HYDRONICS
HEATING HELP Redflash
BY DAN HOLOHAN CONTRIBUTING WRITER I 40
f you really set out to try, how would you go about losing business, and I mean losing it forever? What would you do?
Back when our business was new, and before I had
written any books, I was making my living doing seminars and consulting with homeowners who were, for the most part, rich, cold and miserable. I figured those three qualities made for the perfect client. They had lots of money but couldn’t find anyone who could tell them why their pipes and radiators were banging and their fuel bills were so high. I would go to their homes, spot the failed steam traps or missing main vents, the circulator that was in the wrong place, the boiler that was bigger than it ought to be, and I would write a report and hand them a bill that was large enough to make them wince. If they didn’t wince, I hadn’t done a good enough job of pricing my services. This brings me to a story about this house in a very
wealthy section of New Jersey. The new owner was frustrated because every 10 days or so, an 18-wheel fuel-oil truck grumbled up his street. The driver would stop, pull a long hose that was as thick as my thigh up to the oil tank’s fill pipe, plug in and whistle as the oil gushed from the truck to the tank. The new homeowner hated this man. So he hired me to see what I had to say about his
saving some fuel dollars. He was open to any suggestion. Should he stick with oil, or should he switch to gas? Should he keep the boilers he had or get new ones? Should he have the whole system repiped? Should he burn down the house? Hmm, what to do? I met him at his house, which was smaller than
Versailles, but not by much. The oil truck was there. He asked me what I wanted to do first, and I suggested that we take a tour of the place, mostly because I’m nosey and never pass on an opportunity to poke around in the stuff that rich folks like to accumulate. We went from room to room, and I ogled and gawked.
The place had gravity hot-water heat, and any of the cast- iron radiators could have held down the Graf Zeppelin. Yum! “Can we go to the basement?” I asked. “Sure,” he said. “Wait ’til you see these boilers.” “You have more than one?” "There are two,” he said, “and they're big.”
“And they’re connected to the truck,” I said. “Yes,” he said, “there’s that.” We got to the basement, where my legs suddenly
stopped working, because this place had horizontal mains made from eight-inch, screwed pipe. You ever see eight- inch screwed pipe? Trust me; it’s bigger than eight inches. I stood there with my mouth open, thinking that there was once a day in America when someone lifted those bulky hunks of iron and caught a thread. Who was that guy? How big were his arms? What sort of wrenches did he own? Where the heck did he stand? I figured it was either Popeye or Bluto. I was getting all sentimental and sloppy over my jaunt through time, when the homeowner gently reminded me
These beasts, each of which was the size of a minivan, now had tons of sand where the coal grates used to be. The burners, each bigger than the Fourth of July, hung from the doors and vomited fire deeply into the bowels of those boilers. I shut off the burners and carefully opened the door of one of the beasts. You could yodel in this boiler and get an echo.
about those boilers, so we walked a while through the basement, and that’s when I came upon the two Ideal Redflash boilers. Once again, my legs stopped working. These two had once burned coal but were now connected to the 18-wheeler out in the street. Each had a rating of 500,000 Btu/h, and both were firing. But then, firing doesn’t quite do what was going on
justice. These beasts, each of which was the size of a minivan, now had tons of sand where the coal grates used to be. The burners, each bigger than the Fourth of July, hung from the doors (I could have crouch-walked through those doors.) and vomited fire deeply into the bowels of those boilers. We could have toasted rye bread on the jackets. I shut off the burners and carefully opened the door of
one of the beasts. You could yodel in this boiler and get an echo. You could cremate your spouse in this boiler and no one would ever know. You’d probably get a No. 10 smoke for a few minutes, but other than that, you’d be fine. Seriously. “Has anyone done a heat-loss calculation on the house?”
I asked the homeowner. “Yes,” he said. “The salesman from the oil company did
one.” “Oh.” “Yeah, it didn’t take him long,” the homeowner said. “Did he go from room to room and measure the walls
and windows and whatnot?” I asked. “Did he check the attic?” “No,” the homeowner said. “He just wrote down what
was on the two labels and then gave me this quote.” He took a sheet of paper from his folder. The quote was for a single boiler, rated at 1,300,000 Btu/h. “One boiler?” I said. “Yeah, the salesman said that it’s crazy to have two
boilers. There’s twice as much stuff to break down. He also said he knew that this would be the right size for the house because these two boilers have been here for all these years, and they’ve served the house well.” “But he’s quoting 300,000 Btu/h over the total load of
e Turn to HEATING HELP on p 42
phc march 2011
www.phcnews.com
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