FINANCING AND SERVICE ISSUES

12.04.08

They are in the mail again: offers of refinancing, with all sorts of programs leading you to believe that you can lower your mortgage costs, etc., etc. It never ceases to amaze me how these (some) operators in the lending world will keep popping up with a new program to keep you in debt. Two words of advice: avoid them.

The cold snap we had 2 weeks ago resulted in lots of emergency calls for burner service. Why cold weather caused so many start failures is a mystery to me, but it did. Clogged oil filters, bad oil, dirty burner nozzles, or transformer failure are the 4 possible problems needing attention.

There is a "service issue" going around the NW corner plumbing and heating contractors, as far as I am concerned. It simply is a failure by service providers to do a timely servicing of clients' boilers. There are 2 sides to blame on this: the owner and the servicing facility.

The owner fails, in many cases, to answer the service solicitations received by mail, offering servicing contracts. The provider fails in a timely response to completing any servicing requests, using the "we are backed up and can't get to you until...."

It is my opinion that facilities providing burner service should be doing all this preventive maintenance work during the summer, not in the Fall when it is often too late to prevent the furnace failure.

Furnaces that are essentially turned off during the Summer, or used mostly to heat hot water, will not deteriorate to a "failure" condition by reduced, or a lack of, use. Newly changed filters and nozzles stay clean; new transformers stay "new". Only bad oil could screw things up, but it does not really deteriorate by sitting unused in a tank. If all our service providers would re-program their maintenance operations to take place during the summer, there might be fewer failures when that first "start-up" is required.

©2008 R. Leech features.