A homeowner in Michigan sent an email that had me shaking my head, and not for the first time. Listen:
“Our house is heated by a Utica Gas Boiler that was here when we purchased this house.  Sitting next to the boiler is a Hoffman boiler-feed pump. The problem we have encountered is that we’ve had to have the pump replaced five times since 1981. We have hard water (with iron) but I am not sure if that is the problem.

There’s long been talk about how to divvy up the heating expenses in buildings that have tenants. Should each tenant have their own meter? Their own boiler? Boilers are a lot smaller than they used to be, right?

The title of the article that appeared in UKToday news some months back was “5 Easy Ways to Teach Kids about Energy Conservation.” There was no author listed but I’m wondering if the person who came up with this article even had kids. Kids aren’t easy, especially when it comes to energy conservation. Allow me to explain.

I asked the many contractors who post regularly on The Wall at HeatingHelp.com to tell me what they like (and don’t like) about the counter people at their suppliers. Here’s some of what they had to say. I hope you find it to be good food for thought.

I was, I’m sure, not even in the minds of my someday-to-be parents, but I’ve spent a lot of time in that decade of the Great Depression nonetheless. I like to think of them as teenagers as they wondered what was to be. They truly were the Greatest Generation.

I asked some friends in the industry, who work in cities, how they manage to do what they do, what with the traffic, lack of parking and high-stressed inhabitants. What they had to say made me shiver. 

For most of my career I’ve heard lay people say that it doesn’t pay to turn down the heat when they’re away from home because it takes much more heat to heat the house up again once it goes cold. They believe this because someone told them it’s true, even though it’s not true.

I recently posed this question to The Wallies, they being contractors who post nearly every day on The Wall at HeatingHelp.com: If a new wholesaler moved into your town, what would they have to do to win your business?

I was listening to James Trane the other day. He was speaking from Chicago in 1902, telling me that his system of steam heating using small pots of mercury was the best way to go. Mercury. That got me thinking about how my classmates and I used to play with mercury while our science teacher smiled as he wandered the room, watching us poke the dangerous stuff with our adolescent fingers. Life in the 1950s sure was interesting.

In 1992, I self-published a thick book I called, "The Lost Art of Steam Heating." I did this because I could not get a publisher interested in something that few, if any, contractors had installed since the 1930s. I thought it would do well in New York City, where there are still plenty of steam-heated buildings, but to my delight, we sold tens of thousands of copies everywhere, and even in Hawaii. Go figure.