Best Of
Re: Craziest thing a customer ever told you
I had a customer once who told me that the price was too high and he was only going to pay half of it. Since we hadn't actually given him the price yet, the office just doubled it. AFAIK it was paid at its 'discounted' rate.
Re: Craziest thing a customer ever told you
I have many stories, I'll start with this one.
We serviced a GE oil burner/boiler in this elderly couples home. They ran out of oil and called us once they added one hundred dollars worth of fuel to their underground oil tank. Of course they hit the reset button a few times before I arrived. I assumed the filters were clogged and decided to clean them before attempting to start the burner, I was correct. We used a spray solvent to clean filters and oil burner parts. This took place in the hallway, where the boiler was located (slab house, no basement). The smell was strong and the filters were pretty gummed up, so I used about half a can.
It was cold outside and I was focused on getting the heat and dhw back on so I worked on starting the burner and left the stinky coffee can with the solvent just outside the front door. While I was working the lady would not stop talking to me while I was trying to focus on the task. The husband was chewing his cigar the whole time and telling her to shut up. She got louder, so he got louder. Mind you The Price is Right was at full volume on their Zenith black and white console television, so they really had to shout. I noticed his hearing aids were sitting on the coffee table with the Duracell batteries sitting next to them. This loud conversation went on for about thirty minutes as I did my work.
Finally I start the burner and it fires up immediately. I wrapped up my tools and yell to the couple that I am just about done. I tell the couple that I wanted to check the oil level in the underground oil tank before I leave. Apparently, this was a trigger for the lady. She began to tell me that she sees large black snakes going into and out of the oil tank fill on a regular basis. The husband is again shouting at her telling her she has lost her marbles. It got so ugly that pieces of his stogie were flying out of his mouth at this point as he yelled. Wife keeps warning me that I should use a net to get those snakes (I like to fish, but I don't carry a net in the service truck). The lady was convinced that the oil company was delivering oil and snakes to her.
I went outside and stuck the tank and the husband followed after replacing the batteries and installing his hearing aids in his ears. He very politely asked me to tell his aging wife that I eradicated all of the snakes. Apparently, his nearly ninety year old wife was slowly losing it. He apologized for his and her behavior, but he told me it happens daily and he can only take so much. I agreed with his plan and went back inside to tell her the snakes were now gone and would not come back. She gave me a hug and I went to my next service call.
One Last Climb up the Wall - A (re)introduction
I was recently sorting some papers and ran across a print out from the Wall from 1998. After a lengthy phone conversation with Jeff McGough, he jumped on the Wall and wrote a post about me. (I will attach a couple of photographs of the printout.). Those were heady days for me. I was factory trained at Wirsbo in St. Paul, did my own design, etc. Dan even talked about me in one of his articles in P&M.
I’ve walked through hell since those days. Dark hell after dark hell. Lost everything except my life, my wife, and son. And I almost lost all three of those.
I gradually left the trades somewhere between 2003 and 2008. I was a physically and mentally broken man, diving in dumpsters for our survival. I simply could not perform as needed in the trades. I did my last radiant job in 2004 I think.
But I don’t wanna talk about the hell… I wanna talk about redemption.
Somehow (and I know Who to thank), I climbed out of that hell. It was a long, brutal road. But I made it. No, make that, we made it. It’s straight up a miracle, but our marriage survived, and today my relationship with my wife is one of the most beautiful and precious things in my life. It’s all just a wild and glorious tale of redemption, better told around a fire than on an internet forum. The thing I want you to know is that it happened and it is a beautiful thing to experience all that redemption.
Now, after the hells that destroyed me, and the brutal years of redemption , I am in a better place than I have ever been financially, etc. And I am ready to build my own home. YEEHAW!!! It will be a simple 2,800 sq. ft. home/shop in the southern Missouri Ozarks. But I am installing radiant floor heat! Yippee! No furnasty vomiting out scorched air for me. (Who had those t-shirts made? Anyone remember?) This may seem bizarre, after all the hell, installing radiant floor heating in my own home feels almost sacred. A final raising of a flag of victory against the hell the tried to destroy me. Maybe you think I’m nuts by now. Maybe I am. Just telling you how it is.
Anyways, that the background. I’m gonna need some help. My brain incurred a lot of trauma (no drugs or alcohol involved) and I simply cannot remember all the stuff that used to flow from my brain about this glorious thing about radiant floor heating. So if I ask a lot of questions about radiant in the next few months, and it doesn’t quite make sense that I know so much, but am so ignorant on other parts, maybe you’ll end up here and it will make a bit more sense.
Please forgive me for this self-focused writing… I almost just deleted it. But I am hoping that maybe someone from back in the Wild West days of The Wall reads this and remembers those days. Maybe you’ll read Jeff’s post and you’ll experience a flood of nostalgia and share a few memories of those days. (I’m attaching photos and a PDF.)
PS. Anyone know how Jeff is doing or how to get hold of him?
Re: Black soot from gas heat baseboards
Before we jump into CO poisoning, let me ask you this… Are there ever candles burning inside the home? Do you have pets?
Re: What about HTP floor boiler system with the large tub of water--comments please
New Books by Ray Wohlfarth
@RayWohlfarth recently published two books that will help you troubleshoot problems on the job. Check them out here:
Lessons Learned Troubleshooting Hydronic Heating Systems
Lessons Learned Troubleshooting Steam Heating
Thanks for sharing your knowledge, Ray!
Re: Possible DIY boiler replacement questions
To really close out this thread…
After an entire winter running with the newly replaced heat exchanger and swapping parts to make this boiler a 75kBTU I can say that this was a success. No issues since I did the work and I have used about 13% less gas in terms of Therms/HDD day than last year and even though it was a mild winter we did have 1 week that was below 10 degrees with a couple overnights down to the design temp. The boiler easily kept up on the coldest nights while still not running continually, which was expected as my calculations said I was still oversized.