Johnson’s Plumbing & Heating

We called these guys because the broiler they installed about 16 months ago is not working properly, and hasn’t since they installed it! On a cold day I have the thermostat on 70 Degrees but the temperature in the house only gets to 60 degrees. It did this last year and finally this year I had enough.(We called and complained last year, but on the day they came out, it wasn’t that cold out, so they couldn’t see what I was talking about, they told me it was working right and left). They came over yesterday and checked the broiler out and I was told he turned the water temp up to 205 degrees and that should take care of it, but overnight it didn’t get hotter than 62 degrees so I called at 8 am this morning and they came right over, 2 guys came over. After about 5 minutes they came up from the basement and the guy that was here yesterday walked into the living room and told me. The heats not working right because the almost new carpet that was installed runs under the baseboards so there’s no circulation! I told him the old carpet use to do that and the heat didn’t work right last winter either. But he insists that’s it. I say ok I’ll tell her what you said. They then leave. I think to myself what a crock. Later in the day I go take a look at the broiler It a Buderus Ga124/​25 rated at 85,000 BTU’s an hour. The input for the boiler is rated at 103,000 BTU’s an hour, so that means the boiler is operating at about 83 percent efficiency, which means it’s not a high efficient boiler, they operate at 95 percent efficiency. This means my natural gas bill with be 12 percent higher than if, it was high efficient! It’s the output BTU’s that matter though! I go online and find a BTU calculator, it has the options of well insulated house, poor insulated house and normal insulation. I chose normal insulation, even though the house is over a hundred years old, it has blown in foam insulation and storm windows over the original windows and doesn’t feel that drafty to me, but I also to the calculations for poorly insulated house because it says choose that option for lots of windows. I do a quick estimate and then I think I need to do a more thorough estimate. So I do the BTU, s for each rooms square footage and then add them all up, since it was 4 degrees today I did the estimate to show me how many BTU’s to increase temp by 66 degrees, it tells me I need a broiler rated at 95,000 BTU’s an hour for a normal insulated house, which means the broiler installed is 10,000 BTU’s an hour short, but the page says example if you live in Boston put in 75 degrees increase in temp, so living in western NY I say let me test for 20 below, it get that cold sometimes. I put in the numbers an increase in temperature of 90 degrees, and it tells me that I need a broiler that can output 128,000 Btu’s an hour, and if I have a poorly insulated house 277,000 BTU’s an hour. So my conclusion is they installed a broiler that can’t output enough BTU’s to properly heat this space! That is why on a cold day it will only get to 62 degrees in this house with an almost new broiler! This isn’t the first bad experience we had with these guys either. We have use these guys over the past 4 years and they have fixed many leaky pipes, including a gas pipe, replaced the broiler and a hot water heater and a couple of shut off valves. The first time we used them I can’t remember what they fixed, but I remember the next day I went down stairs to check there work and I saw a elbow joint that had a leak in it (it looked to me like some hit it with a wrench or something, I was suspicious) so we called them and told them we had a leak, not saying anything else they came out and fixed it. Then I found another leak the next day, so we had them come out again, but this time, I hid a wireless camera in the cellar to watch them, the guy fixed the leak, and then before he left, he went over to the water heater and turned the temperature dial down! I guess in order to make us think we had a problem with the water heater, but I just went down and turned it back up after he left. I didn’t want to use these guys anymore after that, but was over ruled because they are the closest and local in town and I don’t own the house, I just pay the rent and my sister the landlord has use them at least 15 times since then, although I don’t think the guy that turned the temperature down is still there because I never saw him again after that! But we should have learned our lesson then, and we wouldn’t be in this fix. What to do next? I mean they’ve blown us off and told us we caused this problem by installing carpet! But I know that’s not the problem!