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The guy had told his architect to have a corner of his basement dug out so that he could play half-court basketball with his two kids. The ceiling was 14 feet above the parquet floor and there was an electronic scoreboard hanging on the wall that would have made Michael Jordon smile. Down the hall there was a theater, a mahogany bar with lots of stools, a workout room, and a wine cellar. And that was just what was in the basement! This guy had all the money. The contractor who installed the heating system in this yuppie wonderland had pulled out all the stops. The owner had asked for the best that was available and that’s pretty much what he got. The boiler room looked like a collaborative effort between NASA, Bill Gates, and Leonardo da Vinci. It took my breath away when I first saw it. Four boilers stood side by side along the wall. The pipes lined up with military precision in a primary-secondary fashion. The controls were in charge and knew exactly what had to be done. It was everything I would have assembled if I had all the money. "Feel this pipe," the contractor whispered, glancing nervously toward the boiler room door. We were standing in front of a long primary manifold. There were 20 pairs of secondary lines coming off the bottom of the manifold. Each dipped down a foot before turning up toward the ceiling and then heading out toward the far reaches of the palace. I grabbed hold of the secondary line and winced. "Ouch! Is the circulator on?" "No," he said nervously. "Now feel this return line over here. It’s even hotter, and this circulator’s off too. I’m pretty sure the primary pump is pushing water up into the secondary circuits. Here, feel this one over here." He led me to a pipe on the far side of the boiler room. I reached up and grabbed it. It was hot. "That’s a return line," he said. "How could it get that hot unless the primary pump is doing it?" This was one of those times in life when the reality of the job supersedes what you read in textbooks, but I just couldn’t see it in my mind’s eye. The supply and return tees to each secondary circuit were so close together. They were practically touching each other!
"I’m not so sure about the primary pump," I said. He rolled his eyes in frustration. Why would you go through the bull of that first tee, all the way up through that long circuit, and then back through the bull of the second tee? It just doesn’t make any sense. Water’s always going to take the path of least resistance, and in this case, that path of least resistance is such a clear choice. It’s only an inch away, for Pete's sake."
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I pressed on. "I mean, if you were water, and you were flowing through this primary main and you got up to this first tee, wouldn’t you go straight through into this second tee?" I pointed at it. "It’s only an inch away.| Dan Holohan - [Intro] | [Email] | [Website] |
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