Hey Haller, how come you're ignoring the link and quote I posted from
the engineering trade journal about standby loss? Trade journals are
rarely run by wacky *******s that print/post bad information. The
author is an interesting guy:http://www.newyorker.com/archive/200..._talk_sullivan

R


heres your link its about boilers, remember were talking hot water
tanks

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The New Yorker
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In the Basement
The Boiler Man
by Robert Sullivan
March 17, 2003 Text Size:
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Gifford, Henry; Boiler Rooms, Boilers; Tours; New York City; New York
City Boiler Tour; Gifford Fuel Saving, Inc.; Apartments One thing that
distinguishes Henry Gifford's New York City Boiler Tour is the fact
that there are no boiler tours quite like it in New York City, not to
mention anywhere else in the United States or, possibly, the world.
Another is the singular passion for boilers that is exhibited by Henry
Gifford, of Gifford Fuel Saving, Inc. Gifford came to boilers late in
life, when he was twenty and had already worked as a bicycle mechanic,
a window-gate welder, and a landlord. As a landlord, Gifford had
calculated that the biggest variable in terms of expenses was the
boiler. He observed that in the boiler arena there seemed to be what
he called a "knowledge vacuum," and he set out to fill it. "I miss
having buildings," Henry, who is now forty-two, said the other day, as
his tour was about to kick off. "But I would have gotten tired of it
by now, and I would have missed all the fun I've had with boilers."

Not surprisingly, some of the forty-one people who signed up for this
inaugural boiler tour did so as much to be with Henry as to see the
boilers. Tim Baker, the managing editor of a mechanical-engineering
magazine, flew in from Cleveland. "I mean, you can just sense the love
that this guy has for boilers," Baker said.

The three-day tour started early on a cold Thursday on the ground
floor of a multifamily apartment building on East Fifth Street. Over
coffee and bagels, Henry introduced people. "You know when you want to
see what kind of an airflow you've got in a room, so you measure it
with a blower door? Well, this guy makes them," he said, pointing to
Gary Nelson, who had flown in from Minnesota, and who was scanning the
room with an infrared camera, searching for heat leakage. There was
the usual run of boiler enthusiasts: architects, alternative-energy
marketers, officials from the Building Performance Institute, and a
landlord named Ralph, who looked like an old sailor.

Henry began with a lecture, accompanied by slides. In his view, the
two most prominent New York City heat-related phenomena--open windows
in overheated apartments, and clanking radiators--are prime examples of
boiler ignorance and waste. To no one's surprise, Henry's talk went
long.

When he was done, the tour group set out to look at some boilers.
There was a quick stop at a building on Avenue C, to watch a boiler-
related film, "Carmelita Tropicana: Your Kunst is Your Waffen,"
starring Carmelita Tropicana, a superintendent/performance artist.
That was followed by a lunch break at Katz's Delicatessen, on Houston
Street, where a woman in a fur coat said to the group, "What? Are you
bird-watching?" Someone told her what they were up to. "Boilers!" she
said. "Oh, that's not very exciting." In the afternoon, Henry sneaked
his people into the basement of an old church, where they saw the
history of boilers encapsulated: turn-of-the-century coal to eighties
super-efficient natural-gas-fired pulse combustion, then back to oil.
On the way out, an engineer from Massachusetts said, "I feel
excitingly illicit."


from the issuecartoon banke-mail thisThe next day, everyone met up in
Harlem, in a brownstone with hundred-year-old radiators, each with a
thermostat attached, a detail that made Henry ecstatic, even though
Con Edison hadn't hooked up the gas and everyone was shivering. In the
basement, with a single light bulb dangling above his head, he
described the Gifford formula for calculating pipe friction and flow,
a formula that, despite Henry's best efforts, has yet to be embraced
by the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-
Conditioning.

All told, the boiler tour went on for seven days--four days and many
heating systems more than Henry had planned. But it was during the
lecture/slide show, on the first day, that Tim Baker, the engineering-
magazine editor, asked the question that seemed to sum it all up.
"Henry," he said, his pen in the air. "You've talked about the
ignorance, the dishonesty. Why is this?"

Henry's face broke into a grin that was bright enough to heat a loft
space. He turned to an associate, who was working the slide projector.
"Put the Madonna slide on," he said. The slide showed young people
standing in line on a Greenwich Village sidewalk. "O.K., so these
people want to be dancers with Madonna's world tour," Henry said.
"Look at this--the line stretches around the block. I asked these
people, 'How much does this job pay per hour?' And none of them knew.
This has to do with what I call the Gifford Status-Money Ratio: the
amount of money a job pays is inversely correlated to the amount of
status the job has. The dancers get paid with social status. Boiler
work has zero or negative social status. And this ratio also
influences the quality of work to be gotten from a person working in
that field. In the basement, there's money, but there's no status.
This doesn't mean you're dumb if you work in the basement. It just
means that you're not expected to be smart. The fact is, excellence is
not expected in the basement."