Approximately twenty years ago, we got a call from a person that owned three identical apartment buildings in a nearby town. His name was Leonard. He recently visited an annual trade show for building owners, and heard that we knew how to fix and properly adjust outdoor reset controls. Leonard called us and we set up an appointment.

When I met him at one of his buildings, he asked numerous very technical questions. I answered as best as I could. He seemed pleased with my answers. Once I passed the test, I began to ask questions about him and his three heating systems.

Leonard’s parents were Holocaust survivors. He was born in the United States soon after WWII, and grew up in the same town as his apartment buildings. His parents taught him to be frugal, but never cheap. Leonard was the type of person that would spend a lot of time doing research, and then reach out to me or another contractor in a different trade before getting work done.

He made it his job to know as much as the people he would be hiring to do the work. It could be roofing, masonry, boilers, plumbing, electrical, etc. I suspect Leonard wanted to make sure he was not being lied to or taken advantage of. Leonard was very handy and would take care of all the small jobs, but he knew his limits.

On a few occasions, we would forget to send Leonard an invoice after doing some work at one of the buildings. He would haunt me for that invoice, even if it was for a job we did months ago. In total, I suspect we wrote Leonard about one hundred invoices, he never questioned one of them. As a matter of fact, he paid the invoices within a week on every occasion.

When Leonard had his three apartment houses built in 1980, he had the plumber install gas fired cast iron Hydrotherm modular boilers with a Hydrotherm power coil piped directly over the boilers for the dhw needs. The boilers were staged, so they would fire as the demand increased. Each apartment was fitted with a Danfoss thermostatic valve on the hot water baseboard. There was one large Bell & Gossett inline circulator for each building. The boilers were fitted with standing pilots. Everything was simple and easy to work on. Leonard rarely needed help changing a thermocouple: an occasional Danfoss head or the coupler on the pump. He liked this, as he could take care of the buildings himself and not have to count on others.

About a month before Leonard first called us, he had a local plumber install a tankless water heater as an experiment. He was skeptical of the claims that he would save money on his utility bills and perhaps more importantly, keep up with the demand of sixteen apartments. Leonard swapped the shower heads to low flow versions years prior. The tankless unit did in fact reduce the gas bill. Unfortunately, the unit had to be replaced often. On one occasion, I questioned him with regards to the gas usage during the summer months. His gas bill (for one building) was actually lower than mine for my house by five percent. My house had five adults living there at the time. As I mentioned, Leonard had no problem spending money, but he wanted value for his hard-earned dollars.

Fast forward to two years ago. Leonard learned that the government was offering a great deal to upgrade with high efficiency boilers. Unfortunately, at the time we were not registered with the “lender” he was dealing with. Leonard asked me what I would typically charge to install a new system. He was amazed; the lender was telling him the cost would be three times as much as I would charge. Being that Leonard had become a friend over the years, I offered to show him how I came up with my numbers. His jaw dropped to the floor.

The good news was that the program covered approximately two-thirds of the cost of the project, and they offered a very attractive interest rate. The company sent two contractors to the site; both were not versed in heating, especially with high efficiency equipment. Leonard balked and spoke to the lender, he demanded the contractor must be familiar with high efficiency equipment. They sent another guy from out of state; his estimate was four times my price. Leonard begged me to apply to this company and get certified and do the job. I reached out to the company, filled out a stack of paperwork, had it notarized where required, and gave them the drug test results as mandated. All in all, it took about a year to get on board with this new program. I probably spent forty hours of my time dotting the I’s and crossing the T’s.

On a cold winter afternoon, Leonard stopped by my office and looked like hell. We both knew he was dying and had a very rare disease with no known cure. He was checking in and was pleased we were close to getting certified. A few weeks later I got a call from Leonard’s family that he passed. We finally got certified for the program the following week.

Late last spring, Leonard’s wife called and said the entire boiler room was under water, the insurance company said it was a total loss. Leonard finally got the new heating and domestic hot water system he wanted.

By the way, the insurance company covered most of the cost of the new system Leonard had wanted for years.