Systems Help Center

Someone just asked me this question: If the temperature is 55 and you want it to be 65, will it get to 65 quicker by setting the thermostat to 80 rather than 65? I said n...

Sometimes, you just stumble over the answer. I think that the art part comes in recognizing that you got lucky that time. Now you have to figure out why you got lucky.

The steam seminar was to be in North Carolina, which was strange enough, that being the state where most folks only know how to say, “Heat pump, please.” It was also to b...

I was wondering about boiler chemicals and how many contractors (if any) were using them on brand-new systems. Do we need them? Hydronic systems are closed to the atmosph...

There was this day in the summer of '88 when it dawned on me that in 12 short years all four of our daughters would be in college at the same time. Kelly would be a senio...

I fished for the first time in my life six years ago, which may seem strange since I was born on an island (Manhattan) and grew up on another island (Long). But my father...

I've learned that there are many imaginative contractors in the heating business, and many have a fine way with words, along with unusual ways of sizing equipment, explai...

I've been thinking about the tens of thousands of contractors I've met in my travels since 1970. I love these people (some more than others) and their tenacity. There's n...

For want of a vacuum breaker, water hammer destroyed this heat exchanger. The call came in when I was young, eager, and paying close attention to the grown-ups. I had bee...

I figure there are only two things that can start and stop a steam-heating boiler. One is a thermostat of some kind. It might be an ordinary one, the sort you’d find in a...