The Truth About Troubleshooting

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Most times, when things go wrong with your hydronic system (or any mechanical or electrical system) there’s a clear reason for the failure. Experience tells me where to look for the most obvious source of the problem in order to make a quick repair and get things up and running again.

But every once in a while a problem crops up that doesn’t lend itself to a quick diagnosis. Maybe it’s something I haven’t seen before or there are unique conditions affecting the equipment in unexpected ways.

I like to look at these situations as opportunities — to learn something new, to challenge my troubleshooting skills and to show you how committed I am to making things right. That’s not to say these opportunities are without their challenges.

It takes hard work, research and focus. Getting to the root cause and fixing the problem once and for all requires a complete understanding of what went wrong. And, more often than not, it takes patience. Patience on my part — and yours.

It’s relatively easy to throw a bunch of parts at a failed system and get a quick fix. But unless we take a systematic approach to troubleshooting, we’ll never know the true cause — and therefore won’t be sure it can’t happen again.

I’ve found the best way to get to the true cause is to make one change at a time and measure the effect of that change. That way I can be confident that the final fix will be permanent, because I’ve truly gotten to the root cause of the problem.

You play a big part in the troubleshooting process, too. Your feedback and observations of system performance are critical. So is your patience. It will likely take several visits and a fair amount of communication to get to the bottom of a stubborn issue. But together, we’ll get it done. And we’ll both be better off for having worked it through systematically.

Hydronically yours,

Wayne