see the business they started in their home 30 years ago grow into the successful international business it is today. The Heat-Line product brands have become well known throughout the USA and Canada as the premium products on the market today.

In recognition of this milestone, a special 30th Anniversary Video was created by founders Lorne and Robin Heise to share the story of the Heat-Line journey.

Following nearly four decades in business, Heat-Line entered a new chapter through a carefully planned, multi-year succession process.

The family-business ethic remains central to how Heat-Line operates today, with direct communication, in-house support, and a commitment to putting customer needs first.