It's been said that a classic story needs 5 elements: a Work, Workers, a World, Words, and Wisdom.
In other words: a plot, characters, a setting, a style and a theme.*
"All About Boilers" is not going to be the title of a best seller, but for the person who will have to meet this boiler, this blog post will be one chapter of a favorite bedtime story.
This boiler has a back story that hasn't been written yet. Who wants to embark on writing the equivalent of "War and Peace" for an ensemble of mismatched characters in a tragi-comedy of errors in a edenic setting where the stakes are, frankly, inconsequential?
Anyway, our chapter opens on a scene where the boiler is failing to fire because the "flow switch" is dysfunctional...it is failing to tell the gas valve to open and let gas go to the burners and 'fire up!' The flow switch senses that the pump is 'on', thus, flow is happening, so 'switch the gas on!'
But this flow switch is not working because the installer neglected to remove one of the two alternate paddles the part is shipped with to fit different sized pipes different systems are piped with. So no flow will be sufficient to signal the gas to turn on when two paddles are in place instead of one correctly sized paddle.
Above, one can see the second paddle removed from the switch.
Below, the fitting where the flow switch is to be installed and another fitting below that where a superfluous and dysfunctional thermometer has been removed and will be replaced with an additional air vent to address issues that belong to the tragi-comic backstory.
A new flow switch is installed by the expert and conscientious worker pictured above. The old one will be set aside as a back up, inasmuch as, with the extra paddle removed, it is still serviceable.
The sad backstory is for another day.
*thanks to Peter J. Kreeft in "The Philosophy of Tolkien" pg. 17
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