So my advice is this: Teach, don’t sell. Be interested in your students as people. Get involved in their lives. Make friends. Help them.

I know that some wholesalers still size equipment and design systems for their contractor customers, but I wondered to what degree this still goes on nowadays.

With all the technology we have these days I was curious as to if and how contractors were using it to place orders with their suppliers. The Wallies wasted no time in telling me how they do it nowadays, and more importantly, why.

I’m thinking that this mansion would be well-built and properly insulated, with good windows. I’m also thinking about that brand-new, one-pipe-steam system and how simple it is.

This is the question I asked the contractors: Can you name a manufacturer that you think is close to perfect in all that they do? And if so, what makes them that way? What might they do better?

We always have turkey for Thanksgiving. I mean who doesn’t? My job wasn’t to cook it, though; it was to eat it. I loved the way the turkey always made the house smell, and I remember how The Lovely Marianne would carefully lift the aluminum foil off the radiator to baste it, hour after hour.

"Our problem is that five out of hundreds of univentilator coils freeze up on a regular basis. They are part of two pipe steam systems with pneumatic control valves and condensate pumps. The F&T traps have been replaced and the coils are grading down to the returns. The traps on some are two feet or so below the coil outlet. The boiler pressure on all buildings runs between 4 psi and 8 psi and the boiler shuts down at night until the coldest room in the building requires heat. If the outside temperature falls below -15 C the boiler stays on pressure. Do you have any ideas on how to solve this problem?"

My first job in this business was to be a truck driver for an AC/Refrigeration wholesaler on Long Island. I didn’t have a car at the time, so I walked a mile to the branch and loaded a box truck, which I then drove 30 miles east to the branch where I would spend my days. Once there, I unloaded the transfer stock, reloaded for the local deliveries, and then drove off to learn about life.

When we started HeatingHelp.com in 1997, the folks who built that first crude site told me we could have a links page. I asked what that was, and the young man doing the coding told me it was a place on the site where visitors could go to see what other sites I thought were interesting.

The promotional offers show up every year and I always wonder whether they work? I suppose some do because the manufacturers repeat them. Buy a bunch of boilers, get a winter coat. Or work boots, or whatever. But does that really motivate the contractors to buy that particular brand?