Heat Packs- Heat packs are free. We feel the cost of getting your order to you is cost we should shoulder. We ask that you do us a favor and add a heat pack to your order if you know you need one. That saves us a lot of time on our end, however we look at the addresses on every outgoing order and try to determine if a heat pack is needed on our end too. But, if there is no heat pack added to the order you're not guaranteed to get one, we only spot check addresses to known cold regions.
There are risks and benefits associated with using heat packs, but when the weather in your area dips below 30 we feel they are necessary and will be included if we manage to catch it. We don't check every order's four day forecast, but we do spot check it if there's not a heat pack listed on the order and we feel the order might benefit from including a heat pack then a heat pack is added.
If you prefer not to have a heat pack under any circumstances just send us an email and we'll make a note of it.
Heat packs are located at the bottom of the order checkout screen from October to April. They are a free add on. If you have forgotten to add a heat pack to your order and need one added simply place a new order (at no charge whatsoever) for a heat pack. We will catch it when we print the orders out for the week. Heat packs can be located here.
The concern with using heat packs is stability, not all heat packs warm to the same temperatures and sometimes temps inside the boxes can reach in excess of 90 degrees. When your plant is dormant this is not necessarily a great idea. The heat pack gets the hottest at the point of contact, so we position heat packs in the box strategically to ensure that there is not direct contact with the plants (which are double boxed anyway to ensure they arrive safely). A single heat pack is rated to warm an area of one cubic foot out from where it is placed. So it does not need to sit directly next to a plant to keep it from freezing, which is the main goal of the heat pack (you're simply wanting to prevent freezing).
Our heat packs are rated for 72 hours, we utilize Priority Mail service whenever they are used and ship them in such a way that they are never scheduled to be in transit for more than three days, however next winter we will be utilizing 90 hour heat packs to ensure longevity.