What was the best MacGuyver moment you actually saw on a job site?
This was mine. The condensate tank started leaking and the onsite maintenance tech used a 5 gallon plastic bucket to collect the condensate. He installed a float and had the pump on the bottom. Ok your turn.
Boiler Lessons
Comments
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Yes, thats a good one. I've seen that work around several times using a small wash tub and a sump pump.
Dennis Pataki. Former Service Manager and Heating Pump Product Manager for Nash Engineering Company. Phone: 1-888 853 9963
Website: www.nashjenningspumps.com
The first step in solving any problem is TO IDENTIFY THE PROBLEM.1 -
I got 2 of them:
#1 residential oil burner and old Delco that had the oil pump internal inside the motor. The pump had quit, I had the flu and a night time service call. I went back to the shop and found an old burner on the floor. Took it back to the job. Set it on the floor and connected the oil suction line to the "new" burner and a nozzle line from the "new" burner to the existing burner. Wired the motors in parallel. Basically using the spare shop burner for a transfer pump. It fired up no leaks and I left. Put a new Beckett in the next day.
#2 Post office had replaced the boiler and HW storage tank a year ago. Christmas Eve flooded boiler room , no heat and the burner and boiler were down in a pit. Pit still full of water power on to burner and control panel lights still on!!! Killed the power and pumped water out of pit. Really cold out. Dried everything off as good as I could. Removed primary control. Put power on. Bumped motor starter and motor ran. Jumped power to ig trans and pilot gas valve and pilot lit. Put jumper wires on to burner motor starter and pilot and with pilot on jumpered to gas valve. Mod motor dead ran burner on low fire built steam and heated building for a few hours baby sitting it. Shut off power and pulled jumpers. Told them to call me if they needed heat. Old brick building held heat once it was warmed up. Returned Monday with new mod motor, ignition trans and primary control. When the plumber installed the new HW storage tank he used a BLACK plug and it blew out causing flood.
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This was not me but another employee. He went to a large hotel building in central Pennsylvania fora no "heat call" on a cold winter's night. The Honeywell motorized gas valve did not work and a replacement was not available. He removed the valve actuator, allowed the pilot to light and used a "C" clamp to open the valve. He stayed there all night watching the boiler fire so there was heat. Our boss was furious due to the size of that boiler running with no safeties devices.
Here is one more: Shanksville, Pa. The oil tanks at the old high school became plugged with an oil bacteria until the oil pumps could no longer pump the oil to the burners. I installed 2, 55 gallon oil tanks as day tanks for the burners to use to heat the school. The local oil company came daily to resupply those 2 tanks until the underground tanks could be pumped out, and the tanks sanitized and refilled with new clean fuel oil.
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Why should the boss be furious? Your fellow employee stayed there he was the safety. I don't see anything wrong with it.
Who would want to shut down an entire hotel?
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Many moons ago a friend of mine's furnace stopped running in the middle of winter. Culprit was a blown transformer.
Late in the evening with everything closed. Luckily he had a pair of older desk lamps with 12V bulb and transformer in the base. Wired two of them in series for 24V, hooked it up to the furnace and fire right up. Kept it going till the replacement part arrived.
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EBE-Bratt : The boss was furious because...."No good deed goes unpunished! " Mad Dog
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Reminds me of a couple of years ago when I had a cooked transformer on one of two HW boilers at one of the buildings.
Wired both boilers off the good transformer and it got us through the weekend.
Trying to squeeze the best out of a Weil-McLain JB-5 running a 1912 1 pipe system.1 -
I think I might be related to MacGuyver somehow.
No heat call on a cold Saturday night. Church with one boiler and gas power burner will start but trips off after a few minutes. Pulled my analog flame signal tester out and found my plug in 'Y' adapter failed. Ran out to the truck to get my soldering iron and learned I did not have it with me. I was pretty sure the flame signal was weak. Found a pair of cheap headphones in the lost and found basket. Cut the male end off of the cord and plugged this end into the Honeywell programmer. Taped the test leads to the earphone cord and read the flame signal. Dialed the flame in and the church was warm for Sunday service.
Another weekend call on a cold winter Friday night. Local public school has two Mills hot water boilers, both fitted with Industrial Combustion D series burners. Principal calls me on my cell phone and claims heat was off for two days and the company that won the contract for the heating work cannot send a senior technician for at least two more days. In the company's defense they did send someone. Both boilers are down. I graduated from this high school twenty years earlier and the principal was one of my former teachers. I made no promises, but agreed to take a look. The custodians tried everything they could, but did not find anything wrong.
One of the boilers was off due to the manual reset aquastat being tripped (this was hidden on the top of the boiler). I pushed the red button and the burner came to life. Thankfully, I had a replacement for the operating aquastat that failed in my truck and replaced same. The second burner needed to be reset, but the reset button was missing on the Fireye E series programmer. Apparently, the custodians were told to hit the reset button by the company that was servicing the equipment. I checked stock on the truck and shop that was at Dad's house two blocks away from the job and learned we did not have the card with the reset button in stock. However, I did find a momentary push button switch. I soldered the momentary button to one end of a piece of two conductor thermostat wire and soldered the other end to the Fireye board. My wire soldering skills are not great by any means, but it worked and we got both burners firing for the long weekend. I wrote a long winded note for the other contractor that they need to replace the Fireye card asap. That summer we were awarded the contract for boiler maintenance again. The MacGuyver reset button was still dangling from the control. Yes, we picked up the new card and replaced the old one.
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I am sure many of us have such stories.
And when you go through a situation like that you NEVER forget it. The stress just burns it into our brains
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In a very rural town on call on a winter evening. I'm working for a new company. Arrive at an old farm house for a leaking oil tank. What I find is a pretty good stream from and end seam of a very old tank. Magnetic patch won't work and no phone. I used a small piece of gasket and a Sheetmetal screw to driven in to the hole to stem the flow. Worked like a charm. tank was replaced in the morning. The tank guys didn't know the story and thought some nut had stuffed the screw in there. They might have been right.
Miss Hall's School service mechanic, greenhouse manager, teacher, dog walker and designated driver
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I had a smart old timer custodian at a school in VT with a fire tube boiler. It was cold and they only had one boiler. One of the tubes leaked and he shut it down. Went down to the wood shop (when schools had them) and found a piece of hardwood and turned it down on the lathe. pounded it into the tube.
Boiler back on line
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Well, Ed, it appears that he wasn't all that smart……………….:)
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I used a whirlybird Sprinker to temporary replace a bad condenser fan motor …
There was an error rendering this rich post.
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Why do you say that? That's and old trick that was commonly used. Better than letting the place freeze up.
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I understood it was YOU who went down to the wood shop and fabricated the plug after he called you!
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Here is a real Macguyver story. In my early days I replaced a B&G prv on a hot water system in the middle of nowhere. Without thinking, I cut the 1/2" copper supply since there was no union. I went to my truck to get a union or coupling but had none. I cleaned the copper and used silfoss silver solder to butt solder the 2 ends together You do what you have to do to finish the job. .
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A coworker told me he had done the exact same thing and said it worked. I never had the guts to try that.
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you must've had a tee and a cap or a male and female adapter or something. the galvanized in my mom's house had a tee and plug for a 90 where there would have been no other reason for it other than they were short a 3/4 galvanized ell.
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I run two fire tube boilers and have a box of tapered wooden plugs for just that reason. Haven't had to use them yet
Miss Hall's School service mechanic, greenhouse manager, teacher, dog walker and designated driver
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I imagine not around at the time but is an good example where Shark-bite coupler and stops would be useful to keep on truck for the “oh poop” jobs 🫠
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I LOVE these stories. I'm just an old, amateur, handyman, but I've been known to "MacGuyver" stuff myself.
Steve
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If you've got a paperclip, a match, some duct tape, and a piece of string, you can conquer the world.
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Lol so many great stories A coworker babysat a boiler all night by opening the valve manually, letting the boiler get up to temperature, and then shut it off.
Ray Wohlfarth
Boiler Lessons0 -
residential gas valves once commonly had a smaller version of that
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I lived in a four unit converted townhouse in Boston with hot water heat and an indirect water heater off the gas boiler. Twice during my 11 years there the zone valve power head for the indirect failed.
Until the technician could get there to fix it, I opened the indirect zone valve manually and heated the indirect by turning up the space thermostat as needed. We had adequate hot water.
Our landlady was profoundly impressed.—
Bburd0 -
Geeze Ray, that looks like a B50 General Controls gas valve. Very old but very reliable.
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On my first visit to our school steam boiler, I noticed that one of the 4" HW steam valves was operated with a 15' stick. You would lift the plunger/shaft for heat, wedge the stick down on the floor, and then drop it when overheated. Duct tape was involved in that it held 2 8' long sticks together to get the proper length. The boiler was set to maintain pressure all season long.
Upon investigating, it was obvious that a C-clip had fallen out of the linkage.
Other wise the motor worked correctly. I did come up with some form of clip that put the valve back in the auto mode.
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i mean bailing wire or probably even a twist tie or paperclip would work
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It might have been a clip from some sort of time clock that worked with a little refashion.
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I meant more the original repair, replacing the clip in some fashion is easier than the contraption with the sticks
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This one came from the previous owner. There was this panelling boxing in the entire boiler, it was charred black in one section.
This is the base of an oil boiler, I'm sure previous owner felt like quite the mcgeiver. Maybe he was trying to launch the whole house in a mcgeiver sized explosion
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In the mid 80's I came across a job in Levittown LI for a water leak....the York boiler was under the stairs. I went under there with a light to find out what was leaking and discovered someone long before me had McGuyvered the switching relay burnt out transformer with a Lionel train speed controller!??! There was a tag hanging on the controller that said "don't set higher than 7 you'll burn out the thermostat" Can't make the **** up!
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Maybe some of you remember the old Honeywell RA890 flame safeguard primary controls. They are long gone.
More than once unfortunately I have seen where people would stick a match book in the flame relay to keep the burner from locking out once it lit.
Dangerous stuff
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a little knowledge is dangerous!!
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A few years ago my son living in Grosse Pointe Park, the power failed for about a week in the winter. He had about 50 tropical fish tanks in his basement. I had him buy a blue flame non vented gas heater, ran a 1/2" OD line from an adapter I put into a tee and he only lost about 2 fish. That was a close call…Fremont woulda loved it…
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mcgyvered would be if you used garden hose.
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I did the same thing when I was on maintenance for an organization that had group homes. I am not an oil technician, the photocell went out on the boiler during a very cold snap, heavy snow storm with 20 - 30 mph winds. When I got there the house was pretty cold and no way to get a burner tech out at that hour on those roads (I HAD to do the run, didn't enjoy it). I was there for most of the night IIRC with my finger on the reset or something to keep it running. It was 15 or so years ago, I can't remember exactly what I did but I do remember my hand got really tired. If I hadn't done what I did good chance there would have been a lot of BaseRay on the second floor that would have had to be replaced. That house wasn't the best from an insulation standpoint. Unfortunately management only noticed the overtime costs, not what I had saved.
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@epmiller typical of management.
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@retiredguy great catch I use the pic in my boiler seminars
Sometimes you gotta do what you can to maintain heat
Ray Wohlfarth
Boiler Lessons0
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