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Warming to the subject

Leigh Merriam knows your heating system, and he wishes you did too.

Leigh Merriam's pet peeve is people whose house numbers aren't clear. That's the kind of negligence that leads a furnace guy to the wrong house, where Murphy's Law guarantees that his knock will be answered by a grandmother who's baby-sitting and who assumes that her daughter had called about a repair. Only later does the workman find out that he's been barking up the wrong furnace.

But a more serious complaint is the $30,000 cars in the driveway of a house with an ancient, inefficient heating system. The benefits of a modern system in fuel efficiency, control, and comfort should make the upgrading decision a no-brainer, as Merriam figures it. "But you don't get in your heating system and drive it to work every day," he says - hence those expensive cars, which are terrible investments compared with a top-notch furnace.

These are the issues that would animate discussions between Merriam and his father, Lyman, who started the Northampton-based EMCO Heating Services in the early '80s. The elder Merriam died two years ago, and the company was sold, so Leigh Merriam went to work for Surner Heating Co. in Amherst.

On the job, he sees far too many ancient boilers that homeowners just won't replace. One century-old boiler, he says, finally gave up the ghost in January, forcing the family to move into a motel while an asbestos removal company, then a heating contractor, made the house habitable once more.

When that happens in a steam-heated house - or before it happens - Merriam recommends installing a forced hot water system, which means taking out the steam pipes and radiators and replacing them with baseboard copper tubing. Depending on the size of the house, it could be expensive: $10,000, say, for a total refit versus $3,000 for a boiler replacement.

But hot water is among the most efficient ways of heating a home, says Merriam, because it only requires heating water to 180 degrees. It is easy to "zone" so that you only send heat where you need it. And a modern unit can supply domestic hot water at little additional cost.

Steam heat, by contrast, requires heating water to 212 degrees, and you have very little control over zoning. As for forced hot air, the systems are less durable, hog space, and are difficult to keep clean.

Merriam studied computers in college and says he was never mechanically inclined, but, looking back, he sees the logic to the path his life has taken. He could never be stuck in a cubicle, he now says. He enjoys being out on the road all day.

He does admit to suffering from the social stigma that can dog people who work with their hands. "On the other hand," he says, "everybody wants to pick my brain about what to do with their heating systems." And people quiz him about which way oil prices are going to go, "like I've got an inside track to OPEC."