A simple phone call asking for help turned into a long-term business friendship. In the early days I did not receive a lot of phone calls for help, but one day a call comes in: “Hi, I got your number from Dave and he said you might be able to help”. After listening to his situation, I make plans for a visit. I arrived at a beautiful old Edwardian-style three-story home, that had lots of restoration work going on. A tour of the low ceiling basement mechanical room and the affections of a big bouncing and very enthusiastic family dog later, I was able to take stock of the problems.

I soon realized this was not going to be a simple fix. The owner had been working intensely (personally) for a couple of years trying to restore the house while behind the scenes modernize this beautiful old house. With many needs and wants of this old system, I had to prioritize and get down to the basics. The budget didn’t allow for it to be fixed all at once: getting the house comfortably heated at half the existing heating bill was the priority. Once the flow was balanced heat distribution was fixed, rooms that had never been warm before, now were. Not having to wear multiple sweaters for the winter just might save this family union. Additional improvements, including a state of the art gas boiler happened in the following years.

The homeowner works in the software industry and he has taught me a lot about integrating with home automation and micro-tweaking of boiler configuration settings, which I beg him to stop doing! But he taught me AND the boiler regional rep AND the US boiler manufacturer some things that none of us knew. He actually discovered a programming flaw in the boiler software.

Making Friends musings will continue as a regular item in future blog posts. Stay tuned for more.

Jeff