The Lorax Factor

After many years of training and more importantly, being trained, there are some words we use that can have big differences in meaning. When doing troubleshooting, the common things I hear are “I have done it that way for 40 years or more” or “yes, it was working fine when I left”, “something is wrong with your ……”. Or my favourite “your …. piece of equipment is crap, garbage, useless” and many other descriptive adjectives not for family viewing. For the longest time, I hated cold days as I knew the phones would ring and I would have irate calls like that. I thought the manufacturers all made crap and the testing ground was my job sites and customers. Turns out it wasn’t that at all. Some installs and systems are just more creative than others. The paper manual that comes with all equipment was nowhere to be found on the job site (today your smartphone has everything at the touch of a button). I swear the paper manuals were either used to light the pilot or if it was a thick manual, it was used as a kneeling pad to do the initial set-up. “Yup, that flame looks good to me.”

More importantly, the words running and working get interchanged all the time. Running simply means something has turned on and it is doing something. It could be making hot water and it could be delivering the hot water to the heat emitters, but it doesn’t mean it is working. I have a video a colleague sent me of a 12-zone pumped system, with every pump set to high speed. The odds of every zone in the large house having exactly the same heat loss, flow rate, and pressure drop, all at the same time, well, you would have a better chance of picking the winning lottery ticket, twice. However, it was running! No one was freezing to death. If you paid all that money, wouldn’t you rather it was really working. Working involves a collection of parts and equipment all interacting to create something better than the individual parts. Almost anyone, even a good handyman can install a system which could deliver heat. Today’s heating systems are a collection of parts and pieces that when designed to work together and installed properly create a sum much bigger than the whole. High efficient boilers can be 95% or higher but not if they are just running. Chose your words wisely. Remember the Lorax, “unless someone cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better, it’s not”