Custard nearly had me there!

[MarkOil]

Thought I'd share this.
My usual practice is to always fire a boiler up before servicing it, sometimes I forget, sometimes it's chugging away merrily when I turn up. Today I forgot, and after asking if the boiler is working fine to which the reply was "yes", I found an extremely noisy fuel pump, and the pressure at 110 not 145 and couldn't adjust!!
I ask the custard if its been doing that before, he tries pulling a fast one and says "oh it wasn't doing that before"
Erm I think it was you fibbing little hound, after a bit of a chat, he coughs up, and now has a near silent boiler.
Lesson for today has been learnt!

 

[rpm]

I get this as well Mark, do a routine service on a Saniflo then get the blame for all sorts, I`ve reached the point where I ask are you sure? once then tell them it`s not possible you must be mistaken! Surprising most back down and change the subject.

 

[Best]

Don't want the baffles heated up, so just a few seconds on to let the boiler go through it's sequence until it fires up & runs. That way I know if it isn't working or making any strange noises.
Point out the noise or any fault to the customer before you start.

 

[Roger Welton]

At the end of the day, servicing a boiler won't make make a pump noisy if it is fine before, only thing that sometimes gets caused by a service is the adjustment screw leaking on danfoss pumps when you touch them, and cust gets charged anyway.

 

[Best]

Also take photos with your phone camera of any flaws of boiler inside or outside & if the customer seems really dodgy then make a video of any noise issue. Will be fun some day if you get an idiot suddenly coming back to you saying it was perfect before you started.

 

[MarkOil]

I usually do run it for a few mins and point stuff out, but it's always when you forget that things like this happen lol.
I keep an assortment of spare coil stems and pressure adjustment screws, I've been caught out before by then pesky screws!

 

[Bunker]

Anything questionable that I find I show the custard before I change it,

 

[Newpark7]

At the end of the day, servicing a boiler won't make make a pump noisy if it is fine before, only thing that sometimes gets caused by a service is the adjustment screw leaking on danfoss pumps when you touch them, and cust gets charged anyway.

Had very same thing today!

 

[Best]

In thinking about it, servicing a boiler properly & carefully, can cause a working part to fail very easily!
I have had oil pumps that were on a burner & working perfectly when I arrived. After I put an oil gauge with manifold on to check the oil pressure then the pump failed totally. Very embarrassing & obviously the pumps must have been hanging by a thread inside & just adding a manifold meant the pumps died. Hard to explain to customer.

 

[Roger Welton]

Just tell them they were lucky it happened when you were there

 

[kimbo]

I always tell them that the whole point of a service is to find anything that might fail before it actually does. They tend yo agree with that.