The spring is beginning to bring warmer weather when Bob gets a call from the dispatcher that a small apartment building is overheating. The building is heated with an old boiler that is running really hot. Btu Buddy helps Bob track down the problem.

The dispatcher calls Bob about servicing an old oil furnace. The customer is old and is adamant that he doesn’t want a new furnace, so Bob does not try to get him to upgrade to a new model. He tells the customer that he will see that he gets the most out of the old furnace that he can.

Bob and Btu Buddy get together for lunch and talk about why high head pressure seems to drive up the power consumption of a compressor. Bob remarks that the problem “doesn’t seem to happen in the cooling season, only in the heating season. What is the difference and why is this happening?”

Bob is called to a new customer’s home with a 5-ton heat pump that is experiencing power bills that are considerably higher than the same months last year. Btu Buddy assists Bob in diagnosing the problem.

The dispatcher calls and tells Bob that yet another person is describing an unusual smell when the furnace runs for a long period of time. Bob talks to the homeowner, checks out the furnace, and finds that it is backdrafting slightly. With the help of Btu Buddy, he tracks down the draft problem.

Btu Buddy and Bob meet for lunch and Bob has a question about the last service call. The job involved replacing the single-wall flue pipe with double-wall pipe. “You said that we had some unfinished business about the service call yesterday, yet you said that the call was complete. What did you mean?”

Bob goes on a call to a house where the residents smell fumes when the furnace is running. He examines the flue connector from the furnace to the chimney and discovers it’s rusted to the point of falling apart. With the assistance of Btu Buddy, he replaces the single-wall vent pipe with a double-wall vent.

Bob had changed a compressor and was just about ready to charge the system when a problem arose. He pulled a vacuum down to 500 microns but noticed a rise in the vacuum gauge to 1,000 microns. There was a leak and Btu Buddy assisted him in finding it.

Bob receives a call from the dispatcher to go to an office building that has a 100-ton system that is water-cooled. With the help of Btu Buddy, he finds that the water level in the cooling tower is low. They check the water fill circuit and discover a kink in the copper pipe.

The temperature is 102° outside. The complaint is from a car dealership. The showroom temperature is 85° and the dealer is having a big sale the next day. Bob finds the a/c unit is already doing all it can. Btu Buddy shows Bob some tricks to get more out of the system.