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[energymass]

Energy Mass Save | Masssave Rebates, Insulation | Home Energy Audit

We are the Energy Mass Save auditors in MA and help to get access to Mass Save rebates & incentives. We help to increase the home energy efficiency with accurate energy inspection.

[operationrestoration-blog]

This is the song I was singing after John the Plumber left our house Friday night after being without heat for three days. I noticed the pressure gauge on our 1960ish boiler was getting a little (and by a little I mean a lot) too close to the red, where it could possibly explode and we'd have a biiiiig problem on our hands. Thankfully, turning the heat off for three days wasn't that bad, since it really hasn't been that cold.

So, after putting out an APB on Facebook, our friend Lindsey's mom suggested John, a plumber who had done work for her in the past. I called John on Thursday and he came out that night to assess the damage. He thought it was the expansion tank and said it would run us about $40. $40 is something I could handle! He also said he would take a look at the pipe and see if there was any sort of blockage. We agreed that he would come back to the house late Friday afternoon to do some work.

We kept the heat off again that night, just to make sure the boiler wouldn't blow up on us and create a real monster. I left work early that day to let John in the house to do his thing. After hearing some bangs and clangs, John called for me from the basement. I went downstairs and he told me to take a look at what he found when he removed the pipe connecting the boiler to the chimney....and this is what I saw.

Now THAT my friends, is massive blockage. The pipe was full of junk, like mortar from the chimney (not a great sign, but one we'll ignore that for now) twigs, soot, you name it. John said he could easily clean it out and that would take care of our little problem that MassSave found in December, when we had our free energy audit done. That little problem? I'll just say that had to do with some leakage of gases.

John cleaned out the pipe and installed our new expansion tank, all for a bargain price of $190 (I consider that a bargain seeing that it could have easily cost us 15k for a new boiler!) and went on his merry way. It was great that he came out at night (a Friday too!) and charged us for a reasonable price, plus the boiler is running still running strong, and most likely more efficiently.

And we could finally sing, loud and clear...The Heat is ON! Hopefully to stay that way too..