What to do?
I need advise on what I should do, if anything regarding an experience I had with a plumbing and heating company back in May.
Sure its been a while, but I had more important things to take care of and I was going to just forget about this, but maybe I shouldn't?
We bought our house in April 2011. I had a company who claimed to be experts in both oil heat and steam come out because I was having a few problems.
1: I didn't trust the draft, I specifically asked them to check the stack draft as I was concerned.
2: poor hot water from the coil in the boiler, I suspected the mixing valve because the inlet would stay hot while the out would get cold. I specifically asked him to look at this.
3: my wet return didn't.... This he fixed by replacing it with copper, all is good here so this was a win.
He charged us for a boiler service, said he vacuumed everything, checked the draft and so on and told us the boiler was in great shape. Turns out my boiler had a rotted block, the wrong nozzle installed which looked old and nothing was cleaned or vacuumed. What did he do for several hundred dollars? To make things worse I had ZERO draft due to a plugged chimney. He didn't pull the stack or vacuum anything. The bottom of the chimney was totally full. My understanding is often a boiler service doesn't include vacuuming the chimney, fine, but shouldn't he have told me I was going to die? I ended up buying my own manometer only to be scared half to death when I finally checked the draft after still thinking I had an issue due to smell and even carbon monoxide alarms going off. Its scary when the needle moves towards the "DOWN DRAFT" side. As soon as I saw that I shut it down and installed a temporary electric water heater.
Mixing valve... He insisted the coil needed to be flushed as mixing valves almost never fail. Apparently on steam systems mixing valves often fail. After flushing the coil he found the mixing valve was bad so he bypassed it. This is something else I consider a huge safety issue. Sure, not as big as the oil burner venting into my house but still, 200F domestic hot water is a bit too hot for me.
He left garbage all over, tossed it over my foundation wall into a crawl space where I found it later on.
End result is I'm out several thousand dollars for nothing. He never checked the stack draft which I specifically asked for and bypassed the mixing valve leaving another very dangerous situation.
All of that is long gone as I tore everything out and installed new stuff on my own. The question is what can I, or what should I do? I have pictures of everything else well as documentation from the company I had remove the brick chimney and install a B-vent (I switched to NG).
Is it appropriate to ignore this? Am I putting other peoples lives at risk by doing so? I'm going to assume there is no way to get any of the money back and thats fine. It just seems wrong to ignore this.
Sorry for whining, I just don't know what to do if anything.
First thing
is to call them and speak to a supervisor.
Is this the same ChrisJ who just got a new Weil-McLain gas boiler?
Steam, Vapor & Hot-Water Heating
Oil & Gas Burner Service
Baltimore, MD (USA) and consulting anywhere.
Reducing our country's energy consumption, one system at a time.
This post was edited by an admin on December 22, 2011 9:56 AM.
Yep
Hi steamhead. yes its me.
As far as I know the company is run by two people. A father who started the business and his son.
His son is who came out to our house to do the work.
Honestly I'm not trying to get even with him or anything and I don't expect to get any money back. It just seems scary that my system was left in such a dangerous condition. My normal reaction is just to forget about it and move on. But is this the appropriate and responsible thing to do?
This post was edited by an admin on December 22, 2011 11:06 AM.
What to do?
I see this all to much in my aria as well. No body is perfect. I have made mistakes too. However the condition that your system was left in is not good. I would say something to the father and also report them to the Better business bureau. The money they charged you and for something so quick and easy to do. If you don't say anything then they are free to do this to other people. Some people don't have the insight that you had. They would have taken their word for it and ended up as a statistic on someones wall. Then oil would have had another black eye because of negligent mechanics. I refuse to call people like that techs. There are a lot of good small family owned oil companies out there. I work for what I think is the best. Make sure they are licensed through NATE or NORA before they touch your equipment. Also it never hurts to ask for references. Any company that takes pride in their work will have a list of customers who you can call and find out what they have to say. Hopefully your experience was just will full ignorance and not stupidity.
