The “Good Deed”

We have a customer with an early 2000s boiler. It’s been going in and out, every time we go the system is running. Or they cancel the call. They want a price for a new system.

I get there yesterday, they asked me about replacement: why it’s necessary. I say it’s not necessary, if the boiler is not leaking, we can keep on repairing it

I walk up to the boiler, no hot water in the indirect. No codes on the integrated control board. I jump the TT at the boiler, it fires.

I trace it back to a loose connection at the Taco; the wire itself is dropping in and out. I thought I’ll be the hero and get them going, even though my role was sales/estimating at that moment.

The low-voltage line gets away from me, drops right into the line voltage term—-Bang

The transformer hisses like I’ve never seen, like there was a serpent in there. I replaced the transformer, flip the tripped breaker back on, and another pop. The integrated control board gets hammered.

Great, I’m trying to help these people and I just throttled myself into the ground.

Thankfully, I’ve got an old friend/customer that knows circuitry very well. I call him up at quarter after five, he says come on by. He looks at it and says it’s gonna take me a couple hours, “I’ll call you when it’s done”

I go over there around 8 o’clock. Pick up the board. He says “I can’t guarantee it’s gonna work but give it a try”

Today I pop it in, it lights up like a champ.

Does anybody else have any “good deeds getting punished” stories?

I can’t believe I’ve been doing it this long and I’ve never gotten in trouble with a low-voltage to line voltage short. Lesson learned.