The majority of American oil-fired boilers, and many gas-fired ones as well, use the single-pass heat exchanger type, whereas,  European boilers like Buderus, use a triple-pass heat exchanger. What this means is an American oil-fired single-pass boiler may have a 400-500 degree stack temperature (temperature of the flue gas going up the chimney), while a Buderus triple-pass design will have between 250 and 350 degrees going up into the atmosphere. That’s approximately 30% less heat going up the chimney and instead going into the space heating water.

What you don’t have as much of going up the chimney with European designs is C02 and a lot of other “nasties”. American-made boilers of the oil variety spew a lot more greenhouse gasses and S02 (the key ingredient in acid rain) into the atmosphere.

Interestingly enough, you don’t see many American fuel oil companies selling efficient European boilers, because that would reduce the amount of oil they would sell to their customers. I’ve often wondered if there is a further ‘cozy’ relationship between the fuel oil industry and American boiler manufacturers. American fuel oil consumers, you gotta wake up! In my opinion (from someone who started his career as an oil burner technician for fuel companies in the early 80s) you should never hire your fuel company to install your heating equipment, or service it either. That’s the same as letting the fox guard the hen house. Certainly, there are some ethical fuel dealers who do offer high-efficiency equipment and who employ decent technicians and sales staff.

The worst American oil-fired boiler types are the kind that utilize a “tankless coil” to heat domestic hot water. These boilers are so in-efficient that they have been banned in some states, like New York, unless it can be shown that the appliance has “an acceptable standby loss”. In my opinion, there is no acceptable standby loss with a boiler that heats potable hot water with a tankless coil, as the boiler must maintain temperature 24/7/365, and much of the heat generated goes right up the chimney. Of course, a stack damper would help, but not eliminate that heat loss up the chimney, not to the room the boiler is installed in.

Here is a video of a Burnham V73 boiler with a tankless coil – this equipment really eats up the fuel!

The better way to heat potable hot water is with a triple-pass boiler design like the Buderus G-series, and an indirect-fired water heater like a Triangle Tube Smart series. But then your fuel company will hate you if you switch from the American Oil Eaters they love to sell to their customers.

The only American boilers I buy are steam boilers, because the Europeans don’t heat with steam, they heat with predominantly forced hot water, because they know better than to heat with the least efficient of all heating technologies – steam and, therefore, don’t make steam boilers as a rule.

In the fall of 2010 I was set to rebuild a Sunbeam coal-fired gravity hot air furnace that was installed in 1889, and converted to oil in 1959. Set that is until the 80-year old owner saw the dirt, dust and debris that had accumulated in the single wooden return trunk. Rather than have me clean the trunk, reseal the cast iron sections, replace the oil burner and combustion chamber, primary control, fuel filter, smoke-pipe and draft regulator, she told me to replace the entire furnace with a forced hot air model. While I was looking forward to bringing this otherwise perfectly sound furnace back to top performance and safety, I considered the other positive: I would make much more money on the sale of a new furnace altogether – the thing that motivates most in business to replace the old with the new.

Here’s the old system:

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I know the old Sunbeam and ducts look like they are, well, old. But I assure you, this system was a solid as it was the day it was installed in the late 1800s. A little duct cleaning and some paint and this could have looked new again, and worked like a charm.

Here’s the new system:

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While I think the Thermo-Pride furnace that I installed is the best oil-fired furnace on the market today, the same can’t be said for the new duct and fittings, which repeatedly broke during installation. That’s right, the new duct and fittings were such poor quality I was embarrassed to install them. Were they made in China? I don’t know because there was no name on the product, only a bar code. Not only that, when I returned the unused and broken elbows to the supply house (Air Purchases, Inc – API – Manchester, NH) I was met with the worst customer service I’ve ever experienced in the trade. After having an account with this company since 1988, I closed it when I got no better treatment from the owner of the company when I complained about the awful treatment the day (6 months later) he called me.

But this post is not about one company, nor one product. No, this post is about what is happening in the HVACR industry as a whole. Since I started in the trade (1980) there has been a major paradigm shift with manufacturing of HVACR equipment and materials. This shift can be analogized by the old Sunbeam furnace/soldered tin ducts, that lasted well over a hundred years, with that of new equipment and materials that are made to fail so “the consumer” will have to buy more products – that also don’t last – and the vicious cycle perpetuates.

This new era of excessive consumerism is designed to do one thing: make a few people very rich, at the expense of the often very ignorant consumer and/or tradesman.

I know what some of you are saying, “but that’s what keeps the economy going!” Yes, following WWII our leaders, both government and corporate, decided that continuance of the white hot economy that the war created was something that needed to be continued, so consumerism was created to do just that. My friends, consumerism has taken an ugly turn for the worse.

It’s not bad enough that we are destroying our natural world through excessive human population, therefore, consumption, but now manufacturers are going to Third World countries with the absolute worst environmental and human rights records for cheap (often poisonous) products that don’t last, at the expense of American manufacturing workers, tradesmen and consumers.

Here is a short list of the worst products on the market for HVACR.

1. Imported Valves and Fittings
2. Imported Grilles, Registers and Diffusers
3. Imported Sheet Metal – Pipe & Fittings
4. Imported “High-Efficient” Cast Aluminum and Stainless Steel Boilers and Furnaces
5. Imported Electronic Controls
6. PEX Tubing
7. Press-Type Copper Fittings and Valves
8. Pre-made Copper and Steel Manifolds
9. Anything that is advertised as “Save Time and Money”
10. Many More Than Time Permits Mentioning

Here’s a product that oughta turn heads, like the day it did when it exploded and almost took off a worker’s head, in Exeter, NH. This valve is made in China and is akin to the majority of valves on the market and bought and installed continually by tradesmen who think they are either getting, or giving a deal, presumably, to their customers. This valve is a private label for the largest supply house chain in the Northeast, F.W. Webb, a company that seems more interested in how many skew numbers move through the cash register each business day, than the quality of the products they supply to tradesmen to install, and the proof of this is the low quality private label products they sell under the names PVF Limited and Pure Pro:

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With each passing year I see more cheap Third World products on the shelves of supply  house like Webb and API. It doesn’t matter that I complain that their fittings are high in lead or Zinc, or they fail almost immediately at times. Nope, my complaints and concerns fall on deaf ears, as the boys at the top of these companies are well aware of what I call the Wal-Mart Syndrome – a race-to-the-bottom-of-price. But it’s not the lowest price these financial wizards are so concerned with; it’s obviously profits,no matter the quality. This is the common business MO throughout our suffering capitalist system. As a tradesman of 30-plus years, the thing that distresses me the most is the crap wholesalers peddle to me with few, if any, alternatives. How am I to produce great work with crappy products? (I invent and develop my own products, actually. And they’re all made in America by hard-working, quality-minded craftsmen.)

These guys all know that everybody expects a deal. What they don’t know –  and how would they, they’re not craftsman – is that low price does not necessarily equal value. Low price, in my book, means somebody (or the environment) is paying a hefty price.

So who’s getting the s**t end of the stick?

When tradesmen buy the cheapest parts they can find they are ripping off the consumer or themselves. How? When tradesmen buy a part and mark up the sale of the part to his customer, this is expected and without a mark-up, no business will stay in business for long. This is ordinarily honest business exchange of goods and services – all costs should be considered for mark-up.

Say a tradesman buys a part for $100 and multiplies it by 2 and sells the part for $200. Now what if he gets “a deal” on a cheap import and pays $50 for it. He can either sell it for the same $200 price as the quality made part (gouging the customer), or he can apply the same multiplier (2) and sell it for $100 (he takes profit opportunity from himself – he only made $50). Who got the worst deal with the sale of the cheap Chinese part in this example, the tradesman or the end-user? The tradesman lost out on a much greater mark-up, for a quality part, which keeps him in the game, and his customer was sold a crappy part that won’t last and he’ll soon be in the market again for the same part. Both lose equally, in a strict economic sense.

Then who makes out in this cheap-imports ponzi scheme? The supplier, because his margins are far greater on cheap imports than on high quality, and relatively expensive, domestically made products. This is what The Home Depot, Wal-Mart, Lowes and all the other so-called big box stores have figured out. They also know that the best place to get cheap products is in the developing Third World, as no smart American manufacturer can possibly compete with workers who earn $15 a month and live in thatched roof huts, or chicken coop style low class worker dormitories. High quality parts don’t move as well when a cheap alternative is on the shelf next to it.

Another way tradesmen shoot themselves in the foot is with products that are purported to “save them installation time”.  Take PEX tubing for example: installation of PEX is usually very quick, quicker than copper piping, but the cost is often virtually the same, even more money per foot. But the time to install it is much less. The key word is “less”. Less time means less money the tradesman makes. Afterall, aren’t we in the business of selling our labor, too?

So when tradesmen give up the time it takes to pipe a system in copper by using products such as PEX tubing, pre-made copper or steel manifolds, press-type copper systems, etc., so they can “save time”, they are giving away their profit-making opportunity to the manufacturer of the so-called time-saving products. Meanwhile, they are still selling the job to the customer for about the same amount of money, given PEX and related fittings are generally more expensive than copper. Throw in the cheap valves and other fittings with stickers on them that say Thailand, or Malaysia, or China, and what tradesmen are doing is installing a system that not only looks like crap, is devoid of true craftsmanship and won’t last very long. They are giving their customer low value. But manufacturers love them for it!

The other big scam on the buying public and tradesmen is high-efficiency boilers, furnaces and water heaters. In the next post I will reveal why this is the greatest scam ever pulled on building owners by the industry, and why they are not actually reducing anyone’s carbon footprint like they are purported to do. What’s worse, from a tradesman’s perspective is the messenger is often the one who is shot, for an offense he didn’t commit.

Stay tuned.

When I invented the new breed of circulator flanges and valves in the 1990s, I did so with quality driving the design, not price. My first isolation flange prototype was actually fashioned from a Taco, Inc. 3/4″ threaded bronze flange that was machined to press-fit with a machined 3/4″ Apollo copper ball valve.

I licensed these flange and valve inventions to Taco in 1999. 6 weeks after Taco filed for a “Utility” patent on my behalf, Webstone Valves’ Michael Reck applied for a provisional patent, then 2 weeks later filed another provisional patent application on modifications of my designs and started advertising them for sale in numerous trade journals. Reck failed to provide the United States Patent Office with “all known prior art” (mine) and was successful in getting a patent of very similar valve design.

What became the standard fare in the trade for isolation flanges for circulators, has everything to do with a race-to-the-bottom in price for manufacture of designs that appeal to tradesmen in price range. This desire for lowest manufacturing cost has lead to compromises in construction that result in leaking and downright dangerous valves.

These valves are Watts isolation flanges that leak, yet they were installed on 9/30/05.

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Here is the YouTube video of the valve leaking out the packing o-ring around the valve stem. In the video I mistakenly identified the leaking valves as Webstone. They are in fact Watts’ isolation flanges; not Webstone.

To replace the leaking Watts valves s in this threaded steel and iron supply and return primary/secondary manifold piping will involve a full day of re-piping with copper. There are no quality isolation flanges on the market, but my latest inventions address this issue.

Here is a PVF Limited (FW Webb) low-quality valve that literally exploded out the end of a high pressure pipe. I was allowed to take these pictures by an employee at FW Webb, in Exeter, NH. He told me the valve almost took a female worker’s head off when it let go. He also told me that Webb has redesigned their foreign valves so they won’t explode.

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This is my 1st isolation flange fashioned with a Taco threaded bronze flange and an Apollo copper ball valve.

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Here are my proprietary valve innovations all constructed with Apollo ball valve components – I just designed the valve bodies.

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I know there has been a mass defection by manufacturers and tradesmen alike toward inexpensive valves made in China, but fellow tradesmen, what you are doing is contributing to the demise of the valve industry and you are doing yourselves, your trade and your customers a huge disservice that is costing everyone. Meanwhile, we are shipping U.S. jobs overseas.

Once upon a time this trade and country was about quality and pride was displayed in the products we manufactured and in the moniker: Made in America. That time has returned!

These are my latest isolation flange creations that are simply the best quality you can buy. And they are all proudly Made In America!

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Contact us if you would like a price and availability for GuruStreetFlanges, GuruStreetAccessoryTees and GuruHandles with your brand and valve designation on them.

When I began my HVAC career in 1980 the fuel company that employed me had amassed a huge customer base that still heated with the dawn of oil burner technology. Because Tenney Fuels, Inc. was the Timken “Silent Automatic” dealer in the Concord, NH area, they still had a sizable number of fully functioning rotary oil burners that I was expected to service and, sadly I say today, replace with newer technology.

One might think that new technology means “better” technology, but one might also think only in terms of the advertising that accompanies the new technology. While I am not fundamentally against new technology, especially in light of purported evidence of how fossil fuels are messing up our natural environment – BP oil spill in the Gulf, Global Warming, discarded non-recyclable petroleum-based products into dump zones in the oceans, etc., I do stop to think about longevity and the life cycle cost of so-called new technology over that of early HVAC equipment designs. With that said, oil burners are firmly imprinted in my brain, both the old and the new.

When I think of oil burners the 1st one that comes to mind is the Timken Silent Automatic, rotary burner. Here are a couple of ads portraying the Timken: The Morning Herald, Gloversville, NY, and Vintage Ads. The Timken had just one part that routinely wore out (aside from electrode porcelain insulator), the track that fitted grilles perched on top and the basis for flame retention. Because at least one electrode created an electrical arc between it and the steel track that circled the outer wall of the hearth, eventually, a hole was formed in the track and distorted and weakened the arc to the point that “delayed ignition” would result, often with a consequential low-level explosion. I responded to a Timken delayed ignition service call in 1981 at the home of a blind man who greeted me at the front door. He was covered with soot from head to toe, not realizing that the explosion in his basement had sent the smokepipe flying, as well as much of the soot that the Timken amassed inside. The unwitting man felt his way around his basement and covered his hands with soot, which ended up on the surface of everything he touched afterward.

So with a story like that one, why would anyone think a Timken was such a good oil burner? It had one major thing going for it that is largely missing from today’s technology – long-lasting simplicity. The Timken needed no fuel pump, oil filter (it had a permanent oil strainer), complicated electronics, exotic metal alloys, overly-engineered components or excessive legalese. The same can’t be said for anything new-oil-burner. My underlying point in this post is the Timken was all about longevity and the KISS (keep it simple stupid) principal. Despite its delayed ignition shortcomings, the Timken was built to last.

As was the Stewart Warner, Winkler Low Pressure L2 gun-type oil burner. Like its Timken contemporary, the Winkler had a local Concord, NH dealer – Ferns Oil Company, which I would work for as a technician from 1984 to 1986. Ferns had a tremendous number of Winklers installed in the concord area, which I got my hands dirty on on a regular basis. Though the L2 burner had more moving parts than the Timken Rotary, those parts almost never needed to be replaced. The burner fuel pump was a massive iron dual piston pump and the motor that drove it was built like a battleship, and the burner itself weighed nearly as much as one. It seemed like everything post Great Depression and WWII was built to last the worst our world could throw at us. The L2 even had a permanent oil burner nozzle and no oil filter. Just the same, you could probably burn old tires through that pump and nozzle. Joking aside, the downside to the L2 is that it burned with a high smoke number, which caused heavy soot build-up in the boiler and smokepipe – something I grew to despise, as a technician who had to clean this dinosaur. Again, the Winkler components would very infrequently fail; only technology would cause the Winkler and Timken to be replaced. (Today, there is virtually no historical documentation about Winkler, or Stewart Warner, for that matter, as British Tire and Rubber destroyed all of the documents in its possession before selling the instrumentation division to Maxima Technologies.)

There were others: Torrid Heat, Kalamazoo, Quiet Heat, GM Delco, and a host of other brands that all vied for emerging #2 Fuel market share. Coal was irreversibly on its way out as a home-heating fuel source. Of course, there are many drivers behind technological change, but change does not always equal advancement. At what point do we really advance our ways of life in terms of comfort, safety, energy efficiency and so on? Should we consider an oil burner that is purported to be 88% efficient (there are many measure of efficiency, by the way), but only lasts 20 years and is riddled with service calls by design, an advancement over an oil burner that is 80% efficient and lasts 40 years with few service requirements?

Yes, all oil burners need to be routinely maintained, even the new ones, so let’s focus for a minute on life cycle analysis (LCA). “The term ‘life cycle’ refers to the notion that a fair, holistic assessment requires the assessment of raw material production, manufacture, distribution, use and disposal including all intervening transportation steps necessary or caused by the product’s existence.” – Wikipedia. I do not intend to do this analysis for oil burning equipment, nor any other HVACR products, but I’ll bet that a properly done life cycle analysis of new oil and gas burner technology would not show that we really are gaining much ground over the ancient technology of yesteryear, even though new appliances burn less fuel. Think about all the service calls on newer equipment and the wear and tear on the service vehicles needed to bring the technician to the rescue. What about the gas and oil they consume? The same goes for the vehicles that mine, manufacture and transport the personnel and materials for the new products that may not last more than a dozen or so years, to your building to replace the older, more long-lasting equipment. Those are just a fraction of the considerations required of a professional LCA, but who does an LCA anyway? You can bet that manufacturers don’t do it.

My point was just made. Shouldn’t we ponder LCA before we purchase new, so-called, energy efficient gas and oil appliances? I could name many American brands that are new, yet pitifully inefficient and built-to-fail, but I will resist the urge. All I will say is, Buyer Beware. There is only 1 oil burner and 1 oil-fired boiler that I would recommend that my gut feeling tells me would win out in an LCA contest and those are Riello and Buderus, respectively. Riello perfected their oil burner technology in the 1950s and Buderus has been making cast iron stoves, furnaces and boilers since the 1700s and is the oldest continually operating foundry in the world. American boiler manufacturers seem to like the build-to-fail-and-burn-excessive-fuel business model. I’ll also bet there is a whole lot of political connectedness between these manufacturers and fuel oil companies and associations, but I have no proof whatsoever. I just look at European fuel prices and the high quality appliances that come from Europe with the built-to-last-and-burn-minimal-fuel business model, then I need to look no further to see the correlation and what brands would win the LCA contest.

If we are going to design new technologies that are more than, analogously speaking, perpetual motion machines that don’t really work, then we’d better pay a lot of attention as a society to life cycle cost and implement our discoveries into future designs and technologies.

I can’t say it enough, Buyer Beware!

When I hear the painful sounds of an A/C system owner’s words declaring the last service technician to work on their system simply topped off the low level of refrigerant in their air conditioning system (or refrigeration system, for that matter), I’m reminded of how little so-called technicians really understand and/or care about refrigerant leaks and how the system owner is largely kept in the dark about the realities of the leak. These 2 facts are what prompt me to step to the plate and unveil the realities of refrigerant leaks for all to see. For starters, operating an air conditioning system involves several net costs: the initial cost of installation, the cost to operate and the cost to service/repair. Let’s break these 3 down.

The cost of an A/C installation represents the available budget of the system purchaser and the price quoted by the ultimate installer – this is where the future operating costs of the system take form. If the system owner budgeted for a high quality system, then they either received a high quality system or they think they did, but really got something else. It’s a difficult job finding a high quality installer and I can find errors in installation or design with virtually 90% of all system installations (that I have seen over the years). Many corners get cut during A/C systems installations and these shortcomings can lead to refrigerant system leaks, or other factors that increase operating costs.

How does a refrigerant leak affect operating costs? Your air conditioning system runs when there is a call for cooling by a thermostat and, generally, continues to run until the room is cooled to the thermostat desired temperature set-point – until the thermostat is satisfied, as it were. When refrigerant has leaked out of a system, the cooling capacity of the system is decreased, which means the compressor and blower need to run longer in order to lower the room temperature to the thermostat set-point. The more refrigerant has leaked out, the longer the compressor and blower will run and the more electricity will be consumed. This consumption is exacerbated as more refrigerant is leaked, resulting in perpetually higher electricity costs and possible compressor damage.

What sounds the alarm that there is a problem with the A/C system is the room eventually will not drop in temperature to the desired thermostat set-point. So the call is made to the service company.

Often, finding a refrigerant leak can be an arduous process that can be expensive to find and repair. An average leak can cost anywhere from $500 to $1500 to repair, so many opt for the “immediate fix” – a pound or two of refrigerant and a couple hours of labor (approximately $200 $350 total cost). In reality, this approach just adds to the pile of expenses that will eventually exceed the cost to repair the leak correctly in the first place, including the shortened life of the leaky equipment.

There are additional costs – costs to the environment that we and all species on earth live in – associated with refrigerant leaks. As refrigerant leaks out of a system, its molecular structure is changed. Specifically, the chlorine atom in the refrigerant is converted to oxygen by ultraviolet rays in the atmosphere, consuming ozone in the chemical transformation. See this link for a good explanation, http://www.brighthub.com/engineering/mechanical/articles/965.aspx and here is the EPA’s view on the subject: http://www.epa.gov/ozone/title6/phaseout/22phaseout.html. Not only does leaking refrigerant cause ozone depletion, leading to higher cancer deaths around the world, but greater electricity consumption means that greater amounts of mercury are emitted into the atmosphere from coal-burning power plants http://www.fossil.energy.gov/programs/powersystems/pollutioncontrols/overview_mercurycontrols.html and greater amounts of nuclear waste is produced and temporarily stored on local plant sites. Mercury from coal-fired power plants has poisoned every New Hampshire lake to the point that every species of fish caught in every body of water in New Hampshire has been found to contain toxic levels of methyl mercury. http://des.nh.gov/organization/commissioner/pip/publications/co/documents/nhdes-co-98-2.pdf

Still, the waste doesn’t end there! Every time a leaky refrigerant system owner has their system “topped off” with refrigerant, more energy is consumed powering the technician’s vehicle to the job site, producing more refrigerant for sale, producing new equipment that replaces the failed equipment due to the refrigerant leak’s affect on the compressor, and all other consequential costs associated with the leak. Believe me, all of the costs due to refrigerant leaks are too numerable to mention in this short blog post, but they are there and should be considered alongside the obvious, higher equipment costs, service costs and electricity costs, plus the environmental costs. Of course, there is the cost of inconvenience to the system owner who must endure high indoor heat and humidity (discomfort) and the time spent dealing with the leak.

In summation, all refrigerant leaks should be fixed and must be in order to avoid the myriad costs associated with topping off a refrigerant system. Bite the bullet and pay for the refrigerant leak to be fixed completely and immediately, otherwise, the owner is just kicking the can further down the road, but wait, a better analogy is pushing the snowball down the hill – eventually the snowball gets bigger and bigger still – this is the mounting costs associated with temporarily topping off a refrigerant system. However, that snowball will in no way cool your building!

Firstly, I believe that products and technologies that curb fuel/energy consumption are a great thing. I also believe in Peak Oil and that we are killing the planet with over-population, over-consumption (especially on trivial consumer crap) and over-dependence on petroleum-based products. As for coal, I believe it is poisoning virtually every body of water on the planet with ethyl mercury, and nuclear has serious problems with waste disposal, and events like Chernobyl are scary as hell. I believe our problems could be resolved in large part by harnessing the sun’s energy, that is if we sanctioned it on a Government level, say, like China does, and foster economic opportunity through innovation.

Now that my position is out there, let me pursue my complaint: the rapacious corporate wolves who disguise their products beneath “green” sheep’s clothing are exacerbating our global environmental demise with products more designed to trick consumers than “save the earth.” The only “green” they can see is that which they hope you’ll hand over to them in exchange for deceptive goods.

For some time I have been curious as to how “green” new products with that designation really are. There are so many increased costs associated with many so-called green products, that are never mentioned to consumers of them. Take a high-efficiency cast aluminum heating boiler, for example – they cost twice as much as a cast iron boiler, last less than half as long and cost far more to service and maintain, due to the increased costs for tools to service them and the vastly more complicated electronics that control them.

In reality, fuel and energy efficiency can be better attained by buying quality products that will last a long time, instead of buying ‘highly-efficient’ products that don’t last, requiring the recycling/re-manufacturing/re-transporting/re-installing process over again and again once their short life is exhausted.

One thing I see coming down the pike, as I look at the deception designed and manufactured into many products in the HVACR industry, is studies proving that much of Green is another way of stimulating the economy without saving energy, but consuming more of it by virtue of the short life of these devises that push the technological envelope, and at a much higher inevitable cost to the consumer, and the environment.

Recently, I gained a customer who was almost talked into (by someone selling “green”) purchasing a $129,000 HVAC system that incorporated heat pumps and gas-fired furnaces, so he could run one or the other when the price of the fuel favoring one appliance over the other lead the decision-making. I told the customer that I could install a $150 temperature modulation control on a new and efficient, single, oil-fired boiler that would last him the rest of his life and save as much money on energy, vastly reduce his service costs over the life of the equipment and cost him a fraction of the original cost for that “green” system he almost got snookered into buying.

I’ve seen time and again, opportunists taking advantage of Federal Tax Credit incentives to sell people systems that will take far more money out of their pockets for short-lived systems, soon-to-be-deposited in the local scrap yard (if we’re lucky and not in some landfill).

I only make the point about quality here (not functionality): a Bell rotary dial telephone would last virtually forever, but a cell phone lasts until you drop it on the pavement, or until the next fashionable model comes out…about a month or two later. So how many cell phones end up in the garbage every year? Approximately, 720,472,118 http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_mobile_phones_are_thrown_away_each_year. The statistic with heating systems may not be the same in numbers, but is just as alarming – the “new” technology just doesn’t last.

Hmmm. There may be a sucker born every minute, but these days there is a snake oil salesmen born about every second. This is why I use a $29 cell phone that I have had for about a year and have dropped it on the pavement about 50 times by now. I learned my lesson on the 1st $450 cell phone that I dropped on the pavement, 2 weeks after I purchased it, and it turned to garbage in that instant. (I frequently demonstrate the ruggedness of the low-tech $29 phone by deliberately tossing it into the air and letting it crash onto the pavement, and it ceases to fail each time.)

I think that creating much of the new Green technology runs parallel to stating that we’ve invented the perpetual motion machine – there’s no free lunch, and the more complicated the items are on the menu, the more they cost and the worse they tend to be for you – it’s the same with a lot of HVAC technology. Rather than replacing certain fossil fuel burning appliances with more high-tech ones, we’d be better off if we created energy efficiency-increasing products that retrofit to existing appliances – something I have already conceptualized for heating equipment.

I am all for Green, but let’s take the snake oil out of it and start doing real things for technology that actually save energy, and consumers’ hard-earned money, rather than repackaging the same old B.S. sales and marketing tricks into sheer lies that are sold to consumers who seem to have forgotten about “buyer beware” and continue to fall for the hype that Green can often be.

If you are thinking of buying Green Technology, you’d better do your homework and your math first!

A good article on some of the corporate trickery with the Green Movement can be read at: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_44/b4056001.htm

If the brass alloy contains more than 15% zinc, then there is a likelihood it will eventually leak, by virtue of the transfer of the zinc from the blended alloy (compilation of metals that create the brass) to elsewhere in the plumbing system, and lessening the tensile strength of the metal. It is as likely that accumulating zinc oxide will restrict flow through the affected part.

Several companies have been sued in class action cases in U.S. District Court such as, http://www.zurnclassaction.com/images/Zurn_class_cert.pdf

and http://kiteclawsuit.org/ as well as http://www.yellowbrasslawsuit.com/wirsbo-faqs.php. I, personally, have seen numerous imported fittings from China that were leaking due to dezincification.

If you need a consultant and Expert Witness for your PEX and radiant heating system brass fitting dezincification case, then I am confident I can help your cause. In the course of developing numerous brass and bronze alloy valves and flanges, I had to learn which alloys couldn’t be used if they had excessive zinc content, There are many superior alloys, albeit, more expensive ones that were appropriate for my high quality designs. I made tools from ZA12 and ZA 27, which were zinc aluminum alloys comprised primarily of zinc, and when left in my damp basement these alloys oxidized very quickly. Certain PH levels in heating systems can also promote dezincification, so it’s not safe to make parts that contain high zinc levels for use in non-potable water systems.

More on this subject later.

As for the non-cast iron boiler? It’s the 2 side-by-side, mounted on the brick wall.

I hope this list has helped you decide which type of boiler to buy. Contact me if you’d like to know more.

Thanks for reading this, I hope it has helped.

“UNFORTUNATELY THERE ARE UNETHICAL CONTRACTORS OUT THERE BUT TO SAY MAINTAINANCE AGREEMENTS ARE WRONG SHOULD BE LOOKED AT AGAIN. I OFFER AGREEMENTS AND I OFFER 15% DISCOUNTS TO MY CUSTOMERS AND NO OVERTIME RATES AND I DO IT WITHOUT MARKING UP THE CALL TO COMPENSATE FOR IT!! THE ADVANTAGE TO AN AGREEMENT AMONG MANY THINGS IS THE FACT THAT MOST CUSTOMERS WONT CALL FOR MAINTAINANCE THEY ONLY CALL WHEN SOMETHING SMELLS LIKE ITS BURNING (AND IT PROBABLY IS) OR IT QUITS ALTOGETHER AND MOST SERVICE RELATED CALLS COULD HAVE BEEN PREVENTED ON A TUNE UP ( MELTED WIRING,BURNT CONTACTS,SWOLLEN CAPACITORS) SO INSTEAD OF A AGREEMENT FEE AND A SMALL PARTS CHARGE AT THE TIME OF SERVICE THE SYSTEM IS NOW IN A CATASTROPHIC FAILURE THAT COULD HAVE BEEN PREVENTED( OR WORSE THE HOME IS BURNING DOWN) I REALIZE THAT A GOOD TECH WILL CATCH THIS ON A TUNE UP PROVIDED THE CUSTOMER CALLED FOR A TUNE UP ( PEOPLE TEND TO DECIDE THAT ITS RUNNING FINE SO ILL SAVE A FEW BUCKS BY NOT CALLING UNTIL NEXT YEAR OR NEVER!! BY SELLING THEM AN AGREEMENT YOU ARE PRETTY MUCH TAKING THAT DECISION OUT OF THEIR HANDS. YES SOME COMPANIES DO PUSH THEIR MEN FOR TIME BUT IT IS THE CUSTOMERS RESPONSIBILITY TO KNOW THE REPUTATION OF THEIR SERVICE COMPANY BEFORE INVESTING IN THEM! AN AGREEMENT IS A GOOD DEAL FOR THE CUSTOMER WHEN PROVIDED BY A REPUTABLE COMPANY, AND YES IT SHOULD BE PROFITABLE FOR THE COMPANY AS WELL OR THEY WOULD NOT BE IN BUSINESS VERY LONG!  A FAIR PRICE FOR A PROFESSIONAL SERVICE IS A WIN,WIN SITUATION FOR BOTH CUSTOMER AND COMPANY. TO BAD THERE ARE COMPANIES OUT THERE THAT ARE UNETHICAL, I KNOW OF A GOOD GUY HVAC COMPANY THAT USED TO TELL THEIR CUSTOMERS THEY DONY NEED ANY SERVICE AGREEMENTS JUST CALL ME WHEN YOU NEED ME BUT THE SYSTEMS ONLY LASTED TEN TO TWELVE YEARS INSTEAD OF FIFTEEN OR MORE AND YOU CAN BET HE WAS THERE TO SELL THAT NEW ONE TO THEM WHILE TELLING THEM ITS A SHAME THAT OLD SYSTEM DIDNT LAST ANY LONGER THAN IT DID !!”

John Rocheleau’s Response:

Hi Russ/Atlantic Heat And Air:

Thank you for posting your comment to my article, “HVAC Service Agreements…” I welcome all reasonably sane perspectives on my blog. Since the points I try to convey on my blog are meant to educate and inform, we are off to a good start!

You have a very good point about the importance of customer retention for HVACR businesses, and, yes, a service agreement will help. Also, you are right about the fact that if, as an HVACR business, you don’t stay in regular contact with your customer their equipment is bound for hell, because they do not have the requisite understanding that mechanical equipment often needs oversight and routine service, or maintenance. Beyond that, you miss the point of my article.

My personal dissatisfaction for service agreements stems from my belief that any agreement that requires pre-payment by the consumer for services that an HVACR company should, and once-upon-a-time did, provide anyway, is not much different than a collateralized debt obligation, or worse, a synthetic consolidated debt obligation, as we all recognize the term for CDOs – the worthless financial instruments that destroyed so many public pensions, routed millions from their homes, bankrupted many institutions and destroyed the world economy in no way since The Great Depression.

My mechanics at Weed Family Automotive, in Concord, NH not only do a great job of mechanical service, but the owner, Dan Weed is a very ethical and honest business man who beckons from a time when business trust both ways was formed with a hand shake – 2 humans meeting each other’s needs without one, or worse, both, attempting to get the better deal through trickery and sleight of hand.

As I said in my article, service agreements/maintenance contracts are a good deal for the seller. Why?  The service provider gets paid in advance for remembering to call the customer to schedule routine service of their equipment. The other benefit to the HVACR business is modulation of work flow to meet their scheduling needs – avoiding scheduling conflicts when the peak season is upon them. Further, the seller of the agreement is assured payment for what amounts to a prediction of possible costs that the seller might encounter for a typical routine maintenance call and unplanned emergency calls. Of course the prediction is a favorable one for the seller, most of the time. Otherwise, why sell anything that puts profit at risk? It would be safer to simply charge for time and materials.

So, let’s say that I sell my customer a service contract to maintain their oil-fired boiler. Included in the agreement are the parts necessary for an annual cleaning. Among the costs are, oil burner nozzle: $3.33, spin-on fuel filter: $5.96 and a fuel pump strainer: $1.75 – total is $11.04. If I have 3 hours of on-site labor: $36/hour = $108, and there is $71.31 in vehicle/travel cost to the job site, 20 miles away, and I get there and back in my 1-ton extended van that gets 14 mpg, then my total cost for the job might be: $190.35. (See spreadsheets.)

I contend that a competent and ethical service technician should be able to competently clean and adjust the oil-fired system and spot any pending defects with reasonable accuracy and certainty…for $190.35 – break even. Add a 50% markup over cost and the sell price for this job is $315.35. Gross profit as a percent of sell price is 33% – reasonable for this job – and is up front, out-in-the-open and fair.

Now, I concede that I do not know what other companies are charging for their service contracts that would include the burner cleaning scenario that I used in my calculations. But I suspect a contract price would be a lot more than my cleaning price. I do know that companies who do sell them, like Dowling Corporation, in Portsmouth, NH, make out handily with them. Many companies rely on these maintenance agreements – financial instruments – for their very existence – just like Countrywide Financial and AIG relied on synthetic CDOs for their survival, but when the gig was up they crashed and burned. When I worked for Dowling as a sales engineer in 2002, they had salesmen specifically for selling maintenance plans of the Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum varieties. I was also encouraged to sell them, though, ethically, I couldn’t, so didn’t. The revenue from these sales contributed greatly to Dowling’s coffers. Without them, Dowling, Corp. would be a lesser company in terms of sales, maintenance work scheduling and customer retention.

So far, we’ve talked only of the benefit to sellers from these financial agreements. Why? Because there are no tangible benefits to the buyer of maintenance agreements, above and beyond anything they would have already received from an HVACR service company that modeled its conduct with its customers like Dan Weed does with his. There is only “synthetic” value to the buyer of these financial instruments, and many of those who sell them adorn the same stripes as AIG and Countrywide Financial – which is exactly why our economy is in shambles. Too much greed in a system where we all have to participate to survive has proven to affect everyone – this greed is toxic to the whole well where we all must drink. We have to change how we do business, and devise systems that reflect the true costs of doing business – the greed-card line item out of the equation.

To get a better idea, one might read “All The Devils Are Hear” by Bethany McLain and Joe Nocera. This straight-up dissection of what lead to the financial crises that American taxpayers will bear the cost of, but China, Japan and Saudi Arabia are bearing for the interim, gives one an idea of how innovations can be bad, can and do adversely affect our economy. There is too great a trend in many aspects of free market capitalism that portend to give benefit to consumers and the system as a whole, but really snooker consumers for the benefit of the seller of goods and services – unfair trade? Maintenance agreements, and flat rate pricing for that matter, are not a benefit to consumers, just as adjustable rate mortgages and synthetic CDOs are/were not – they are a disservice to the system for the benefit of the few who are the best at playing the greed card.

Yeah, I understand that companies are in business to profit, plan responsibly for the future, create jobs, and overall, support the economy, but can’t we do it on the up and up? This is where innovation is needed – trickery and sleight-of-hand need no more innovation.

Best,

John Rocheleau

I read your email below and it is refreshing to hear that someone still believes in America, middle class and honest day’s work.  I work at Hart & Cooley but that is not why I am agreeing with you.  Some say I am old fashion, I come in to work early and leave late only because that is what I was taught growing up.  I was buying tools at Lowe’s and I too found it impossible to find some that are still made in the USA.  So I select those that are at least owned by American companies.  I have American made cars, still refuse to buy the Japanese or Asian “stuff”.

I don’t know if you are aware, Hart & Cooley has decided to pull out of China and back into North America the low end GRD’s.  We do produce product in Canada and Mexico.  Yes we were in China to survive and yes we saw people “dive to the bottom”. Did you know that the Chinese government subsidized GRD manufacturers in China with an 18% VAT tax?  What could anyone do with an 18% advantage on the competition?   We kept our North American made product but customers who were not willing to pay a fair price for the American made product, we had the Chinese made stuff to sell too.  But we have improved our processes and the Chinese Government stopped subsidizing the GRD manufacturers in China, now we can compete albeit Mexican made product.  But those products are made to our quality standards and monitored by us (in US).  We know we need to earn our customer’s business.  I am not afraid of that challenge.  We will just apply American know how to do that day in and day out.

I am not saying these things because I work at Hart & Cooley.  Yes we would like for people to buy our product.  But I write this because I find it refreshing to hear what you had to say.  I do promote made in America especially in my personal purchases.

It is great to hear someone speak up for America,

Warm Regards,

Bernard Roy

President, Hart & Cooley, Inc

From: john rocheleau [mailto:protechhvac@comcast.net]
Sent: Friday, November 26, 2010 8:11 PM
To: Clark, Dave; Basney, Kari; Customer Service Info – H&C
Subject: Can no longer find H&C products

Hello Hart & Cooley Representatives:

Having been in the HVACR trade since 1980, I am accustomed to using Hart & Cooley products that were once made in America. Recently, I have noticed that a wholesaler for duct, grilles, registers and diffusers in New Hampshire has been filling my Hart & Cooley orders with the cheapest diffusers I have ever seen, and it bothers me beyond belief that yet another vendor has joined the race to the bottom by supporting manufacturers who ship manufacturing of their products to 3rd World countries.

I recently removed a 120-year old once coal-fired gravity hot air furnace and replaced it with a high quality Thermo-Pride oil-fired furnace, but, aside from my workmanship, that is where the quality stopped. (See my article on my Blog.) The 30 gauge sheet metal that I bought from the wholesaler did not conform to metal thickness standards. 30 gauge galvanized sheet metal should be .0157″ thick, but the inferior product the wholesaler unloaded on me was only .0118″ thick. The metal was so substandard that the screws I purchased (made in China) would not penetrate the metal during assembly without denting it. Several adjustable 90 elbows separated at the joints simply while trying to screw them together. My standard cordless drill could not drive the sub-quality screws into the sub-quality metal, so I went to Big Box store to buy a cordless impact drill. Unfortunately, when I returned to the job site the Ryobi drill battery charger would not charge the loose-fitting battery, which I now need to return. This Big Box store does not sell a single cordless drill made in America – every one: Dewalt, Milwawkee, Porter Cable, Ryobi and the rest are all made in China. The floor diffusers that I unwittingly bought are of such thin material that I am confident that I can bend them in two with my bare hands.

I returned some of the things I bought to the supplier and the counter attendant was not prepared to deal with my anger and frustration. I really believe that I might be the first to vocalize my dissatisfaction to them about their newly-found product line, based on his surprise at my dissatisfaction and his lack of customer service skills.

When I say this is a race to the bottom I mean the bottom of the ladder of quality and economic sustainability. Made In The USA once meant that these home grown products were made from quality materials and highly skilled American labor, all of which used to contribute in large part to driving our economy and creating the middle class that once existed.

I have no problem with Chinese workers, per se. My problem is with the lack of quality in the products they produce for American capitalists who know fully well that the consumer of their products – end-users and tradesmen alike – today, barely has a better alternative – American manufacturing is seeming to become an oxymoron. I also have a problem with the Chinese Government subsidies of their industries, lack of environmental consideration, lack of ethical treatment of their workers and their ongoing devaluation of their currency that effectively is eroding American industrial strength and eliminating an entire way of life for millions of American workers. All this so we can buy nothing-made-in-America at Big Box stores, which as we all know, succeeded in putting millions of small businesses out of business in this country.

Substandard Chinese products have made news over the past decade, but seemingly more so recently. Here are 10 on a very long list of defective products.

1. Baby formula
2. Drywall
3. Pet Food
4. Toothpaste
5. Toy Trains
6. Car Tires
7. Fish
8. Jewelry
9. Cough Syrup
10. Baby Strollers

Now must we add sheet metal and diffusers to this list? I will stop installing sheet metal and diffusers and grilles in residential and commercial property if it is made in China. Defective and cheaply made products not only take jobs away from the American worker but also make my work substandard…and that’s where I draw the line!