Strangest boiler room?

DanHolohan

What's the strangest boiler room you've ever been in? Mine used to be a crypt:

clammy

I would guess that it was always a boiler room or a great root cellar . Where there any stairs or did u use a ladder to get in and out ,I would image it must have been quite damp down there . Only good point no house to go through . Thanks for sharing Peace and good luck clammy

DanHolohan

There are stairs and it was definitely a crypt. The niches are for the caskets. It was in a small church attached to the home of Charles Carroll, the only Catholic to sign the Declaration of Independence. Catholic churches were not allowed during Colonial times, so he built his own on his property. They celebrated mass there until the 1990s. They moved the bodies that once rested here to another part of the plantation:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Carroll_of_Carrollton

clammy

Pretty cool, about 15 years ago I did a renovation job and they wanted the steam boiler and chimney gone and wanted a direct vent boiler we really had no place to put it and get a vent out . The home owner said no problem and walked over to a book shelve and slide a shelve over and the whole book shelve opens on a hinge . There was a 6 x 7 ft room w a few caskets mounted on a wall and a small German style kurtch that sat 4 . The home was very old and it was used durning prohibition as a drink club. We installed a htp munchkin and a indirect tank ,we left the kurtch and sat the boiler on it . The owner left the book case opening . Funny thing was it was right across from the high school . The hidden drinking club was built under the cement poured back porch which ended up being led inact and a addition was daddy’s peace and good luck clammy

nibs

Have to watch that your crew doesn't use the nice soft benches for naps on company time.

DanHolohan

Ralph Adams, the guy who took me there, passed away last Valentine's Day. He was a lot of fun to ride with. We went from that crypt to a famous haunted house nearby. It was a very creepy day.

Grallert

That's a good one Dan. I have nothing quite like that. I guess the strangest one was on Martha's Vineyard. Lots of houses were converted from summer homes to year round. Often with no place to put a boiler of furnace. One I remember was a no heat call. The home owner lead me into the living room, move the couch and rug aside and lifted a hatch in the floor. There directly under the floor was a WM 68 in a hole. pretty much had to lay on my belly in the living room and service it from above.

lager

Dan
I Love your history lessons,

Jim

Noel

New London, NH police station put in a boiler that I started up. It's in a jail cell.

Steamhead

DanHolohan said:

Ralph Adams, the guy who took me there, passed away last Valentine's Day. He was a lot of fun to ride with. We went from that crypt to a famous haunted house nearby. It was a very creepy day.

When were you there?

SteamCrazy

That would creepy! Wow, but Kool at the same time.

DanHolohan

@Steamhead September 2013

Steamhead

I would have loved to see that. Carroll was a big wheel in colonial Maryland, and we all learned a bit about him in school, but I don't believe his estate was ever mentioned. Carroll County was named after him, but the estate is actually in Howard County. As I understand it, his descendants still own that property.

We've worked on a steam system in a log house near Columbia, MD, whose oldest part was 300 years old or so, but it had a standard basement where the boiler is.

MarkMurf

Out here in Montana , thirty years ago , the old timer Master Plumber I used to work for (great guy), early on realized my oil burner/steam/trouble shooting experience . He really pursued me to come work for him . Flattering as it was . At any rate there was an old granary in town with as old a high pressure steam boiler they used to hydrate the grain as it passed by steam nozzles on a conveyor belt. It also had a loop with a coil submerged in a giant tank of molasses. This to keep up the viscosity of the molasses as they sprayed that on grain to make it more palatable for the livestock. At any rate , first time in that basement shuffling through 6" of a lovely mix of grain , dead mice , dead pigeons and god knows what else was like something out of bad movie . The 'boiler operator' opened an iron door reminiscent of my tour of Alcatraz . Standing there was one of the oldest and tallest verticle steel tube , natural gas fired boilers this tech has to date ever seen . Complete with it's ancient cement jacket crumpling . Along with the oldest Baso thermo/mechanical pilot proving/main gas valve likewise this tech had ever seen (working of course). They , for NO good reason had this thing running at 135 psi ! !
I didn't even want to be in room !
I asked the'boiler operator'(unlicensed) if that was really necessary ? Shrugged his shoulders and said "way it's always been." I asked if he had any interest of working in the first granary on the moon ? At any rate , after nosing around and watching the entire production scenario , I slowly kept turning that pressure down . 35psi was all they needed .
And to say it looked like something out of a horror movie ? Well some decades later , approached to be in a low budget locally filmed 'horror' movie , I had the experience of not only landing a role in the movie , but to assist the production crew in converting that basement into a jail to be used in the movie ! ! LIFE ! !
'COWBOYS VS DINOSAURS' . Featuring little old heating man me.
Rent it on Amazon Prime ! ! Ha ha !

mechanicalplumber

That looks like a great place to heat up your lunch!

Jackmartin

Speaking of crypts. When I was still an apprentice I was sent to work on the morque coolers. I was with another young fool and since these coolers had two doors one on both sides we saw __ what we thought was some harmless fun. The chap cleaning the main morgue area with the table was a black fellow newly arrived from Jamaica. We immediately saw how I incredibly uncomfortable he was he sang , recited prayers and was just generally terrified. So, in our young stupid minds we thought it would be fun to play a joke on the poor man. We opened the door on the other side of the cooler ,yours truly lays down on the tray , and my fellow idiot pushs me in. I start hammering on the door where our victim was working yelling to let me out I was still alive. Our stupidity back fired ,
this poor guy lets out a scream that shook the hospital dropped his mop ran screaming out of the morque and went home! The man refused to come back to work as he had been attacked by a ghost, this poor fellow still believed in Voodoo. Well the manure hit the fan, my boss had a meeting with the Sister Superior of the hospital, she insisted we come back ,apologize, and we were to stay in the morgue while a priest blessed the place with our victim standing outside and they suggested ,ordered, I pay two hundred dollars to this man's church. I have been reamed out before but that was the worst one of the lot, the Sister Superior was so nice and by the time she finished I wished I was dead. That was forty years ago and it still feels like yesterday. Stay well and Be Blessed Jack

jerryb46

reading stories from HH.com helps pass the time waiting to get back to something of a normal life,THANKS DAN!!

DanHolohan

Thanks, Jerry. 👍

jumper

Toronto condemned unheated homes in the fifties. Entrepreneurs acquired them; jacked them up; installed gravity furnaces; and resold these rehabilitated homes.

7_Midgett_AKA_Coach

This does not look like a room where one could put their hands into their back pockets and walk out of. You would have to be an expert to walk up the steps backward. Wow thank you for sharing this DH