Traveling Boiler Techs

Jalen_Jalen2006

If it’s okay to ask on here does anyone work for the major boiler companies, doing starts up and, commissioning/installs. I.E. Powerflame, Riello, Cleaver Brooks, Superior, Victory, Burnham. How do you like it? What do you do? Just curious

update: thanks for all the responses love reading these hoping I can eventually one day get to that point. Some people find the startup part boring I find it to be the best part of our work. Anyone can install any piece of equipment. Though to sit with the equipment and dial it in, trying things over and, over. It’s an art, when you finally get it where you want it’s incredibly satisfying.

EBEBRATT-Ed

Never worked directly for a boiler company but was a Power Flame rep for 10 years. Also did startups for Buderus with Riello burners and was an Iron Fireman dealer for10 years.

Jalen_Jalen2006

https://forum.heatinghelp.com/discussion/comment/1825915#Comment_1825915

So how much time would it take you to do a start up is it a whole day thing?

EBEBRATT-Ed

Depends on the controls on the job. Once your familiar with the burner your working on you can usually set one up and adjust the controls and have it ready to run in about 4 hours.

If your responsible for getting other things running like pumps or feed pumps or mixing valves it will take longer.

And there are always things missed.

Like:

Fixing the wiring the electrician crossed up

Priming oil pumps

Chasing down valves that are closed and should be open

The list can go on forever.

Imagine driving 2 hours to a job to do a simple start up on one burner. Before you go you are told "everything is all set and ready to run"

You get there and the gas is shut off, there is no water in the boiler, stuff is mis wired etc etc etc. Your already there and you have a 2 hour ride back so the day is pretty well shot. Do you fix a few minor things because your there? Or bail out and leave and tell them to get there issues fixed and have to go back??

No win situation sometimes.

EdTheHeaterMan

I never did that work but I used it one time.

I remember my first commercial boiler job with a combination Gas/Oil burner.  Might have been a PowerFlame.  I did the commissioning myself and could not get it to run correctly on low oil.  So it never got to high oil.  I could coax it to high oil flame and get that set up properly but the low oil would not light.  I could get the low oil to light but the High oil was smokey.   Spent 2 days trying to get it right.  Finally I called Weil McLain tech support and they recommended that I purchase their start up service that came with one year of labor warranty.  

I bit the bullet and paid the fee.  When the tech from WM came, he was actually another contractor like me and I told him my problem. He did exactly what I already did and found the same problem as I did.  But he had experience that I did not have, and he went off book.  He replaced the nozzles with different specifications and got the firing rate on low and on high to be compatible with each other.  That nozzle change I was not prepared to do.  Live and learn. The book isn't always right. Once I had that knowledge I never needed to purchase the start up service after that. 

SlamDunk

I didnt work for a boiler company but for a thermal process equipment company that used many different burners and heat sources that required installation and commissioning. The work was great for the experience but the challenge was leaving home. The majority of my married coworkers got divorced. My wife and I survived. The single guys had a blast. We travelled globally.

I work for a different company now and we have had several boiler installs. The techs are local to within a 300 mile radius so travel isnt too arduous. The jobs go in stages: Install, piping and electrical, controls then the tech comes in and debugs everything then starts up and tunes. Usually, a couple days. Ocassionally, a couple weeks.

ScottSecor

We were a Powerflame and Weil McLain start up representative. I can only remember one job that was actually ready for us when we arrived. This was out of approximately fifty jobsites we visited.

This "ready to go" start up was at a military site. I was told it was a simple start up for a dual fuel burner on a small Weil McLain 78 series boiler. I assumed about four hours for onsite labor. This was the most complicated Powerflame C burner and Weil McLain series 78 boiler I have ever seen. I think the engineer checked every single box on the Weil McLain and Powerflame order form. There were sensors for flue temp, flame temp, oil temp, rom temp, outdoor temp, over-fire draft, draft at flue collector, low and high gas pressure switches, low and high oil pressure switches, return water temperature and a bunch of Magnahelic and regular gauges for backup, etc. Needless to say I underbid this job. By the way it was a very cool site, I was told it was the only airstrip in the United States that had the "slingshot" (catapult) needed to propel certain military jets.

Oftentimes, electrician was unsure how to wire a low water cutoff or an automatic feeder. Sometimes the installer did not know the boiler need to be filled with water. Occasionally the contractor did not realize the breaching needed to be installed and vented to outside.in order to fire the burner. On more than one occasion there was no one there to unlock the boiler room door.

Another interesting start-up was a NJ Turnpike job that was certainly a union job (we were not union). Apparently, I arrived at either lunch time or break time and was told I had to wait about an hour. As I waited in the truck I viewed the plans and specs that were handed to me when I arrived. The Weil McLain commercial hot water boiler was used to heat the creek/river near a mechanical flood gate/dam. As I recall, there was a large stainless steel heat exchanger inches away from the dam that was designed to prevent the water from freezing. This too was a very complicated install with regard to piping with massive pumps, however the gas fired burner was about as simple as they come.

We have been factory trained on a few boiler and burner brands, but we are no longer the official start-up representatives. There were just too many unknowns and we learned the contractors were typically not great payers.

Lance

Melroy is a warranty and commercial startup factory trained tech support for AO Smith. They hire us to review for code compliance and proper installation per their instructions. This is a free service to an installer, but if we determine it failed compliance the contractor would have to pay thousands to try again. Sadly we often fail startups as not ready. From no power, to improper setup, or control issues, and then there are the code failures. We had one contractor who decided to hire us to do a pre-survey before startup. It saved them money. The only exceptions we made for some clients was if it took two hours to go through security, or during the survey we came across a small problem easily fixed. I personally only had one unit found with a warranty failure out of three units. Can't blame the mfg. Some equipment costs $20-30 thousand. In some cases we are hired by contractors to train their people so they can better serve their clients. It is not an easy job, and the tools we use are expensive. It is not uncommon to do a two hour review and startup to commission the job. All is documented.

EBEBRATT-Ed

@EdTheHeaterMan said

"The book isn't always right." Took me 2 or 3 years after I started to realize this. After calling factory reps in on a few job (I could tell some stories) where you had a boiler burner that was a factory package that does not work.

I have said it before and I will say it again. If a boiler MFG makes a commercial boiler Like a Weil 88 that goes from 4 or 5 sections up to 18 or 20 who believes that the testing gets done at the factory?

I can say for a fact it does not in all cases get done.

Lets say that boiler can be fired with a Power Flame, a Webster, Carlin, Beckett, Riello whatever. And in some cases gas or oil.

so 5-20 sections means 16 different boilers x 5 different burners x 3 different fuels oil, natural and LP.

Thats only 240 different combinations

Think about what that would cost. That's why commercial jobs are different. They guy in the field figures it out.

Some MFGs do a good job, Riello for 1 I will say probably does a pretty good job when I did start-ups for Buderus.

Power Flame not so much the burners are fired into an open test pit at the factory then shipped. I saw it myself

EBEBRATT-Ed

@ScottSecor

I got sick of the start-ups.

Things were rarely ready the first time. You figure the time it will take and then time is wasted because things were installed wrong, and you make multiple trips, and they don't want to pay.

I started a Smith 19 once with a Carlin and when I got to the job the fitter didn't have water in the boiler. He put water in the boiler but the valves to the system were shut. "Don't open the valves" he said the system isn't ready.

I said why did you call? He said we have to have the heat on tomorrow

So, I started the burner, and the fire looked great, but the smoke tester showed smoke, and I had no Co2.

I shut it off cause the boiler was hot and told him don't run it I have to come back when the system is done so I can run it longer something is out of wack with this burner.

Next day he started it anyhow. He shut it off when the paint burned off the jacket. He had sent the cleanout covers back to the shop because he didn't know what they were for.

retiredguy

To @Jalen Jalen2006 this is how I will respond to your question. Before I retired in 2007 I worked for a company in Pittsburgh, Pa. for 35 years. We serviced almost any style boiler, hot water or steam, fired with almost any fuel including nat gas, propane, sewer gas, fuel oil, and even hard and soft coal. My maximum fuel input was about 25,000 cu ft of gaseous fuels and 180 gal/ hr of fuel oil (25,000,000 BTU's). I mostly traveled through all of Pennsylvania but some guys traveled all over the USA. A lot of our work was a start-up of the burners and commissioning the steam/hot water system. Since we were an H.B.Smith rep a lot of our work was with those boilers and the burners that they supplied which were usually Power Flame C's and P's. I was mostly "self taught", although I would never recommend that today. I did not live out of a suitcase but I carried one for the far away jobs. On out of town jobs, I got paid from the time I left my house, until I came back home and that included all food and hotel stays. In my later years I drove an F350 diesel that was maxed out at just over 10,000lbs and attempted to have every control I would need to complete a "no heat", "regular service", or "start-up", job. Yes, that truck was well equipped and I dreaded taking a yearly inventory. I can tell you that I loved the work. I could have lived in some of those boiler rooms. The only thing I did not like was the fuel oil smell and the soot/coal dust on your skin and clothes. In my career I must have seen just about every type and style of control you could imagine. Yes, there were a few hiccups but that came with the job. I was well paid as an employee and I have to thank them for that. I was offered jobs with other companies but they retracted when they learned what my pay rate was. I hope this gives you some insight into boiler service. A lot of things may have changed since 2007 but that is how it was then. My recommendation; learn all you can about the work you will be doing. Try to be the best service tech out there.

ethicalpaul

Thanks for sharing these stories, I loved reading them