Boiler Mystery - Seeking Ideas

[hausdok]

Hi All,

Had a strange one yesterday and I'm looking for some ideas from the brethren to help me figure it out.

The house I did yesterday was built in 1952 and is heated by a hydronic heating system using baseboard convectors. The system had originally been fittted with an oil-burning boiler but a couple of years ago they brought gas to the house from the street, installed a meter, and then replaced the boiler with a gas-burning boiler. So far so good.

This is where it gets interesting; the homeowner left documents out to show that the boiler had been installed in 2007. The “gutsâ€

[Inspectorjoe]

It's a shame you don't do the picture thing.

Were you able to get a date off of the gas control valve?

[Terence McCann]

Sounds like a rebuild of an existing boiler.

[Tom Raymond]

"This is where it gets interesting; the homeowner left documents out to show that the boiler had been installed in 2007."

Did you write down the installer info? I would think that a system as odd as that would stick out in the mind of the installer, and he would be able to describe what happened there.

Tom

[hausdok]

Nope,

Didn't check the date on the control valve and I didn't write down the installer info. I'd meant to write down the installer's info but it slipped my mind. Then on the drive home last night I remembered it and mentally kicked myself in the ass. This morning I called the company that I my memory was telling me had installed it, but they said that it wasn't their job so I guess my memory was deficient in that respect.

It was kind of surreal. Taking off the cover and looking up into that cabinet it looked like it had just rolled off an assembly line someplace but the cabinet said, "Look at me, I'm a teenager!" Anyone know if these serial number correspond with a gas-burning Bryant boiler?

I probably shouldn't be obsessing over the thing; the system was functioning fine and it's probably going to last longer than I'll be left on this planet - it's just been nagging at me ever since yesterday, I hate it when square pegs seem to fit in round holes.

ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!!

Mike

[Jim Morrison]

So, what do you think we have here?

1. A used boiler?

2. A new boiler that sat in a warehouse someplace for more than a decade before it was installed?

3. A new boiler shrouded with the old cabinet from a previous boiler?(Remember, it used to have an oil-burning boiler - would they even fit if they were the same manufacturer and BTU?) (also highly unlikely). The boiler data is below:

Brand: Bryant

Model: BW2AAN000140AAAA

Serial#: 3494V0401B

Btu/Hr: 140,000 (112,000 net)

Date of Manufacture: September 1994

What do you think we've got guys?

ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!!

Mike

I'd guess it's #3.

[hausdok]

Mystery solved,

I contacted the client and asked him if he remembered the name of the company on the document. He told me what he thought it was and then I looked for anything similar in the phone book. I found a company by that name and called them. I told the lady that answered who I was, explained the situation and asked if she could tell me whether they'd installed that boiler. When I gave her the address, she said, "Hold on a minute," and put me on hold.

After a minute or so, a lady's voice came on the line that said, "Hi, Mike, this is ___________ _____________; I'm the owner of that home. I work here at ________________ and that was a boiler that we'd had sitting in our warehouse for years. It had never been used at the time we installed it."

Most of their work is forced-hot-air and they rarely work on hydronic systems. It was a 15-year old boiler - just one that had never been used - and the reason that it cost so little was that she got everything at cost because she's an employee.

So, the client gets an older tech boiler but he has the benefit of knowing that the company that installed it was very careful to dot every i and cross every t when they'd installed it for one of their co-workers.

What a weird sequence of events.

ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!!

Mike