Part 3
Last fall I was over at this customers place doing a complete redesign and rebuild of the whole system. I had a seasonal job near there and agreed to do the work for free if I could stay at their farm. They were happy to trade!
The branch of the system that had been run over ground had been dug in during the summer some time.
They still did it horribly wrong anyway even after all the trouble and expense that they went through redoing the first house.
He rented the mini excavator for a third time and had dug up the 200 feet of corrugated tubing that ran to his house and utterly destroyed it!
To compound the problem he did not buy new stuff. Instead he just dropped the insulated pipe right in the trench which he buried at 6 feet deep not 2 to 3 feet like I told him too! (Several times)
Without the corrugated tubing to protect the aluminized insulation it will be crushed and rot out very quickly. We had that discussion several times before the rework had been done. I even drew pictures for him this time!

He insisted it will be fine because his put a foot of straw down in the trench before he covered it up and they have been doing that to sewer drain fields for thirty years. ????
I am pretty sure this is not a sewer install!
I said that won’t matter when it gets water logged and rots. It will just eat away at the insulation that much faster. Plus I said that control wire is not rated for underground use. It will rot out and go bad before the first winter is over. The whole purpose of the corrugated tubing is to keep it dry and not get crushed! Oh well too late any way.
I told him, you will be digging it up in less than 3 years because once that insulation rots away the heat your loosing will keep that strip of ground thawed out all winter.

The boiler got pulled out and totally rebuilt and redesigned. The pumps were cleaned and well, you already saw the rest in the earlier post.
I was there for five weeks from the seasonal job running way over. Super pay though. I got to give them hands on training and see the system run for two weeks heating all three buildings with no problems. I never did need to change the software’s running parameters! The new design and system rework was well with in its operating range.

Around December his folks went out of town for two weeks and he got lazy and let the system drop back to the redundant back up fuel. ($4 a gallon fuel oil)
Part of the digital control system is that if the fire goes out or if there is a system failure the old fuel oil burners still take over automatically but at a lower temp settings.
He went to work and did not think to check his fuel level for his house. He never put fuel in last summer when it was down at $2 a gallon. It ran out and froze up while he was gone.
Plus several days of being cold had caused the unprotected lines running to his house to contract and ripped the control wires some place under ground too. When he did fire up the boiler the controls would not respond for his house circuit. That’s about the same point the blower motor went out as well. See earlier post for that story as well.
During my stay I noticed that his branch only had one control wire set coming in. He said that the second wires end about 10 feet out in the yard where he had to splice everything.
The reason there is a splice is because he went with a different route with this trench and also buried the line deeper. He still thought I should pay for the added line because my measurements were off according to him. It made no sense to him that if you drop a pipe from 2 feet to 6ix feet deeper each end uses up 4 more feet of the total line. Plus a small jog around the outside of a tree cost him a few feet too.
The second control line never got extended because well, it worked just fine last winter so why bother extending the back up if your not using it! ???
I already stopped caring months ago. I figured why should I? They obviously don’t!
Present cost to now? Around $6500 and still rising! That branch has to be dug up again next summer. The ground settling is causing the pipe splices to pull apart and leak. I bet corrugated tubing would have helped!
He plans to just buy all new feed line and burry it, not reuse the pipe he already has, it can easily be salvaged but would have to be reinsulated and properly reburied in corrugated tubing this time. I estimate I can do it for around $1400 with excavator rental.
The factory line he wants to use is all set up and looks exactly like what I made but costs about $15 a linear foot instead of $5 a foot. The factory stuff still does not have a control wire though!
Hmm… 15 * 200 = $3000 plus another $100 for control wire and new line couplers and $400 for equipment rental and two days work. I think that comes to $3500 more added to that $6500 they already spent.
Plus the original pipe run was 580 feet as I mapped it. They now have around 750 feet in the system!
The 600 feet that they ordered the first time got them into the bulk discount range with the supplier and had free shipping with it! The other 150 feet has cost them almost as much as the first 600 feet due to no bulk discounts or free shipping.
For $10,000 I would have given them a 10 year unconditional warranty! And seasonal service too!

But in reality they have a hack job heating system that has no warranty and will probably get redone at least once more in the next few years!
But they do admit they are using the same amount of wood to keep three structures heated as they had been using for just heating his parents house!
And only needing to cut the fire wood down to 12” diameter and 4 feet long saves a lot of processing time and effort too.

The next controller is going to have a voice synthesizer that actually tells them what is going wrong! But I still think they won’t follow its instructions.
I would not be surprised if I get several phone calls asking why the alarm keeps going off and the controller keeps saying “Warning, Low water, check system!” or “Failed to reach running temp, Auto start cycle timed out”

Are common sense points deducted for double posts?