The Article Below was published today by Fox News. Even in South Florida where you would not think of this "Carbon Monoxide Problem" there were 5 teenagers killed celebrating a birthday.
Please recognize the signs, make yourself familiar with them all. Teach your children, parents check on your elderly neighbors-if we are vigilant we can minimize this needless tragedy!
May your new year be a safe and prosperous one.
I will work to bring more frequent information, attempt to clarify some of the false information that is out there about Heating and Air Conditioning, I believe that a well informed consumer is the best type of potential client.
There are many snake oil salesmen in this industry, I want to make sure that they are less likely to fool the consumer because when they do it casts a bad light on all of us.
Understand as a Business person Profit is not a dirty word-Stealing from a consumer, lieing to a consumer, not providing what the consumer needs at a fair price is wrong.
Thanks for viewing
Kevin
5 Teens Found Dead in South Florida Motel Room
Published December 28, 2010
FoxNews.com
Print Email Share Comments (106) Text Size Five teenagers celebrating a friend's birthday inside a South Florida hotel room were accidentally killed by carbon monoxide from a running car, authorities said.
A spokesman with the Hialeah Fire Department said a hotel maid called 911 Monday after seeing people unconscious through a window at the Hotel Presidente near Miami International Airport.
The Miami Herald reports that the bodies of the teenagers -- Juchen Martial, 19, Evans Charles, 19, Jonas Antenor, 18, Peterson Nazon, 17, and Jean Pierre Ferdinand, 16 -- were found on or around their beds at approximately 2 p.m. Monday.
The friends, all from a small Haitian community in Miami, rented the motel room the day after Christmas to celebrate Martial's 19th birthday, according to the newspaper.
Police spokesman Carl Zogby said the teenagers' deaths were accidental.
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A car used by the group, a red Kia Optima, was found running in a closed garage underneath the room. Friends say the car had needed a jump-start earlier and could have been left running to preserve the battery's charge. A door leading to a staircase up to the room had been left slightly open, and high levels of carbon monoxide were found inside.
Officials found no alcohol, drugs or suspicious items in the room. Bags of McDonald's -- some of the food uneaten -- were found in the room, according to the Herald.
Authorities say the incident is still under investigation. Zogby told the newspaper that police are examining the hotel's inspection and fire records to determine whether it was required to install carbon monoxide detectors.
Click here to read more from the Miami Herald
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Thursday, December 16, 2010
Maintenance is KEY to all HVACR Systems
I found an article this morning by a gentleman from Long Island by the name of Dan Holohan. He has long been considered as one of the leading authorities on Steam Heating Systems. Having attended one of his Dead Men Steam courses I can say that while in the class I got the answer to 2 problems we were having in seperate facilities and was then able to use my new found knowledge to demonstrate accurately to a client the problems that were in their system.
Having this confidence in Dan I subscribe to his weekly E-Zine. This article appeared in this issue and is shown below giving full credit to Dan.
The $37 million steam trap
Info
Author
Dan Holohan Published
August 25, 2010 Subscribe to RSS feed
Here’s to preventative maintenance, a practice often overlooked. When the laws of physics and the laws of economics collide, the laws of economics nearly always win in the short run, and especially in this slow economy. The laws of physics, however, don’t care about anyone’s budget, or anyone’s ignorance. The laws of physics just win in the end. Always.
So even if people are putting off preventative maintenance today to save a buck, they’ll pay tomorrow, and through the nose because there’s no escaping Mother Nature. She can be vicious and she’s forever relentless. And when things go wrong, we blame her instead of ourselves. But I think we’re to blame because we’re dopey enough to pretend that Mother Nature isn’t there. Here’s a higher-education example of just that:
Dartmouth College gets about $37,000 per undergraduate for yearly tuition. Not the most expensive school around, but still dear enough to get your attention.
James Wright, the current President of Dartmouth, lives in an 83-year-old house that has also been home to the past six Dartmouth presidents. It’s one of the nice things about being the boss. The place will get some long-overdue renovations this summer, and all to make it ready for President-elect, Jim Yong Kim and his family. They’re going to knock down most of the walls and spend six months and about $2.8 million to fix up the place.
Let that number sink in for a moment.
I read an interview where President Wright explained that when he and his wife, Susan, first moved into the house in 1998, he chose to delay renovations to the heating, water and plumbing systems because it would be “invasiveness.” I can understand that, but here we are 11 years later and you can imagine what’s gone on in that old house since the Wrights moved in. You don’t know “invasive” until you’ve ignored and upset Mother Nature. She never sleeps.
"We live in a wonderful, historic house,” says President Wright, “but it is an embarrassment for an institution like Dartmouth to have a house in this condition, so I am pleased the Board is more than willing to go ahead with some of these renovations."
Parents, grab your wallets.
The house is still using its original heating and plumbing systems, and they’re going to replace it all. They’re switching from steam to hot water because (are you ready?) “The steam system has resulted in significant heat loss, leaks and damage.”
Okay, I’ll go for the leaks and damage. Steam systems will do that if you ignore them for nearly a century, but I think the heat loss has more to do with the building envelope that it has to do with the system itself. But, hey, I’m no Ivy League graduate.
“The current system is not only uncomfortable, it's wasteful," President Wright said. "It's not efficient, and Dartmouth should do better. We're going to miss living in the house immensely, but we certainly won't miss the heating system in the house, and we won't miss the other problems. There is water in the basement oftentimes. There are issues of mold down there, which really can be a health issue, and there is seepage coming in from the foundation."
And he’s been living with this since 1988. Go figure.
Dartmouth offers degrees in engineering, up to the stratospheric Ph.D. level. Wouldn’t you think that, over all these years, at least one of those students would have checked out the heating system in the president’s house? Done a bit of preventative maintenance. Reached out and touched the real stuff. Or is it just me?
And that brings me to the $37 million steam trap.
On July 18, 2007, it rained here on the Isle of Long and in New York City. Now this wasn’t a normal summer rain. This rain would have gotten Noah’s attention. I stood at my backdoor and watched the water creep up our concrete patio and nearly enter the house without knocking, and that had never happened in the 30 years Marianne and I have lived here. It was impressive.
Later that day, after the rain had stopped, the corner of Lexington Avenue and 41st in Manhattan exploded in a plume of steam that rose higher than the 1,047-foot Chrysler Building. This happened when a 24-inch, high-pressure steam main, installed in 1924 (about the same time as the Dartmouth President’s house), let loose. It left a crater 15-feet deep and 35-feet wide. Asbestos coated everything. A 51-year-old New Jersey woman, who worked a block away, ran from it, had a heart attack and died. A 22-year-old, tow-truck driver was in the middle of the intersection when this ground exploded. It lifted his truck 12 feet in the air and dropped it back down onto the 400-degree steam. He lived, but spent months afterward in a medically induced coma because of his burns. It was horrible.
“The rain started that,” I said to Marianne when I saw it on the news that evening.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“The rain cooled the steam main and the steam inside the main condensed. When you suddenly have that much water moving at that speed, you’re going to get water hammer, and this is what water hammer can do.”
We watched the news together. I mumbled more about the power of steam, and about Mother Nature. Marianne puts up with me when I get like this. She’s good that way.
The steam mains under New York City streets share the space with a lot of other stuff. There are sewers, electrical cables, phone lines, water mains, subways, and more. I can’t walk by any New York City excavation site without stopping to stare for a good long while. It looks like a bowl of linguine down there. You have to see it to believe it.
There are manhole covers on just about every corner, and this is where you’ll find the steam traps. There’s often steam spewing from those manhole covers and we New Yorkers see this as perfectly normal. ConEd, the district steam company, used to have an advertising slogan: Dig We Must.
And they sure do.
The official report came out on December 27, 2007. A contractor had used sealant to repair a leak in a joint, and the excess sealant had gotten into two nearby steam traps and clogged them. No one noticed this. When the rain arrived and cooled the steam pipes, it created lots of condensate, which the traps couldn’t drain because they were clogged with sealant. The water gathered and launched itself at Lexington and 41st. It hit with an unbelievable amount of pressure, and that was that.
From a November 12, 2008, ConEd press release:
“The New York State Public Service Commission today approved a $37 million settlement with Con Edison to resolve the Commission's prudence investigation evaluating the company's actions and practices relating to the Lexington Avenue - East 41st Street steam event. Under the settlement, Con Edison will not seek to recover from customers some $37 million in costs related to the incident.
“The July 18, 2007 steam incident in midtown Manhattan was a difficult time for many of our customers. Con Edison sincerely regrets the incident and the substantial and profound impacts the incident had on our customers and the public. The company is committed to learning from this experience in order to strengthen the safety and reliability of the steam system and has implemented measures to enhance its system.
“Con Edison has implemented an action plan in conjunction with experts' findings that includes replacement of all 1,654 steam traps on the system with an improved design; enhanced rain response procedures to include physical inspection of manholes in flood or vapor-prone areas; new repair oversight protocols; remote monitoring; research and development on steam trap design, as well as new steam trap inspection and testing procedures.
“The environmentally friendly steam system serves major institutions in Manhattan below 96th Street, including museums, hospitals, government and commercial buildings, skyscrapers, as well as apartments and private residences. It supplies heat, air conditioning, humidification, and sterilization services. Con Edison's steam system is the largest in the United States, larger than the next nine steam systems combined.”
A steam incident. I like that.
And okay, there were two traps, so the actual cost per trap was only $18.5 million, not $37 million. A bargain!
While this points out the extreme in what can happen as a result of a lack of maintenance this brings home some serious issues.
A lack of maintenance appears to provide savings during the first few months as your noticable out of pocket expenses are less. What tends to go unnoticed is that with dirty filters equipment has to run longer to provide the same amount of heat to the space it services. This leads to increases in utility bills, uncomfortable employees and on and on-bringing about increases that over time far exceed the short term savings.
Until the next post-Let all those you love know it every moment of everyday!
Having this confidence in Dan I subscribe to his weekly E-Zine. This article appeared in this issue and is shown below giving full credit to Dan.
The $37 million steam trap
Info
Author
Dan Holohan Published
August 25, 2010 Subscribe to RSS feed
Here’s to preventative maintenance, a practice often overlooked. When the laws of physics and the laws of economics collide, the laws of economics nearly always win in the short run, and especially in this slow economy. The laws of physics, however, don’t care about anyone’s budget, or anyone’s ignorance. The laws of physics just win in the end. Always.
So even if people are putting off preventative maintenance today to save a buck, they’ll pay tomorrow, and through the nose because there’s no escaping Mother Nature. She can be vicious and she’s forever relentless. And when things go wrong, we blame her instead of ourselves. But I think we’re to blame because we’re dopey enough to pretend that Mother Nature isn’t there. Here’s a higher-education example of just that:
Dartmouth College gets about $37,000 per undergraduate for yearly tuition. Not the most expensive school around, but still dear enough to get your attention.
James Wright, the current President of Dartmouth, lives in an 83-year-old house that has also been home to the past six Dartmouth presidents. It’s one of the nice things about being the boss. The place will get some long-overdue renovations this summer, and all to make it ready for President-elect, Jim Yong Kim and his family. They’re going to knock down most of the walls and spend six months and about $2.8 million to fix up the place.
Let that number sink in for a moment.
I read an interview where President Wright explained that when he and his wife, Susan, first moved into the house in 1998, he chose to delay renovations to the heating, water and plumbing systems because it would be “invasiveness.” I can understand that, but here we are 11 years later and you can imagine what’s gone on in that old house since the Wrights moved in. You don’t know “invasive” until you’ve ignored and upset Mother Nature. She never sleeps.
"We live in a wonderful, historic house,” says President Wright, “but it is an embarrassment for an institution like Dartmouth to have a house in this condition, so I am pleased the Board is more than willing to go ahead with some of these renovations."
Parents, grab your wallets.
The house is still using its original heating and plumbing systems, and they’re going to replace it all. They’re switching from steam to hot water because (are you ready?) “The steam system has resulted in significant heat loss, leaks and damage.”
Okay, I’ll go for the leaks and damage. Steam systems will do that if you ignore them for nearly a century, but I think the heat loss has more to do with the building envelope that it has to do with the system itself. But, hey, I’m no Ivy League graduate.
“The current system is not only uncomfortable, it's wasteful," President Wright said. "It's not efficient, and Dartmouth should do better. We're going to miss living in the house immensely, but we certainly won't miss the heating system in the house, and we won't miss the other problems. There is water in the basement oftentimes. There are issues of mold down there, which really can be a health issue, and there is seepage coming in from the foundation."
And he’s been living with this since 1988. Go figure.
Dartmouth offers degrees in engineering, up to the stratospheric Ph.D. level. Wouldn’t you think that, over all these years, at least one of those students would have checked out the heating system in the president’s house? Done a bit of preventative maintenance. Reached out and touched the real stuff. Or is it just me?
And that brings me to the $37 million steam trap.
On July 18, 2007, it rained here on the Isle of Long and in New York City. Now this wasn’t a normal summer rain. This rain would have gotten Noah’s attention. I stood at my backdoor and watched the water creep up our concrete patio and nearly enter the house without knocking, and that had never happened in the 30 years Marianne and I have lived here. It was impressive.
Later that day, after the rain had stopped, the corner of Lexington Avenue and 41st in Manhattan exploded in a plume of steam that rose higher than the 1,047-foot Chrysler Building. This happened when a 24-inch, high-pressure steam main, installed in 1924 (about the same time as the Dartmouth President’s house), let loose. It left a crater 15-feet deep and 35-feet wide. Asbestos coated everything. A 51-year-old New Jersey woman, who worked a block away, ran from it, had a heart attack and died. A 22-year-old, tow-truck driver was in the middle of the intersection when this ground exploded. It lifted his truck 12 feet in the air and dropped it back down onto the 400-degree steam. He lived, but spent months afterward in a medically induced coma because of his burns. It was horrible.
“The rain started that,” I said to Marianne when I saw it on the news that evening.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“The rain cooled the steam main and the steam inside the main condensed. When you suddenly have that much water moving at that speed, you’re going to get water hammer, and this is what water hammer can do.”
We watched the news together. I mumbled more about the power of steam, and about Mother Nature. Marianne puts up with me when I get like this. She’s good that way.
The steam mains under New York City streets share the space with a lot of other stuff. There are sewers, electrical cables, phone lines, water mains, subways, and more. I can’t walk by any New York City excavation site without stopping to stare for a good long while. It looks like a bowl of linguine down there. You have to see it to believe it.
There are manhole covers on just about every corner, and this is where you’ll find the steam traps. There’s often steam spewing from those manhole covers and we New Yorkers see this as perfectly normal. ConEd, the district steam company, used to have an advertising slogan: Dig We Must.
And they sure do.
The official report came out on December 27, 2007. A contractor had used sealant to repair a leak in a joint, and the excess sealant had gotten into two nearby steam traps and clogged them. No one noticed this. When the rain arrived and cooled the steam pipes, it created lots of condensate, which the traps couldn’t drain because they were clogged with sealant. The water gathered and launched itself at Lexington and 41st. It hit with an unbelievable amount of pressure, and that was that.
From a November 12, 2008, ConEd press release:
“The New York State Public Service Commission today approved a $37 million settlement with Con Edison to resolve the Commission's prudence investigation evaluating the company's actions and practices relating to the Lexington Avenue - East 41st Street steam event. Under the settlement, Con Edison will not seek to recover from customers some $37 million in costs related to the incident.
“The July 18, 2007 steam incident in midtown Manhattan was a difficult time for many of our customers. Con Edison sincerely regrets the incident and the substantial and profound impacts the incident had on our customers and the public. The company is committed to learning from this experience in order to strengthen the safety and reliability of the steam system and has implemented measures to enhance its system.
“Con Edison has implemented an action plan in conjunction with experts' findings that includes replacement of all 1,654 steam traps on the system with an improved design; enhanced rain response procedures to include physical inspection of manholes in flood or vapor-prone areas; new repair oversight protocols; remote monitoring; research and development on steam trap design, as well as new steam trap inspection and testing procedures.
“The environmentally friendly steam system serves major institutions in Manhattan below 96th Street, including museums, hospitals, government and commercial buildings, skyscrapers, as well as apartments and private residences. It supplies heat, air conditioning, humidification, and sterilization services. Con Edison's steam system is the largest in the United States, larger than the next nine steam systems combined.”
A steam incident. I like that.
And okay, there were two traps, so the actual cost per trap was only $18.5 million, not $37 million. A bargain!
While this points out the extreme in what can happen as a result of a lack of maintenance this brings home some serious issues.
A lack of maintenance appears to provide savings during the first few months as your noticable out of pocket expenses are less. What tends to go unnoticed is that with dirty filters equipment has to run longer to provide the same amount of heat to the space it services. This leads to increases in utility bills, uncomfortable employees and on and on-bringing about increases that over time far exceed the short term savings.
Until the next post-Let all those you love know it every moment of everyday!
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Service is a legacy
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/obituaries/news/s_711645.html
This is a little different. The above link is to my own mothers obituary. In my loss and going thru many of her things-scrap books, articles, family memories and highlighted by her obituary I see where the strength of drive for service comes from in our company.
I watch thru the years as my mother worked so diligently with those who were, by the worlds standards, Handicapped. With her dedication to the Special Olympics, an annual fishing trip for her students, taking 3 years to teach one of her students to ride a tri-cycle, coming home exhausted from taking these students out of their wheel chairs and jumping all day on a trampoline while holding these precious kids in her arms. They were special to her just like us, her own children were. This level of commitment and service is rarely found in people in today's world. This day and age it is about ME! or as a former employer put it WIFM-What's in it for ME! with most people I meet.
With her passing I have begun to reexamine my own life. My accomplishments, My misdeeds, My life as a whole to see if I even was truly what I wanted to be.
You know what I have found-everything I am proud of and that means the most to me are the qualities I have been seeing in my MOTHER during all this time of reflection. I will rise in the middle of the night for a friend in need, I will miss an event that I really want to go to if a client has no heat or needs a part, I have been teaching Sunday school and driving the van to pick up people who have no means of attending church for a long time now-it adds another 8 hour work day for me on Sunday's. It does not matter though. It makes me happy, It makes others happy-It is service before self like my mother lived.
I wish you all could have met this wonderful mother, servant, friend, teacher, life coach......she was special to me and I hope to continue to be a testament to that legacy.
I want this testament to continue to be a part of what my company is. I want it to rub off on all around me-those I meet, those I have known for years and those I pass on the street.
It would be my wish, and I know my mothers as well, that everyone who reads this would go and call their parents, tell them how much they mean to you, get to them as fast as you can and as often as you can to hug them and share their company, never pass up an opportunity to see them, set a time each day as my mother and I had to call them just to say hello-or from a dear friend and his fiance shared with me(which is what I did for mom)-WAkey, WAkey, Eggs and Bakey.
May you always rise to meet the day with a smile, Love and prayer on your heart, and leave this world a better place than when you found it.
God Bless you all!
This is a little different. The above link is to my own mothers obituary. In my loss and going thru many of her things-scrap books, articles, family memories and highlighted by her obituary I see where the strength of drive for service comes from in our company.
I watch thru the years as my mother worked so diligently with those who were, by the worlds standards, Handicapped. With her dedication to the Special Olympics, an annual fishing trip for her students, taking 3 years to teach one of her students to ride a tri-cycle, coming home exhausted from taking these students out of their wheel chairs and jumping all day on a trampoline while holding these precious kids in her arms. They were special to her just like us, her own children were. This level of commitment and service is rarely found in people in today's world. This day and age it is about ME! or as a former employer put it WIFM-What's in it for ME! with most people I meet.
With her passing I have begun to reexamine my own life. My accomplishments, My misdeeds, My life as a whole to see if I even was truly what I wanted to be.
You know what I have found-everything I am proud of and that means the most to me are the qualities I have been seeing in my MOTHER during all this time of reflection. I will rise in the middle of the night for a friend in need, I will miss an event that I really want to go to if a client has no heat or needs a part, I have been teaching Sunday school and driving the van to pick up people who have no means of attending church for a long time now-it adds another 8 hour work day for me on Sunday's. It does not matter though. It makes me happy, It makes others happy-It is service before self like my mother lived.
I wish you all could have met this wonderful mother, servant, friend, teacher, life coach......she was special to me and I hope to continue to be a testament to that legacy.
I want this testament to continue to be a part of what my company is. I want it to rub off on all around me-those I meet, those I have known for years and those I pass on the street.
It would be my wish, and I know my mothers as well, that everyone who reads this would go and call their parents, tell them how much they mean to you, get to them as fast as you can and as often as you can to hug them and share their company, never pass up an opportunity to see them, set a time each day as my mother and I had to call them just to say hello-or from a dear friend and his fiance shared with me(which is what I did for mom)-WAkey, WAkey, Eggs and Bakey.
May you always rise to meet the day with a smile, Love and prayer on your heart, and leave this world a better place than when you found it.
God Bless you all!
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