Comparison of Capitol Plumbing (Capitol) and Paul's Plumbing and Heating, Santa Fe, NM (Paul's) with Road Runner Aircon, Heating & Refrigeration, Albuquerque, NM (Road Runner)
My Burnham Series II boiler serves seven valved zones of in-floor radiant heating tubes in various rooms (and part of the garage) of a 2050 sq. ft. one-story house. I called these three companies for a pre-winter checkup because some zones appeared not to be working well.
All three techs found that the pressure side of the temperature-pressure gauge integral to the boiler was not working, but was stuck at about 7 psi. Beyond that, their diagnoses and recommendations differed radically:
1. Capitol's tech found two little nuggets of calcium or other mineralization under the burners, which I did not notice before or afterward. The tech claimed these nuggets were evidence of a heat-exchanger about to fail. Its failure, he said, would flood my boiler closet, which does not have a pan under the boiler as current code requires. He also found discoloration of the fiberglass insulation, which, he said, was evidence of rollout of flames, and he said my rollout shutoff switch was not working. He recommended installing a new boiler for about $9,000, plus $5,700 more for a water treatment system (for mineralized well water, common near Santa Fe), for a total cost of $14,700. He did not offer to replace the bad gauge, nor did he mention the input water pressure limiter. Charge for the visit: $146.22
2. Paul's tech soon found the bad internal gauge and played with the pressure limiter, but did not suggest replacing it. Wanting a second opinion, but not wanting to suggest a high-cost solution, I asked the tech to examine the heat exchanger. The two nuggets of condensed minerals found by Capitol's tech were gone, but Paul's tech used a fiber-optic system to discover small areas of mineralization in some corners of the heat exchanger's tubes. He seemed reluctant to recommend replacing the boiler. But when I asked him what a replacement and water treatment system would cost, he informally quoted a price of $14,000. Charge for the visit: $101.65
3. Neither Capitol's nor Paul's tech would put any quote in writing before I committed to a verbal price first. This to me was a red flag of sorts. On a later phone call, perhaps with a troubled conscience, Paul refused to commit to a replacement date, pleading lack of time during the busy heater start-up season.
4. I looked up the replacement boiler on the Web and confirmed with Paul the model number by phone. The boiler, a Weil-McLain CGa-6-PIDN - 146K BTU, costs $2,299, plus delivery, from the ecomfort.com website. That implied an installation charge of over $6,500. John Lial of Road Runner (see below) later said installation would take about a day and cost about $1,000, for a total price of under $3,500, as compared to the $9,000-plus that both Capitol and Paul's quoted orally.
5. I called Road Runner for a third opinion, and John Lial responded to the call. He has 37 years' experience with heaters and boilers and ran his own high-stress business for seven years, serving fire-control centers in Alamogordo.
John examined the boiler and pronounced it fit for service. He said no one replaces a boiler for *presumed* heat-exchanger problems before the heat exchanger actually fails. He said they rarely fail catastrophically but first spring small leaks, usually over many months. He advised me to install a small Proteus moisture detector, which will send me and my fiancee e-mail and text messages if water appears on the floor of the boiler closet. I bought one from Amazon for about $100 and installed it. Charge for John's visit: $74.74
Some time later, John installed a small screw-on gauge on the water supply, to supplement the bad internal boiler gauge. After a couple of weeks of testing, I was troubled that the boiler would not hold its rated pressure but suffered a pressure drop within a few hours after I brought it up to rated pressure (15 psi or greater) using the input pressure limiter. When I did this, the boiler safety valve sometimes also leaked.
A few days later, John returned, purged the system and replaced the pressure limiter and boiler safety valve at my request. Both showed signed of clogging with gunk, and there were signs of big particles in the otherwise clear purge water. After several hours, the boiler appears to be holding the limiter's rated pressure of 15 psi, and there are no leaks through the new 30 psi boiler safety valve. The price for this work was $338.
My conclusions are that Capitol and Paul's are willing to exploit customers' presumed ignorance (unfortunately for them, I'm an ex-physicist) to charge exorbitantly for unneeded work. I will use John Lial at Road Runner for all future work on my boiler or water heater.