Best Of

Entering the trade in 1985, I too did not have a cell phone, no fixes et cetera. My greatest teacher of the Plumbing trade was Jimmy O' Brien (RIP asbestosis) born in Dublin early 1940s. When he was 12, he went to live with an Irish Master Plumbers Family and started an Apprenticeship program. He came to NYC at age 19 and was light years ahead of the other guys in the Apprenticeship program here.

Jimmy had an outstanding vocabulary & intellect & came across as college educated. This is what we need Here...NOW..Mad Dog

I agree that this is a very unfortunate trend. I went to college and studied engineering, but the reason I wanted to be an engineer is that I grew up with an interest in taking things apart, figuring out how they worked, fixing them when needed, and building stuff with my hands. My high school friend had a garage full of woodworking tools, and after school I'd go over to his house and we'd build stuff. He went on to become a naval architect/engineer, and I became a mechanical/aerospace engineer.

But I never lost my interest in building stuff and working with my hands. Often I find that more enjoyable than desk engineering. I've rehabbed houses, built furniture, restored motorcycles, etc.

And so I find it sad and unfortunate that our society has not learned to value the manual trades as much as "white collar" work. I have not been to Germany, but from what I've read, Germany has a much better system for training in the manual trades, and less white collar snobbery. There is a demanding apprentice system for tradespeople, and when you finish, you really know your stuff. And tradespeople are respected.

So I think it's unfortunate that we don't have a similar system of training in all trades, and a similar respect for and appreciation of tradespeople, and a promotion of that career path in high school guidance counseling. Unfortunately it would take a huge cultural change here that I don't see happening any time soon.

I’ve always taken care of my boiler tune ups myself- for decades. I’ve gotten older and my hands have arthritis so last year in January of 2024 I decided to sign up with an established well know oil company in the area for their automatic delivery and annual tune up which includes emergency burner 24/7 no heat situations which as I get older, I will admit is appealing to have somebody on call if I need emergency service.

Their first tune up in February 2024 it was a younger guy. I know they are learning and don’t have decades of knowledge. I get it. But he didn’t have the correct nozzles for my Riello. So he used a different one with a different firing rate and instead of setting the pump pressure to account for the different firing rate of the different nozzle with a pressure gauge he used his combustion analyzer as a best guess. This also resulted in him adjusting the air shutter.

He also installed the baffles into the boiler incorrectly and afterwards it generally was running loud and hard startup bang - so not like it used to.
So in April, I called them back and they sent out one of their “senior “ Technicians to put the correct nozzle in and set the pump pressure with the gauge and correct the baffles and air shutter.

I told the company I don’t want any more young guys working on my equipment.

So for this year‘s annual tuneup I requested they send the same senior technician out that came to fix the younger guys problems, but of course he retired and moved to Florida so they told me they would send another “senior” technician with 35 years experience.
Well, as it turns out he didn’t replace the pump strainer and didn’t do an efficiency test with the combustion analyzer. All he did was change the nozzle, looked inside to see if it needed to be vacuumed, and replaced the spin on filter.

What’s worse is he lied right to my face when I asked him What the combustion numbers were. He told me it’s running great 86% efficiency.

I have an extensive home security system with cameras in the basement so I saw it all with my own eyes.
I decided not to call him on his lie because I have enough stress in my life and I didn’t wanna get into an argument with the guy so I said thank you and sent him on his way.

What’s going on with the industry? I remember the days when guys cared about their work and were thorough and did a good job. Now it seems like you get a young guy that knows nothing about nothing or a senior guy that is washed up with a bad back and tired of the trade. I’ve decided to go back to will call oil deliveries and doing my tuneups myself. I do a better job.

I'm in the process of hiring a high school student for the summer. (Commerical Refrigeration) He just wants to see if it's what he wants.

After getting the pricing for extra workman's comp and liability insurance it's not worth it but I'm a gambler so I'll do it.

The oil companies can't afford to keep the good techs. They cost them money and it's not always the case that their oil sales make up the difference and training. There are few if any training centers and it's expensive to enroll. It's been a few years, but every time I removed an old clunker with a tankless and replaced it with a nice G115 and an indirect we lost a big portion of that customers oil sales. At the end of my service career I had to carry a fixed pricing book in order to try and make up the difference. I was no longer able to have the conversations with customers who were curious about their systems and potential up grades. We lost to gas and discount oil. I got bored and tired.