[brianpatrick]

We’re doing a couple of remodels downtown in a high rise condo building. The maintenance guy called me and has a leak on his boiler and “low flow” of hot water after a shutdown. We don’t really do boiler work. There aren’t a whole lot of boilers in my area.

I’m not even sure what this leak is. His regular boiler guy can’t get here for almost a week. Any way to fix this or at least stop the leak for now without damaging anything?

Or should I just walk away from this?

 

[skoronesa]

You need a new recirc pump end.

 

[brianpatrick]

Found a rebuild kit for the taco pump, a seal kit. the pump in question is leaking but still working. Three of the other six pumps are not working at all, and haven’t been for a while.


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[Sstratton6175]

Sometimes you can’t fix stupid. The fact that they have six pumps and three don’t work says a lot about how these people operate. People who run their facility like this are not the type of customer you want. We have plenty of systems like this that we work on and maintain. If you have big expensive pumps that you can’t afford to have down, you need to have a spare on hand. Then you swap out the leaking pump and rebuild the one you take out and the cycle continues. I’d sell them a new pump then send out the leaker to get rebuilt at a specialty electric motor/ pump shop. When the rebuild comes back pull another until everything is back online and the spare is there and ready to go. If they won’t do this, walk away, you’ll be better off not having the work.

 

[brianpatrick]

Sometimes you can’t fix stupid. The fact that they have six pumps and three don’t work says a lot about how these people operate. People who run their facility like this are not the type of customer you want. We have plenty of systems like this that we work on and maintain. If you have big expensive pumps that you can’t afford to have down, you need to have a spare on hand. Then you swap out the leaking pump and rebuild the one you take out and the cycle continues. I’d sell them a new pump then send out the leaker to get rebuilt at a specialty electric motor/ pump shop. When the rebuild comes back pull another until everything is back online and the spare is there and ready to go. If they won’t do this, walk away, you’ll be better off not having the work.

I met with the new management team. Apparently the building was sold recently and the new management company ended up firing the maintenance guy who was supposed to be maintaining the system. The guy was stealing from them and letting things go to ****.
They have a company they use at other properties, who couldn’t get there and we were onsite. We fixed a leak in some 2” copper and rebuilt the leaking pump.

I agree with you. I’m not really interested in this kind of work anyway. My guys aren’t geared for it, and troubleshooting problems would really just be guessing for us. It was a nice little Presidents’ Day chunk of change but I think this is where it ends for us.

 

[dhal22]

Sometimes you can’t fix stupid. The fact that they have six pumps and three don’t work says a lot about how these people operate. People who run their facility like this are not the type of customer you want. We have plenty of systems like this that we work on and maintain. If you have big expensive pumps that you can’t afford to have down, you need to have a spare on hand. Then you swap out the leaking pump and rebuild the one you take out and the cycle continues. I’d sell them a new pump then send out the leaker to get rebuilt at a specialty electric motor/ pump shop. When the rebuild comes back pull another until everything is back online and the spare is there and ready to go. If they won’t do this, walk away, you’ll be better off not having the work.

Excellent summary. Most excellent.........

Nothing against you Brian, I just like this approach to business.

 

[brianpatrick]

Excellent summary. Most excellent.........

Nothing against you Brian, I just like this approach to business.

I like it too. I sometimes get dollar signs in my eyes and can’t say no when I should.

 

[KCPlumb]

Replaced a BASO pilot assembly and gas control valve today on a little hot water boiler. The old Honeywell gas control valve had two settings ”on and automatic”, interesting that you could fire the boiler by the gas control valve by switching it to ”on” setting.

 

[Tom F Ohio]

Looks like the old one was under water or something.