Electrocution possibility

I usually have a high regard for the old timers who came before me. But this is stupid. Forget the electrocution potential. I just wonder how many times the light bulb shattered over someone's head while they were taking a shower and a drop of water hit the bulb. Not to mention the bare feet in the shower with the broken glass. Who designed this? This is in a mansion in Shaker Hts. to boot.

Something you don't see everyday

I have to wonder what people think about when they are sitting on the commode in this house!

When radiators go bad

Sometimes radiators leak between the sections. This one did. This is a rare look at the reason. The push nipple is rotted thin enough to crack in one place and have a hole in another. We plan on attempting to fix this one. We found a source of push nipples and we plan on replacing all the lower push nipples. The upper nipples all look to be in decent shape. Its the condensate that eats the nipples up eventually.

Wooden radiator valve handles

We have received so many requests from people that they want original radiator valve (looks) that Paul has decided to manufacture custom made wood handles for radiator valves. The customers are ecstatic over them.

Sometimes the gauge glass doesn't reflect reality

When we run across a steam boiler whose gauge glass doesn't seem to reflect what is actually going on in the boiler, we usually find this situation. Thats a plugged gauge glass valve port. This is generally caused by a lack of proper maintenance. They do have to be cleaned during the boiler service.

Leaves and vent pipes

We had an interesting service call recently where the plumbing vent goes sideways in the attic for a while before going through the roof. The owner started to complain of sewer smell in the house. What we eventually found was the horizontal section of venting in the attic was packed full of leaves. We had to cut the attic vent piping and install cleanouts in it in order to snake the vents. This probably would not have happened with the old code which required full size stacks, but the new code goes by minimum sized piping. In the picture you can see where we cut the pipe and the dark area in the middle of the white PVC pipe is a pack of wet leaves.

Steam boiler return water

We recently removed this steam boiler (which was the original coal boiler), for a new owner who is moving into this house. The coal boiler was still working when we removed it. Take a look at these return connections on the boiler. How was it the returning condensate was making it back to the boiler? This is the worst clogging of return push nipple ports that I had seen. Yet the beast was still working!

Baby Wipes

Paul was over at a house the other day and while servicing the boiler, noticed the floor drain was backed up. He snaked the drain and pulled out loads of baby wipes from the sewer. The homeowner said 'it says they are flushable on the box' !! Yup, they made it out of the toilet alright. But it gets better...she hadn't used them in years!! yes that is correct..see, just because they are flushable doesn't mean they will actually leave the house and get to the city sewer.

Leaking Underground Return Piping

Yes, they are that stupid

This is a one pipe steam radiator, which means the steam goes into the radiator and the condensate drains out of the radiator via the same pipe. Take a careful look at this picture of a one pipe radiator that the prospective buyer said doesn't work. Gee, I wonder why? Yes, there are installers that stupid.

You can't make this stuff up.

Mark and me go to this apartment complex where the owner over the phone says 'my boiler don't work right'. Mark and me look at each other and all that can be said is ' what was your first clue'.

Main Vents

Main steam vents need to breath. They exhaust air as the steam pushes it out of the pipe, and when the system shuts down, they let the air back in in order to break the vacuum created by the collapsing steam. Unless of course an insulator does this! In which case the main vent may as well not be there.

Big Brother...Oh Brother

Now the EEOC wants to tell me that I can be sued if I were to not hire a minority member who has a CRIMINAL record....humm..lets see..if your my customer how would you feel if I sent someone to your house who was a convicted criminal?....yea, thats what I thought too..I think big brother is overstepping his bounds on this one..me thinks on a one to five scale, i'll give him the middle finger on this one.

Green Building ?

I was just reading an article on a new building being constructed in New York that is covered in solar panels, etc. to make it very energy efficient and 'green'. The article was very impressive until I got to the point where it said that much of the cost was paid for with grants from the government. That kind of pissed me off. That means that you and me paid for this clown to build his building, or at least part of it. If that method of construction is so grand, than how come it can't stand on its own two legs? When I installed a steam system in my house that is more efficient than the forced air it replaced, I didn't ask my fellow man to pay the cost of it.

I like good advertising.

Not some lame crap like Chevy uses with hippies dancing around a car. (Like thats supposed to make me buy anything other than a gun). But something like how Toyota slams a brake drum down on a counter and says, this is a standard truck brake, then they hold up theirs and all they say is 'this is the one you want'. Nuff said. Short, sweet, and to the point. Kind of like the ad here which most plumbers have by now seen, but I think is my all time favorite ad. Short, sweet, truthful and enough said!

Perfect Radiator Cover

This is about as good a radiator cover as they get. The sides are grilled. There is an air space at the bottom, free area above the radiator, area above the radiator for the heat to escape the cover, and a nice marble shelf to deflect the heat into the room instead of just letting it rise to the ceiling. About the only thing that would perhaps make this a tad bit more perfect would be a greater free area on the grill work. But its still the best cover I've seen yet.

Customer says- My shower drains slow

No Joke! Really

Dang roots can climb!

We replaced a section of sewer and the lavatory sink drain because we could not snake the lav sink without kinking the heck out of our small drain cable and we kept bringing back roots. When we cut the lav sink drain 5 feet above the floor, we found the roots had climbed right up the pipe to the first floor! Check out these pictures. I would never have expected the roots to climb vertically up the pipes like that.

Dumbest radiator installation i've seen in awhile!

This radiator installation takes the cake for the dumbest installation i've seen recently. The radiator mounted in the ceiling of the kitchen of this school is a Shaw Perkins radiator. The Shaw Perkins is really a convector instead of a radiator. It does a bang up job of creating convection air currents but doesn't do squat for radiation. The people at the school actually had to add ceiling fans to try and get the heat to come back down from the ceiling. A ceiling radiator is dumb to start with, but a ceiling mounted convection style radiator is really dumb. The place was designed this way too! That means a licensed engineer came up with that!

Another gas explosion in Ohio

Another gas explosion in a home. Kids were injured in this one. Gas just insn't something to mess with. Details are still sketchy as to the cause.