What I think
Comments
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"We asked for it" is true but it's also bit of a responsibility shift. Hacking of the consumer mind is a powerful and well developed science. See Edward Louis Bernays. The science of psychology calls into question some of old Mr. Thomas Paine's ideas about the natural laws of the free market that we regurgitate. The tail has been wagging the dog for all of my life and likely yours too. That's no benign happenstance. I'm 90+% done with the book "The prize" it's a history of oil. It really frames and connects a lot of how and why things have happened.
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I agree "American Made " is good for the country but probably not realistic certainly not 100%, maybe 50%
I hope (but do not think) that we learned our lesson during Covid.
We shouldn't have to buy face masks and Covid tests from China. We at least need to make things that are really necessary in our own country. It's called National Security.
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Interesting how we've gone from techs wanting to replace equipment that's perfectly fine to this.
There's absolutely nothing cheap about replacing equipment that can be repaired.
Single pipe 392sqft system with an EG-40 rated for 325sqft and it's silent and balanced at all times.
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The OP topic was techs who don't even attempt to diagnose. "you need a new one" The techs do as per, Bosses, Market, Industry. The Techs are not loose cannons. They are doing what's asked of them. Even if they had the skills to repair (many don't) and the products were more repairable and built to last (many are not) the consumers have the desires of a disposable culture and the bosses maximum profits are not in repair. It's very connected. It's not as simple as just, we have less repairable products or it's just, a lack of training or just , malfeasant bosses. I would say our current state of culture is a bit more irrational than when old Mr. T. Paine was doing his best rationalizing. Why and how is complex and interconnected, even though we all prefer the simple answers.
The hardest part is, we simply can't go back, no mater how much we would like to, no mater how much we might try. The future is a juggernaut tyrant of collective creation.
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The dystopia we are in is Brazil. I don't seem to recall them finding a solution at the end.
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"Service tech came out flashing code for lost flame signal, changed the igniter, flame sensor, unit worked so he left. unit stopped working again so he came back and changed the control board, that didn't fix it either so came back and replaced the fan, gas valve, safety devices and temp sensors, still didn't fix it" This sort of thing happens way too often, and it truly is no wonder homeowners have a hard time hiring a contractor because there is just no way they can know if they are hiring real techs or paying to fire the parts cannon.
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Trying to find a good contractor is difficult, I still don't understand how that works and it's not price related, or, at least not only price related. Usually the lowest bids will be bad news, but not always. Sometimes the highest bid is bad. Even to decide if a bid seems reasonable you need to have some knowledge about what's going on.
That said, even the best guys have bad days, and even the best make mistakes. I think everyone ends up being a parts cannon on one job or another at one point. No, you didn't just throw parts at it, but that's what it ends up looking like.
Single pipe 392sqft system with an EG-40 rated for 325sqft and it's silent and balanced at all times.
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In 46 years I never once fired a parts cannon. Just not the way I am made.
The closest I would go was to troubleshoot something as far as you can go and you can't find the problem and you think you have a bad control so you change it because there is nothing left to try.
I don't consider that the parts cannon.
We used to do this with commercial burners. You would have two boilers on a job and 1 is locking out and you can't find the issue. Techs would come back and say they couldn't find a problem . What did you do? "nothing"
No, you swap the burner primary controls and see what happens.
If the problem goes to the other burner you have a bad control. If it stays with the first burner you have a burner issue but eliminated the control as an issue.
At least you did something
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When I began in the heating business back in the 1980's that my father started, we worked mostly on thirty to fifty year old GE boilers. The majority of his customer base were WWII veterans or people of this age. Almost all of them were the original owners of their homes, or there parents were the original owners. They all seemed to have an attachment to their unique GE boilers. I suppose GE was very good at marketing these boilers. To this day I truly believe they were very well made machines and if parts were still available, some would still be running today.
We rarely tried to sell these customers a new boiler, our goal was to fix them until they could no longer be fixed. Unfortunately, in the 1990's parts were all but impossible to get. We were forced to replace them when they were beyond repair. I doubt my father made a lot of money keeping these GE boilers running, but the bills got paid and his name (and reputation) was spreading like wildfire. The business grew and so did the profits.
My point is, I was taught to fix things, not to replace things. To this day, I still think this way with many things, perhaps to a fault. However, in order to fix things, you have to at least have a an understanding of how it works. Since our local schools no longer offer any shop classes and most parents are not handy these days, how is Little Johnny or Little Susie supposed to learn?
I am by no means the handiest person in town. However, by time my brothers and I were teenagers, we knew and understood:
- How a goose neck works on a bicycle
- How a derailleur worked on a ten speed bicycle
- How to adjust brakes on a ten speed bicycle
- How to fix a flat or replace a tube on a bicycle
- When to use a socket wrench and when to use a combination wrench
- Vice grips were never the right tool
- That you needed three things for ignition (spark, fuel and air)
- Always sand wood with the grain
- How to read a tape measure down to sixteenths
- Righty tightie and lefty loosie, except on reverse threads
- Never dip the paint brush all the way to the handle
- How to check the oil in the car, lawn mower, etc. and why it was important
I suspect most people on this website knew what I knew at that age. I gather many knew these things at birth. Today, whenever I get the chance to talk to teenagers about mechanical things I am amazed at how few of them know any of the items listed above. On the positive side I just spent a few days with an old friend and his three sons (age 17, 20 and 22). Every one of these kids would know at least ten on my list.
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Like I said, "No, you didn't just throw parts at it, but that's what it ends up looking like."
Maybe it's not applicable to something like a furnace, but on some more complex things, it happens.
Single pipe 392sqft system with an EG-40 rated for 325sqft and it's silent and balanced at all times.
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i had like 6 weeks of shop in 7th grade and a semester in 8th grade. Very little of what i know i learned there. i leaned a lot for watching hometime and the woodwright's shop and this old house and reading popular mechanics and reading various home improvement and mechanics books along with seeing that whenever we hired someone to do something we got terrible quality work out of them with a few exceptions. The contractor that built an addition was terrible buy his hvac contractor was great. A neighbor that was an electrician did the electrical and he did a great job.
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Is it the Tech? The boss? a hard problem to diagnose or the rare but dreaded faulty design? I had a new tank-less install with a truly rare, once every two weeks to two months, intermittent flame failure. Under the guidance of what I know to be a good tech support team, I was involved in a many times repeated 2 hour drive to fire off the parts cannon. They eventually swapped it out at a loss for us both. I have duplicates of many good new parts. Very atypical for me and them. It happens. This very rare event doesn't make me change my policy of being genuinely willing to repair. The OP was about the modern policy of not even trying. If that's your MO, then the tech need not be very skilled. When they run in to something that's new enough that they can't trash it, the senior tech is called or re-scheduled. The unskilled tech just determines age, take pictures, measures up some, gives the speech and fires the big ol price cannon. This is what is increasingly the case. Bosses claim it's because they can't find good techs, Techs say they aren't trained or are instructed not to fix things X years old. Customers don't understand and are rightfully scared and distrusting. NEW with a warranty ends up being the attractive one shot known high expense to resolve.
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Probably the best analysis I ever read of how to properly troubleshoot a mechanical or electrical problem was in the book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. The author at one time wrote technical manuals for a living. And then he wrote this book about many things, based on a long motorcycle trip he took with his son. And the motorcycle trip turns into a long meditation on the art and science of maintaining and fixing complex mechanical things like motorcycles.
So he talks about the many problems he's had with the motorcycle, and his systematic method of fixing them. First, observe closely. Write your observations and state the problem carefully, including the conditions under which the problem manifests, if it's intermittent. Then develop some hypotheses about the possible causes. Then test each hypothesis, again carefully noting results in your (his) notebook. Don't jump to conclusions. And don't assume that there's just one thing wrong. There could be multiple things wrong, and if you only find one, you haven't completely fixed the problem. Don't get caught in "gumption traps," the times when you're totally stumped, have tried everything, and nothing works. Walk away and come back with a fresh mind.
He also analyzes all the ways things can go wrong: you're frustrated, you don't have the tool you need, you overtorque a bolt and break it off in the worst possible place, you drop a nut into the crankcase. Or, you can't find the part you need because the manufacturer classifies it as a suspension part instead of a drivetrain part, so it shows up in the "wrong" parts diagram. etc, etc.
Every pro here has probably learned by trial and error a similar methodology to troubleshooting, but it can be a long and painful learning process if you're not patient and/or don't have someone to teach you. Some people never learn because they don't have the patience or the interest.
But one of the most important things he said was, you have to care. If you don't care about what you're doing, you'll never do it well. So the first, and most important thing, is to care about what you're working on.
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One of my neighbors is having their kitchen remodeled and adding a half bath - no permit. She said I could come by and take a look at their work now and then to make sure at least the plumbing looked OK and when I did, I saw that there were some issues: copper x male adapters into 100 year old galvanized pipe, 1-1/2" p-traps on showers, leaving original cast iron drains in the wall……I suggested some corrections to the lead guy and they refused to do them and they have banned me from the job; I'm a nosy neighbor. I told the owner that she might have problems in the future and she said, "Just let it go."
To the current topic, many - most? - homeowners really don't know the right way to approach suggestions and work done by the guy that knocks on their door and works on their house. They want to trust them. Do they really need a new boiler or is it just a tripped spill switch. People know how to use computers really well, but not the workings of their house.
8.33 lbs./gal. x 60 min./hr. x 20°ΔT = 10,000 BTU's/hour
Two btu per sq ft for degree difference for a slab1 -
"One of my neighbors is having their kitchen remodeled and adding a half bath - no permit."
There's the first problem. Homeowners who don't realize that having jobs done with permits actually protects them.
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Maybe engineered obsolesence is a good thing with the rate that technology advancement is going. I just replaced a functioning furnace and ac system simply due to its advanced age. The refrigerent was R-22 and not available so why wait until a breakdown? the new furnace is half the size and uses a pvc pipe for flue gases. That is a remarkable improvement! I certainly wouldnt want to upgrade to a newer 70% efficient furnace with energy prices perpetually rising.
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Then theres the problem my ressi lead told me today. Called york for a blower motor and encoder. Cost is 2000+. York guy says, we can sell you the replacement unit for 1600.
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R-22 is available although I keep seeing insane markups by service companies on it claiming it isn't. It is no longer manufactured but it is available. If it hasn't leaked until now it won't leak later. You cant say that about the new system.
You could buy the motor out of the same catalog York did for about $400.
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Assuming it's ECM, a lot of them are allegedly programmed by the manufacturer.
If that's true, how would you program it?
Single pipe 392sqft system with an EG-40 rated for 325sqft and it's silent and balanced at all times.
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R-22 is still available and I've never seen a 70% furnace?
Even the furnace in the house I grew up in from 1958 was rated 80%.
Single pipe 392sqft system with an EG-40 rated for 325sqft and it's silent and balanced at all times.
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The air wasn't as cold as it should have been. In any case, I can't see spending money on a repair when it could go toward a new system. It was 37 years old and time for retirement.
The innards of this new system is unrecognizable to me. It even had a window in the service panel so I can see the fault code.
The only drawback of the new furnace is when I got to the house for the inspection, it was turn off for two weeks and freezing outside. It took 4 hours to go from 40F to 69F. The old furnace would have had me there in 30 minutes.
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You made the right decision then, no one would invest in a 37 year old system.
What's your design temp there?
Single pipe 392sqft system with an EG-40 rated for 325sqft and it's silent and balanced at all times.
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My understanding is the older natural draft stuff is in the low 70% despite their self claimed ratings. True 80% came with draft inducers.
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My 2011 82% boiler is natural draft?
Single pipe 392sqft system with an EG-40 rated for 325sqft and it's silent and balanced at all times.
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I have no idea what the design temp is. I left it up to the contractor to size it. According to this link though, 93F and 15F :
When the house finally did reach setpoint temp, the furnace maintained setpoint regardless of how cold it got outside so, I must say, the young contractor did a good job. It got down to 18F outside and it was a toasty 69 all night long. We'll do the air conditioner side when it warms up.
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@ChrisJ "My 2011 82% boiler is natural draft?"
2011 isn't really the older I was talking about. As I'm sure you know, a boiler and a furnace have different heat exchanger designs. The big thick welded steel clam shell furnace exchangers with big iron burners are not 80%. Your Laars mini therm or what ever might be on the verge of condensing but good engineers back in the day had few reasons to efficiency seek or flirt with condensation.
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Absolutely,
But they used similar systems to rate them, no?
The furnace I grew up with had a cast iron heat exchanger and cast iron burners.
Single pipe 392sqft system with an EG-40 rated for 325sqft and it's silent and balanced at all times.
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@ChrisJ
How a vintage furnace and a late 80's boiler design are "rated" is not in my knowledge base. I can't really compare them. The Mainer responds is: it's hard tell'n, not know'n. It would be very odd for furnace manufactures to go through the redesign trouble of draft induced systems if they had already achieved 80% without it.
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I recall the nameplates on old 60's Lennox furnaces.
The input might be 100,000 btuh.
The the max allowable bonnet capacity would be 80,000 btuh.
Not sure what that means…..maybe overfire it up to where there is 80,000 into the plenum/bonnet?
But there were no claims for efficiency back then. At best maybe steady state numbers but certainly no AFLUE numbers.
Teemok, I recall seeing "The Prize" on PBS in the 90's.
IIRC, it claimed that the cause of all war beginnings was the pursuit of energy (oil or coal).
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I guess this furnace was similar.
I took this as 105K in 84K out.
Single pipe 392sqft system with an EG-40 rated for 325sqft and it's silent and balanced at all times.
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And I learned the hard way that even though you drop down 2 sizes for the replacement furnace, the existing ductwork is still too small and the new 90%+ will cycle on limit with a pleated filter.
The old beasts could stand a lot of temp rise across the RA/SA. Also, they had about 30 X 30 inches of air filter in the "hammock" frame.
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Are we assuming something about the relationship between a bonnet capacity and input and efficiency?
There's burner efficiency, how well combustion takes place and then there's the BTU transfer to the indoor air or water if you like.
One engineer might like more CYA in a bonnet? Maybe there's an accepted standard ratio that has squat to do with efficiency? (Edit: this is me thinking the size of the actual component, "the flue bonnet" had a rating of it's own. Ha! It's just dumb code speak for max output)
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I take it as it uses X amount of fuel, and produces X amount of heat output.
I'm not sure how else it could be taken? How else would you size a furnace? The input amount is only relevant to sizing the fuel source. The Bonnet capacity would be the only thing you have to go on for sizing it to the structure.
However,
This is really, really far off topic. Maybe we need a new thread about older equipment and alleged efficiencies.
Single pipe 392sqft system with an EG-40 rated for 325sqft and it's silent and balanced at all times.
1
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