Eric Johnson (00:00)
How'd you get into the boiler industry? What is your background?
Roy Voorberg (00:03)
All right, that's an interesting story. At least a lot of people tell me it's interesting. I'm born and raised in the Niagara Peninsula by immigrant Dutch parents. And my dad was from Holland and he had worked in the greenhouse industry in the Netherlands. And so when he came to Canada, he wanted to get back involved in the greenhouse industry. But of course, that takes a lot of resources that he as a new immigrant didn't have just yet. So he would work for people.
While I was going to high school, he got me a job in a greenhouse. ⁓ And so my first job in the boiler business was working in that greenhouse was shoveling coal into the boiler hoppers and raking the clinkers out of the coal boiler. And ⁓ so I would be working around the boilers with the owner himself.
got interested in them a little bit as we did that and helped them with some repair work and fixing pumps and break broken pipes and whatnot and then my dad and my brother together both built greenhouses and we had one boiler and it had to run in the winter it had to run all the time to keep the steam pressure up and so my brother and I took turns sleeping in the boiler room if the boiler quit that would wake us up and we would get up and fix the boiler and then once it was running we'd go back to
to bed to sleep and so that's how I got sort of started into boilers themselves was ⁓ back at the age of 14-15 years of age and then ⁓ finished high school got a job working in Dominion Foundries and Steel which is a blast furnace at Coke Ovens place as a electrical apprentice worked there to get an apprenticeship and but in the meantime on my days off I'd work around the
the greenhouse help of my dad and my brother fixing boilers and they put more boilers in and used ones that we bought and I fixed those used ones up and then ⁓ and one of them was a an old had been originally a coal fired but we've we bought it and had the single burner in the front ⁓ of the ⁓ stoker bit area.
And every time it would quit, then we would have no steam again. So I said, why don't we buy two burners and put them fire, crisscross fire them in the rake outdoors. And so that's we did. We made up brackets. I made them up, welded them up, and mounted two burners with a key switch. So if one quit, you just turn the key switch and the other one would start up. And we went along like that for a long time. And then finally we had enough money. We bought some new boilers, and my brother and I installed them. And the guy came from Volcano. They were Volcano boilers we bought.
When he came to start them up, ⁓ he looked around the boiler room and he said, so who installed these? I said, well, my brother and I did. And who did this over here? He was looking at the boiler with two burners on it. And I said, well, my brother and I did that, mostly me. And he says, holy mackerel. He says, you should come work for us at Volcano. And I said, well, I don't have any fuel licenses. I'm just, by that time I was a licensed electrician.
He well, we need an electrician anyway to rewire a lot of old boilers anyway, so you should apply. says, and I'll back you up on the application as a reference. So he did. And I applied and volcano hired me. And then I went to night school and got my first, my oil license. And then after that, I went to night school and got my gas license. And I worked for volcano for eight or 10 years and then started my own boiler and burner service company in the greenhouse business as primary ⁓ customer base. then ⁓
That went along well. I had a partner in that. And then we did a lot of work for a big greenhouse manufacturing company and building company. one day they came along and they said, we'd like to buy your business and make it part of our company. And I said, OK, put an offer on a table. So they did. So I sold the company to them. And I moved on to other career opportunities in the boiler business, ⁓ working first for sterling combustion and then for Carremm Controls and then E.J. Walsh.
and now with Morriston Mechanical. So, I'm semi-independent with Morriston and I work for two other companies as well on a part-time basis between the three of them. So, keeps me fairly busy, busier than sometimes I even want to be at this time and this stage in my life. But I can't give it up, I love it too much, so I keep tinkering away at it.
Eric Johnson (04:37)
What were the approximate dates, the years of shoveling coal and sleeping by a boiler in a greenhouse?
Roy Voorberg (04:44)
I was probably shoveling coal in the late 60s, 1968, 69, and sold my own company. I sold that in 2000. So that's 25 years ago now that I sold my company. I had, at that time we had about 10 or 12 guys on the road doing service work and in the shop rebuilding boilers. We would buy used boilers from companies that were going out of business or something. And we had all our, I had all my own equipment. I...
equipment to we would remove them from the building with forklifts of our own that we owned in our we had our own dollies and Blocking tackles etc. And then the only thing we didn't own was a flatbed truck or a tilting bulls So we would hire that out to a guy that I knew and he would do the transport portion of it And we did the rest all ourselves. So when I sold it we we were selling probably 15 to 20 used boilers a year
in size from 50 horse up to 500 horsepower and we sold them like new with a one-year warranty on everything because we would recondition them to that point that we had that come that confidence in it and we did well with it so that was kind of a unique and I've had the opportunity and just in the last couple years I've actually I'm back working for what was originally my own company as a part-time guy it was called Fueltec Combustion I work for the owners now
on a part-time basis and I've worked on some of the boilers I sold 25 years or 28 years ago so they're still going so that's kind of fun yeah
Eric Johnson (06:21)
That's
gotta be a weird feeling walking into the mechanical room and knowing, oh man, I remember doing this 25 years ago when these were new and I was always told, I used to work with somebody else, that when you start quoting replacements for boilers that you installed, it's probably time to start retiring.
Roy Voorberg (06:44)
Well, that's right. So I'm semi-retired. ⁓ I try not to work Mondays and Fridays anymore with the tools. I'll do tech support. Just an hour before you called, I did tech support with one of our technicians at Morristen Mechanical. He's on a job, a steam job, and he's having trouble with a high-low pressure control system for the burner.
and ⁓ troubleshooted him through on the electrical side of it to get that resolved and it's now up and running. that's always a good feeling too when you can help the young fellow along and get him going over the phone. You know, I don't always have the drawing but then I tell him, hey, you got a drawing? Yeah, take a picture, send me the picture by text. Then I can hear my office, I've got a full-size printer so I can print up full-size drawings and I can...
go over the whole thing with him line by line. He's looking at it exactly and I have the exact same drawing and that makes troubleshooting a lot easier for him and me. And then I walk them through the drawing. My electrical background really comes in as a huge advantage with troubleshooting. That's where most, I think most young guys get hung up and this fellow is the same case. Their electrical knowledge is not so strong enough and they don't know how to read a ladder diagram.
Eric Johnson (08:06)
Yes, electrical troubleshooting is probably the number one skill that I hear about, although somebody can understand electrical, but they are going to be 100 % reliant on the drawing if they don't understand the sequence operations of a general boiler. Like right now, if I told you to draw out a wiring diagram of a simple atmospheric boiler, you could do that. And if...
If boiler service technicians are built to always rely on a drawing and they don't actually understand the sequence operations, then when they don't have the drawing or it's an older system that's been changed, then they immediately just give up. Well, I don't have a drawing, so I don't know what's going on. Well, no, you can like fill in the gaps and have the ability to understand it because every boiler, whether it's steam or a hot water boiler really works the same. They just change a little bit.
Roy Voorberg (09:02)
salute.
Eric Johnson (09:04)
depending on the controls and how fancy they are. So when you were learning boilers, in your teenage years, you were firing coal, and then did you switch to fuel oil or did you just go right to gas, natural gas?
Roy Voorberg (09:08)
Absolutely, absolutely.
No, I
first did fuel oil. First got my oil licenses and ⁓ did a lot of oil equipment and gas was also available for service work. So I did some gas under supervision of a gas fitter and I had a guy, his name was John Lucas. He was my mentor and ⁓ he's the guy that suggested I get hired on at Volcano and he ⁓
He said to me all the time, says, Roy, if you want to make more money, you got to go on nighttime service calls. So I said, OK. How do I go about that? He said, well, I'll help you with it. He says, first we got to talk to the boss and get you on the list. And I said, OK. So we did that. And I got on night calls. And then he said to me.
You go to a call and you look it over, says, and if you don't know what you're up to, he says, you just call me. Middle of the night, doesn't matter, there's my home phone number, just call me at home and I'll walk you through the job. I said, okay. And he did that. And it was quite amazing. I would call him sometimes and then he would say, in the right hand corner of the panel, you're gonna see a terminal block and there's a red, white and a blue wire and you gotta do this and this with, oh yeah, okay.
And then I'd be doing that and I'd get the boiler running. I'd be watching it for an hour to make sure everything was good. And I'd turn around and all of sudden here's John standing in the boiler room behind me no matter where it was. He would drive out to make sure I was okay. So I picked up from that and I've been doing that for young fellows for a number of years now that I helped them out that way. I tell them you can call me anytime. I have a fellow that I met through LinkedIn. We him and I have never met face to face. But we have talked.
And just this weekend past, ⁓ he was on a project, some rental boiler somewhere down in southern US and they're Autoflame and I'm an Autoflame specialist as well. And he called me already on Friday night said I got a tomorrow morning I got to start up two rental boilers with Autoflame. I haven't done it for a while. Can you just walk me through the process? So I did that Friday night while I'm home with my wife. I'm typing to him and
talking to her and then typing to him and she's getting a little annoyed of course but and then Saturday and Sunday mornings a few questions came back from him and I answered his questions and I've been mentoring him along you know remotely for four or five years now and it's gone well and we have a good rapport we talk on the phone quite often but we've never met face to face but it's it's still fun to help somebody like that out you know and make sure that they do what's right instead of
taking too much time and doing what's wrong in the end anyway.
Eric Johnson (11:57)
Have you always worked in Canada or have you done any work in the US?
Roy Voorberg (12:03)
I have done a ton of work in Canada, all the provinces, including Nineveh up in the north. I have worked in many, many of the states in the US for Autoflame systems. I've worked in Cuba for Autoflame systems. I've been to England several times to the Autoflame the Limpsfield factories. ⁓ And I've done, when I had my own company, I was an agent for a burner company out of... ⁓
Holland out of Zantingh is the name of the company and so I've been to Holland to their plant on a number of occasions as well and made good friends with one of their chief engineers electrical engineers and I was just at home a couple weeks back and looked him up ⁓ and talked with him we didn't get to meet face to face this trip but we have done other times I've been to his home and met with him and he's been here and he's been to for dinner our house with my wife and I and so yeah you know
The boiler business is a worldwide business but it's a small, in a way it's a small company business because you get to know people that you make relationships with and they stick for life and I think that's kind of neat too.
so.
Eric Johnson (13:14)
Yeah, sounds like it. So I know Canada has a of remote places. How many times have you flown on a little plane, single engine prop plane, to go service a boiler?
Roy Voorberg (13:24)
I have done that on a number of occasions. can't tell you how many exactly, but I have a number of mines in northern Canada and in Denevec that I have worked on in the last five or six years especially. And for me to fly to one of those mines from leaving home to get to the mine site, it's almost a two days worth of travel just one way to get there and then two days of travel to get back again. so that's...
unique situation to do go on a service call and and then when you're there you're in a mining camp and Because of the flights they don't come in they don't fly in and out every day So if you're there, you know for sure You're probably going to be there a minimum of eight days because the flight doesn't come in for another seven days after that dropped you off So you might as make the best of it and check everything in the boiler room You can check while you're there and tear everything down and put it back together that you can do and so that's what we do when we go up so we we Price that a little bit differently with it's a it's
Basically we run it as a per diem cost rather than an hourly rate. And then when we're there, ⁓ we do everything we can in their boiler room from start to finish to try and get everything in tip-top shape.
Eric Johnson (14:33)
What does a mine use ⁓ a boiler for? Is it a steam boiler?
Roy Voorberg (14:38)
They will have both steam and hot water. ⁓ Primarily we can get involved with a company that's a US based company that makes the explosive emulsion that they're using to blast the rock apart. So in making the emulsion and mixing various chemicals including fuel oil together to make that mixture they have to apply heat to it because it's not very viscous when it's cold so they have to warm it up to get the blending correctly.
and that's where the boilers come in. So some of those boilers or those chemical mixes are done with hot water boilers and some of them are still done with steam systems. So it varies from mine to mine and from application to application.
Eric Johnson (15:21)
And ⁓
is this mining for like oil? know the oil sands are a big thing in Canada.
Roy Voorberg (15:29)
Yeah, so I've worked in Fort McMurray where the big oil sand projects are. I've worked up there as well, yes. The mines I'm referring to in this particular application are mostly for diamonds, ⁓ iron ore, ⁓ and other precious minerals, uranium, etc. So it's deep well mining, etc. ⁓ Now, and we don't get into the actual mine. Everything is done. These buildings, because they're ⁓
making the explosive material are actually remote from the actual mining camp because if there's an explosion there they don't want to lose the whole camp. So it's actually quite a ways off site usually a couple of kilometers off site where the boilers and everything are situated and they're running only on diesel fuel up there. All their power comes from just generator sets etc. So it's you have a lot of unique conditions because of course generators don't always give clean power and all the rest of it too.
There's lots of interesting things that happen when you're up there. Yeah. So.
Eric Johnson (16:29)
What is
the boiler regulation atmosphere look like in Canada? As far as like, I know most politicians are death to boilers, death to natural gas, electric, everything. What's that look like? know there's, I only know a little bit about Canada. Actually, my mom was born in Canada, so I have family in Canada, but I am not a...
Roy Voorberg (16:36)
Okay.
Eric Johnson (16:59)
I've been there lot, I have not kept up with the regulations. I know there's differences between the provinces, but ⁓ I mean, you would know best, so.
Roy Voorberg (17:07)
Yeah.
Well, the provinces, by and large, they all have adopted the same code, but they have what we call localized amendments because operating conditions in one part of the province or in one part of a province might vary because of certain climatic situations, etc. up there.
The codes will have variations adopted into them as amendments. ⁓ At one time I was licensed in Ontario and was licensed in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta both. ⁓ I tried to get my one for British Columbia and they just they have a rule there that at that time they wouldn't allow you to write and challenge you an exam. You had to take a full apprenticeship starting from scratch and as a journeyman I wasn't going to do that. It cost too much money and time.
If
I had projects in BC, there was another way around it and that was I would hire a local guy and I would pay him to sit on the stool in the corner while I did the work and he worked under his license. He was the mechanic and I was the helper and we got around the rule that way. So there's always some ways to circumvent the authority but the registration up here of technicians in Ontario in particular is pretty rigid.
and the controls over boilers and burners. I just can't bring a boiler in from anywhere and fire it up and let it go. It has to be approved here for use here by our local government's approved inspection agency, the TSSA. And they're pretty onerous. They come out and they will not leave a screw unturned until they've tested everything possible to make sure that boiler is safe for the use it's intended to be used for here and for the fuel system that
it has on it. ⁓ So it's a lot of work.
On a small boiler it can take you half a day to do an inspection with them. And on a larger boiler, if you have everything ready well already and when you know what they're going to expect, you have it ready when they arrive. You can do it in a full day. But I've seen guys who didn't have things ready and weren't well prepared. It can take them a week to get it approved. So the testing is severe here. The licensing is registered pretty heavily as well. We have different classifications of
licensing for oil and gas fitters from let's call it from apprenticeship all the way up to a journeyman technician and so like in gas I think there are four graduations and in oil I think there are three graduations but
I myself carry gas and oil now and I can fire any BTU input piece of equipment that there could be in the province. I'm legally allowed to fire it. And it doesn't have to be approved while I'm firing it. It only has to be approved once I decide to leave it running without my attendance. But if I'm on site for testing purposes, I can run anything. So that's helpful.
Eric Johnson (20:14)
Is the levels, how do they separate the equipment? Is it by the input?
Roy Voorberg (20:21)
Yeah, mostly it's by input. So in the gas, they have a basic ticket that is zero to 400,000 BTU. So that would be residential furnaces and water heaters and very light commercial equipment. And then you'll go from that to a next level, which would take you to being an apprentice under a ⁓ G1. G1 is an unlimited BTU input. ⁓ And then you have to
before you can challenge the exam and that you have to have been signed off of having X number of hours available or actually worked in that trade under the supervision of a particular journeyman before they'll let you write an exam for the next level. I've signed off for a couple of guys over the years ⁓ and
That sometimes comes back to bite you in the backside if they don't do well on their exam because then the government comes to you and says well you trained this guy and he failed miserably what did you do wrong right so ⁓ but we will get into that discussion on another day ⁓ because not everybody retains information the same way right so they can physically be good at doing it but it's not always that they're able to articulate that in in the printed page so
that makes a difference too and and the same on the oil you have to prove years of experience under a qualified person before they'll let you ⁓ to write that final exam and become a journeyman i was working on a job last week with a young fella and ⁓ i posted a little bit about it on linkedin even and he's he's very knowledgeable knows a lot about burner control systems but he's not real ⁓
familiar yet with oil distribution and pumping and pressure and atomizing differences in different nozzle sprays etc. So ⁓ I said to him too, said, man you need to take a course and get your oil ticket because you're good at it and you're going to be good at it and there's a real shortage of oil licensed oil guys in Ontario. So I've encouraged him and I've encouraged others to take the thing but the problem is getting a course together
most of the colleges are not offering courses because they can't get enough people together in one group to make it profitable, right? So I've had a couple people come and ask me recently if I would run a course. And I'm thinking about doing that. But then I want to have some discussion with the government before I run it to make sure that I teach them the material that the exam is going to be focused towards, right? So, yeah.
Eric Johnson (23:03)
Is the exam multiple choice?
Roy Voorberg (23:06)
⁓ It's a variety of stuff between multiple choice to essay answers, ⁓ to drawing. You have to draw out stuff like typical schematic of ⁓ a basic burner control system. You have to draw out a gas train or an oil train. You have to be able to label parts on a fuel oil pump, etc. So there's a whole variety of things that are on that exam. It's pretty intense when you do write it.
But, you know, it's not to such a point that a guy, if he knows basically what he's doing, he should be able to pass that pretty well. ⁓ so we have those exams available through the college system and guys can go there and challenge him. it's, you need to prove your years of experience first. Yeah.
Eric Johnson (24:00)
Yeah, you can guess on a multiple choice, but when it says write an essay or something like that, if you don't have any understanding of it, it's gonna be very difficult. So who grades these exams?
Roy Voorberg (24:13)
Correct.
Well, it's an inspection grouping from the ⁓ typically from TSSA. They'll write, they'll set the exam and they'll grade the exam. ⁓ So they have a licensing department, TSSA, which stands for Technic...
Technical Standards and Safety Authority here in Ontario and they regulate the code and they regulate licensing and they also regulate the pressure vessel side of it. ⁓
So instead of ABMA or whatever you might have, we have TSSA pressure vessel department. So they do, they make sure that the vessel is registered, the drawings are registered, that the safety valves are yearly inspected or if it's a hot water boiler every couple of years that they're certified again, et cetera. That's all done by the TSSA people. So they run both fuel safety and pressure vessel safety.
Eric Johnson (25:15)
Are all
boilers in Canada, to your knowledge, built to ASME?
Roy Voorberg (25:20)
Yes, they use ASME as our basic requirement.
And then again, because of some places in Canada, because of temperature issues and things like that, then they do have some amendments that they add to that, some criteria amendments. But by and large, we still use the ASME code the same as you. We use NFPA code. We use CSD-1 as a base guide for a lot of our regulation. But then we've condensed that or rewritten it into our own B149 or 139 for oil.
nine is for gas one thirty nine is for oil so they they will have a mass information out of all of those different documents into one local what we'll call local coder and Canadian code
Eric Johnson (26:11)
Are there boiler operator licenses or laws for boilers over certain size need 24 seven supervision?
Roy Voorberg (26:21)
Yeah, absolutely. And TSSA oversees that as well. Operating engineers, we call them. So they will have credentials from a fourth-class stationery or operating engineer up to a first-class chief style. And it depends on the temperature and pressure that your system is operating at. And that doesn't matter if it's hot water or if it's steam. If you're hot water over 249 degree water,
and in excess of 30 psi ⁓ or if you're 250 degree water at 30 psi you'll need a basic operator fourth class and moving up from there depending the higher the temperature and the higher the pressure and the same on steam anything over 15 psi okay and greater than 50 horsepower well actually 49.9 horsepower if you're greater than that you have to have some kind of a ⁓ sort of a
or you have to have an exemption certificate that says ⁓ they've inspected it and allow you to function ⁓ one unit at that size for your manufacturing process and if you need more horsepower it can't be
in many cases tied into the same header it has to be a separate so you could do a bunch of multiple 49.9 horsepower boilers on one property that are all separate systems. Yeah, so like last week I was working in a plant that was probably producing in the area of ⁓ one million pounds of steam an hour.
So that would be a first class steam plant here. So it has a chief operator at first. It will have a first class floor operator and end.
possibly two ⁓ first-class operators on the floor and probably two second-class operators on the floor. There's probably in this one about six or eight boilers. So there's a lot of blowdown and testing and shedding of boilers on and off as the loads vary. So there's a lot of work for operators to do. And they have one guy sitting in a control room all day with 25 or 30 different monitor screens and he's monitoring every boiler and everything, water level, deaerators
condensate feeds and you name it so if I work there then I have to work in concert with him to tell him what we're going to be doing we're going to be firing this particular unit on oil or taking it off of oil etc moving to the next one so it's it's it's well laid out and it's well done in I think in Ontario ⁓
It's a little bit different than a couple of the other provinces about operation. But by and large, they do have a regulation about some sort of a criteria for the operator. Just the levels of where they start vary a bit from province to province. Yeah.
Eric Johnson (29:22)
Is Canada pushing to get rid of fuel oil or is just the nature of how Canada laid out?
is how everything's spaced out as fuel oil is still pretty prominent fuel.
Roy Voorberg (29:28)
Yeah.
Good question. ⁓ So I'm going to say both. are regions in Canada where there is just no gas piping available yet. So oil is one of the best alternatives then. Propane would be the next for those people. And there's quite a few yet wood-fired plants around as well. ⁓ They're becoming almost a little bit more prevalent in the last couple of years just because of the cost of fuel.
We have a regulation here that says in a hospital, especially in Ontario, a hospital must have a dual fuel option on every boiler.
So the most practical solution then is natural gas as the main fuel and number two oil as the alternative fuel. That's the most practical. ⁓ Now in some plants where they're going, newer hospital plants where they're going to condensing boilers for hot water,
oil is not a good option for condensing boilers. So then they're going to propane tanks as their backup fuel. But they must have two fuels so that in the event of any kind of an infrastructure disaster and the natural gas is cut off for some reason, they're able to function those hospital plants still with an alternate fuel. So that's that.
that makes oil still a good license to have because there's a lot of hospitals. Every major metropolitan community will have a hospital at least and a lot of rural areas have hospitals and they have to have two fuels. So it's a good opportunity for young fellows to have a ⁓ specialized certificate in having a fuel oil license. ⁓ there are, last I spoke to TSSA, there are less than 200 licensed oil fitters in all of Ontario.
But there are probably something like 5,000 licensed gas fitters. So that's a big discrepancy in numbers.
Eric Johnson (31:32)
Are they concerned about that?
Roy Voorberg (31:35)
Yes, they're very concerned actually. They even, for a while we were talking about if a guy who had a gas fitter one ticket ⁓ was willing to sit down and just challenge the oil exam, they were talking about actually giving him an oil ticket even though he had no experience. ⁓
But they've backed off of that now because they've realized that could lead to some liability disaster. So they've said, no, we won't do that yet. they are concerned and they're trying to come up with a program that would encourage young fellows to pick up the fuel oil side of it. But I ran into a lot of guys and they said, I don't want to work on fuel oil. It's too stinky. It gets my hands dirty. You know, my wife doesn't like it when I come home smelling like oil. So I don't want to do it. The fellow I service called with this morning.
is sort of one of those guys he he doesn't really want and he's been with me on a few oil calls where he said I gotta have another guy so you gotta come with me because he's he's a sharp fella but he's not too keen on touching anything that's got oil going through it because he doesn't want to get his fingers dirty and I said well bring a box of latex gloves and wear the gloves you'll be fine right but yeah I grew up with it they didn't so it's different
Eric Johnson (32:48)
Yeah, there's a certain level of comfortability around it, especially when you have to take things apart, because you can never drain all the oil out of piping. then oil starts getting everywhere. You got to have the rags to clean up the oil, dry and everything. And it is a different way of thinking a little bit than working on gas boilers. But yes, if you use the gloves and you get good ones that don't rip and that don't dissolve under oil, you know, they're...
I don't think it's as bad as most people say. think there's a lot of...
people just don't know and they're scared of what they don't know. ⁓ But once you get on the other side of the hump of the education, they're like, ⁓ that's not that bad. Is a lot of oil pressure atomized, air atomized? Do you see any steam atomization?
Roy Voorberg (33:35)
Exactly.
Yeah,
yeah. Well, what I was working on last week is steam atomized. were pea body burners. So they're steam atomized. You know, we're firing. I'm going to have to guess here a little bit on gallons, but we were doing.
nine or ten gallons a minute so you can figure out the math on that for per hour. But that's all steam atomized. And then in an emergency if the plant had been down and had no steam back up they have compressors so they can run air through the atomization lines to get them running and then switch back over to steam afterwards. But in most residential and what I'll call light commercial applications that have oil, hospitals that have oil, that's all mechanical atomized because they don't want to have the
of steam lines and airlines to the every burner of course. Most of the ones in the hospitals will be remote pump sets for the burner as well. They will not be integral pumps. ⁓
So that makes a lot of sense too, because that way you're not driving a pump or worried about driving a pump that's not actually delivering oil and turning it and spinning it dry and burning it out and then you go to knead it and it's no use to you anymore. But I would say that majority of what guys would get involved with will be mechanical atomized. Now in the greenhouse business, would be a lot of people who have Clearer Brooks boilers and they typically would use on anything
over 150 horsepower they would use air atomized and have built-in air compressors on the cleaver brook spoilers so guys would need to know about air atomizing and if they can do air atomizing they can do steam atomizing the principle is the same the nozzles can be the same it's just a matter of having if you're doing steam atomizing you want to typically you want to have some crossover metering and you want to have some insulation on the lines go into the steam regulator and nozzle because you could touch it and burn your hand in heartbeat
Okay.
Eric Johnson (35:41)
What is the education outlook? Is it kind of like the same as the US as high schools or I don't know if you call it high schools, in the US high schools push college and then college pushes, white collar jobs. Is that kind of still how Canada is or is that really vary by region depending on how populated it is?
Roy Voorberg (36:05)
Yeah.
⁓ Good question too, Eric. Because yeah, I think ⁓ at one time, when I went to high school as an example, we had high schools that specialized in technological training. I took, when I was in high school, took electrical systems, I took woodworking and drafting and automotive repair and ⁓ et cetera. So you had a feel for, as a young fellow, some of those trade options. ⁓
and a lot of guys took those courses and lot of guys went into the trades because of that but high schools have gotten a little bit away from that because of ⁓
the risk of somebody getting hurt in the classroom. So they've gotten away from it a little bit. Colleges are picking up on it somewhat and teaching the trade option courses. But by and large, you know, it's still like so many people around, I think around North America period, say, well, go get a good education and you'll get a really good office job. Well, a really good office job is fabulous. But we're going to run out of workers who actually make the stuff go if we don't.
train young fellows into doing technological type work, whether it's carpentry work or whether it's electrical or it's steam fitting and pipe fitting. Somebody's got to build the buildings that we all live in and the housing that we live in, etc. So we need guys who are technical and they who are good at technical who can get it done quickly and not cost an arm and a leg to get it done because they didn't know what they were doing. They made too many mistakes.
Eric Johnson (37:47)
And if somebody would want to get their gas fitters license and they're 18 or 20 or young, they have no idea what's going on. And they're like, I want to go do that. What would be the process to get that? Do they have to join a union or do they just work for any company that has people with that license?
Roy Voorberg (38:07)
Okay, and you have both options here because we have a lot of service companies that are unionized and we have a lot of service companies that are not unionized. So ⁓ I think you have an option there that way to pick a company that's either union or not.
the non-union companies have certain advantages over the unionized shops and vice versa because unionized shops typically the union halls have training classes and training instructors and programs behind them that the young fellows can sign up for to do during slower periods in that particular field as well. So that's always a good option for them. So I think it depends on where you are.
⁓ located because in the big metropolitan areas the unions have representation in a strong way so they also have union halls where they do a lot of training. If you're out in the rural area, you don't have a close proximity to a union hall, it might be better for you to join a non-union shop.
and then travel to one of the community colleges where you can take your in-class training and academic training and then come back to the job site for your hands-on training. So it's available both ways and I think both of them have fabulous advantages available to them and I wouldn't say there's one that's better than the other. I think it's just a matter of your geographical region where you live, which one you would probably opt into.
Eric Johnson (39:42)
So in order to get the license, somebody has to take so many hours or so many classes of classroom training and then have so many hours of on the job training under somebody that's under already licensed.
Roy Voorberg (39:57)
Yes, correct. That's the standard route here. They will do a mixture of academic and hands-on or co-op style training.
Eric Johnson (40:07)
So
how'd you, why'd you choose to get your electrical license?
Roy Voorberg (40:12)
⁓ Well, when I was in high school, I actually wanted to be an automotive mechanic. ⁓
My brother at the time, I'm now thankful he did that, he's a little older so he's a little wiser, ⁓ he said to me, man, he says, I wouldn't be an automobile mechanic for all the money in the world. I said, why not? He says, under that hoist, the cars up on top of you, dripping salt water all over your nose and face. He said, why don't you do something like electrical? And I was taking electrical in high school, and I really enjoyed that as well.
I thought about it for a while and I thought you know what maybe my brother has a good point here so I said okay I'm gonna venture into electrical and so when I graduated I applied to a couple of big plants steel mills and stuff and they were looking for apprentices and I got into apprenticeship for electrical I did five years apprenticeship here ⁓ and then paid that paid them back with five years as a journeyman ⁓ and then I decided to leave and go into the ⁓ full time into the boiler
section of industry. So, but that's where I my start, right out of high school my electrical apprenticeship was the first job I took on. So I'm still carried my electrical license in construction and in maintenance. I my gas fitters ticket, have my oil fitters ticket, and I have my masters in wet heat, which is a
for repair and installation of boilers. You don't have to have, but it's good to have a master's certificate. So I wrote that exam.
Eric Johnson (41:52)
What did
your brother end up getting into?
Roy Voorberg (41:54)
My brother was a metallurgical technician for Stelco, which is the steel company of Canada at that time, since they've closed their doors. But he was a metallurgical guy. Then he and my brother, my dad together, they made or built greenhouses and he was growing and working in the factory. My dad was working in the factory. ⁓
and they would in their off hours they would operate the greenhouse and then as they grew then first my dad retired from the factory and worked full-time in the greenhouse then my brother resigned from his job in the factory and worked full-time in the greenhouse and I worked I would just help them out as I was able doing their boiler and electrical wiring stuff so that was it was it was a family affair for quite a few years so
My brother stayed in the greenhouse business basically the rest of his life. He's now fully retired.
Eric Johnson (42:41)
So
So what
do you say your upbringing, your childhood, teen years is what influenced you to go into the blue collar trades route to get the electrical and then into the boiler? Is that, would you say your greatest influence? I'm just trying to explore how people got into the trades and it seems like it, but I didn't know if you.
ever had your heart on something else and then kind of loop back around.
Roy Voorberg (43:20)
Well, actually I did and I'll get into that in a moment. But I'm going to say that I've always had an aptitude for and an interest in mechanical and electrical stuff. I've always had that since a young fella. I had Lego blocks when I was a kid and the biggest important sets for me and those were the ones that had electrical lights and switches to make things work and go and I loved playing with that. So that was an impact.
for sure and I think my family's ⁓ involvement ⁓ in a family business gave me an opportunity to do it ⁓ that I could get my hands right in deep into it and find out that hey, this is something I enjoy doing so why not do it and make a career out of it. But I also had an interest as ⁓ in policing and so. ⁓
Not right away, but later on in life, some 35 years ago, I got involved in policing as well as a part-time auxiliary police officer here in the ⁓ Ontario area with the Halton Regional Police and I worked.
30 years with them as a part-time police officer. I became a sergeant. I oversaw 21 other auxiliary officers for a number of years until I retired from that in 2022. I ran two careers concurrently, both as a burner technician on call and as a policeman on call.
And sometimes I would get called in when there was a major disaster somewhere. We had a huge train wreck here in the community where I live one Sunday afternoon. And we got called in to help coordinate ⁓ keeping camera people out of the train wreck until the investigation could be done, until all of the rescue work could be carried out, et cetera. So as an example, that was just one of those type of circumstances. ⁓
So it was kind of interesting and I really enjoyed that as well but ⁓ still my heart and my soul were in the boiler business.
Eric Johnson (45:36)
What intrinsic values do you think make somebody a good?
good service technician, good boilers or somebody that works in the trades well. I've been thinking about this a lot. Cause a lot of people, training, training, training, but with athletes, you can play high school, you can play college, but in order to play at the pro level, you just have to be born with a certain level of athletic ability. And I'm trying to...
It's hard to, you know, because most people are younger and you can't always see somebody's display of knowledge or abilities if they've never really applied themselves. So what do you think if you were looking at somebody who is 16 to 20 years old, what qualities would they have that would then make them successful to be a boiler service technician?
Roy Voorberg (46:42)
Great question. Okay, so I look at, having had my own company where I hired and fired my employees, of course, one of the first things I looked at was their determination.
Are they determined? If I had a guy knock at my door today and say to, here's my application, I'm looking for a job, and I never, I took it and I said to him, okay, well I'll read it and I'll call you, and I never heard from him again. I go, nah, he's not the guy for me because he wasn't determined enough to come back and knock on my door a second, third, or fourth time.
If the guy came back every day for a week and knocked on my door saying, you read my application? I knew he had something in there that was special because he was really going to dig into it. And a service technician has to be someone who's going to really dig into a problem until it churns his gut into the inside out if he can't find the fix for it. And so that was one thing that I always looked for in a young fellow was determination. Next would be aptitude. I would...
sit them down and just have a conversation with them about normal stuff in life. You know, do you have a car? Yes. Do do your own tire changes? Do your own oil changes? Or, you know, stuff like that. If your muffler fell off, would you change it yourself or would you take it to a body shop or a car ⁓ mechanic shop? Things like that. And find out what level of ability that young fella had and
Does he have a mechanical aptitude? Does he know how things are put together? If his car doesn't start, does he know how to troubleshoot the basic part of his car? Because most 16-year-old boys love cars. So if they love them enough, they're going to know how to make them fixed to a certain extent. ⁓
I would quiz them on that kind of stuff. And still today I look at it when I'm talking to new technicians who I meet on a job for the first time. I have a conversation before we actually start the job and I'm just seeking to figure out what is their aptitude in the electrical mechanical side of things in life and are they doing this because it just pays the wages for it.
the bread or are they doing this because they really are in keenly interested and like because I like to have technicians working for me and around me who are keenly interested. ⁓
We have a young apprentice at Morriston Mechanical and I love taking him on jobs and sometimes when I go up to Nineveh and I need a guy I always say to the owners I say I want that apprentice and only that apprentice to go with me or I'm not going because he is one of these young fellows who he has a feel for it he thinks about it he looks at something and he can figure out how it goes together and how it comes apart
and if I'm on a ladder and I need a wrench and I turn around he's standing there holding up the right wrench to me already before I've ever asked for it. Well, there's somebody who has an aptitude for it and an interest in it so those are keen things to have.
Eric Johnson (49:39)
Where,
how does, well don't wanna cut you off, but where is that?
Roy Voorberg (49:42)
That's it.
Eric Johnson (49:44)
Where's that taught that? ⁓
Roy Voorberg (49:46)
It's not taught. That's inbred. That's inbred. They are born with that or they don't have it at all. I'm sure of it. I'm sure of it. so I think that I just would add, I think one last step to all technicians is I look at the cleanliness of their vehicle they're driving when they come to the interview. And...
Eric Johnson (49:57)
Yeah, the...
Roy Voorberg (50:10)
If that car is immaculately clean, he's going to keep a service truck clean. He's going to look after his tools and equipment. If that car is a mess, your service truck is going to be a mess in a month, and he's going to lose tools left and center. Because I think it all goes with a good mechanic as someone who takes care of his own equipment. If he takes care of his own equipment, he'll take care of somebody else's equipment.
Eric Johnson (50:33)
Yeah, you're essentially, your service vehicle is your own, it's your office, but it's really your own company in the sense that when you're working out of it, it's your resource hub, it's your ability to show to the customer who you are. It reflects on the larger company, but if you don't take care of your own little space, you become inefficient. You can't find stuff, you lose stuff, you lose parts, tools and everything.
⁓ Yeah, that does reflect on the person. I've heard that before of people. I I can't stand people who have cars with trash and random sweatshirts. If you have to get in the car and they're like, hold on, let me move all this stuff off the front seat. And there's stuff all over the floorboard stuff. I'm like, what are you doing driving this thing around?
And also, what also goes through my mind, have you ever been in a rollover? You know all this stuff is gonna be like coming at you, but.
Roy Voorberg (51:37)
Exactly,
exactly, Eric. Good point.
Eric Johnson (51:40)
⁓
So yeah, I guess all the companies will be wondering how do you duplicate a person like that and how do you find them? How did that person get into the trades? Or into the, how do they, I don't know what they're on, their gas license or whatever? Do they just start? What is their age? Do you know how they got in?
Roy Voorberg (52:07)
Yeah, that's a great question. This young fella got in ⁓ that I'm referring to, his father ⁓ is mechanically inclined and recommended him, ⁓ the young fella when he got out of high school to the company and said, listen, give my son a try for a summer, just for the summer job. Try him out and see if he's any good at mechanical stuff. So he'll know whether or not he wants to go into it. And if he's good at it, you might want to keep him. You might not.
No questions asked if you turn them away and say, we don't want them.
and the owners tried him out for a two-month summer job and he was the best thing since sliced bread so they just they kept him on and and he is truly the best thing he's one of the best apprentices I've run into for a long time and it's a joy to work with somebody like that right and that makes all the work you got to do a lot simpler when both of you have your mind set into a good repair and a an efficient repair and troubleshooting method mechanism so yeah
But I think it's hard to determine that as a corporate, especially in the bigger corporate situations, because a lot of companies now, aren't the guy hiring, the service manager doesn't do the hiring anymore. ⁓
administrator in the HR department does the hiring based on credentials only. They don't go out and look at their car. They don't talk to them about mechanical. They just read down the list and do they have the boxes checked off that were given to them by somebody and if they does it they hire them and then you're stuck with this person for a while especially under the laws of the land here in Canada. You can't just fire somebody because you don't like his work style. You have to have a solid
grounds and that's a good thing too that they've done something you know inappropriate before you can fire them so you want to I want to know before I hire them that they have some kind of an ability so I would throw at least a verbal test at them and if really really had to get down to nitty-gritties I'd actually just write up a real basic ⁓ written test and ask him to fill that in I recently did a hiring and I wrote a series of questions
And I asked all the...
Attendance who were invited for interview exactly the same questions and I wrote down exactly their answers and then at the end it was a very interesting to see the answers and To see who was qualified and who was not qualified in the discussion because there were technical questions What would you do if a boy didn't start and it was of this kind of boiler or that kind of boiler, right? And you could feel their their approach to it. I wasn't looking for an apprentice and it was for a fully
qualified individual, so they should know everything about it at that point. So that's how I did it and it worked out well for me.
Eric Johnson (55:04)
Do you, assuming somebody has all the same licenses, how much correlation do you think there is between years of experience and actual knowledge?
Roy Voorberg (55:17)
Great question. ⁓ I think it really varies based on the person's personality because I have guys that I know who've been in the business 30 years and I have also got apprentices who probably physically and mentally are better off than those guys who've been in the business 30 years because they've just gone through the job as a job. They work their nine to five and that's all they wanna have. They don't think about it after they leave. If they have a problem,
and it's time to go home at 430, they shut the tools off and they shut their brain off and they walk away. Whereas a good guy, I think a good technician, I'll say that I consider myself to be at least a reasonably good technician. That job doesn't stop until it's fixed in my brain. It's running through my brain day and night until I've got the solution to the reason why it's failing. You know, much to my wife's chagrin sometimes,
She'll see me sitting at a table with my computer and my notebook and I'm studying stuff at nine o'clock at night and she what are you doing? I said, well, that job that I was on today, yeah, but you're home now. I said, yeah, but that job has to get fixed and I got to find a way to fix it. I got to know what it is that's causing this problem. So I keep going at it. And I think it's paid off for me in dividends over the years. That's why I'm at.
you know retirement age I'm still working is because there's companies that see the value in some of experiences I've got and they call me and say hey can you come and help me out with this job or can you help us with that job can you do this job for us etc. I don't want to do jobs every day all week long no I don't
going to be frank with that but I do a lot I do a love of the work and I do like to get involved especially on jobs that have been problematic for somebody I like to get in there and see if I can find a solution and fix it and they six weeks later call them up and say well has that happened again no it's not happened okay now if you're if they say it's it's happened again I said you know I'm gonna come back and have a look and I'm not even gonna charge you this time I'm coming back for free because I want to fix it so
Eric Johnson (57:25)
How do you define the line between?
balance and caring because a lot of people when you talk to them especially when you if they are even in the trades they'll say well they're not paying me to think about my job after 430 so why would I do that
Roy Voorberg (57:48)
Yeah, no, that's, and that's real. That's a real ⁓ situation in life. You are correct. It's a lot of guys think that way. And I think there's, you have to look at that from a life balance, work and play balance for sure. You have to take time off. You have to enjoy with your family and spend time with your family, et cetera, because
really that's what life is all about is your family and you have to make a good relationship with them. ⁓ But I think on the other hand to it and my wife I think will probably back me up on that if I asked her to come into the room and answer the question. We've been married 50 years ⁓ and she could say that because
I've worked hard at the job, I've been paid well by the job, and we've been able to go and do trips and go to places that many friends of ours couldn't afford to go to. So I think when you apply yourself adequately to the job and make sure that the job is done when you leave the job,
the owners and operators of the corporations you work for are going to recognize that you are a unique individual and you're going to end up making more money. You're going be able to negotiate. They aren't going to offer it to you, but you'll be able to sit down and negotiate for that now because you can say them, well, and you keep a record and you say this job, this job, this job, and that job. I fixed them up where you had 20 other guys on it and you couldn't get it going. Example and point is the service call I had two hours ago where
one of our technicians was on a job and he said to me right away, says, yeah, he says, I got this job I've been asked to come and look at. He says, and by the way, the ABC company was in here yesterday trying to fix it and they couldn't fix it. Well, that gives me right away the incentive to say to him, you and I are going to fix it right now today. And within an hour, him and I had it fixed and resolved and found the wiring mistake that somebody had made. ⁓ But that ability,
whether it's mine or his or somebody else's, that ability eventually becomes a negotiating tool.
to be able to ask for better wages. Those better wages afford you to do more things with your family on your off hours and to take trips. My wife and I just in September, October, we spent four and a half weeks in Europe, touring Europe and visiting relatives because we're both from Dutch background in Holland and whatnot and had a whale of a time. then two weeks ago I was on a job in Bermuda in the hospital in Bermuda. did work down in Bermuda and my wife, I took her along on that trip so she could enjoy the sights and sounds of
muted while I was working. ⁓
But we can do all that stuff because the job pays me well enough to afford it. And that's how we find a blend between life and work mix is being able to ⁓ negotiate a better wage than the average guy will get. I don't get union wages when I go out. I won't even look at the job for union wages. I go out for above union wages, so to speak. So ⁓ I think you have to also accept the fact that some jobs are going to take you 24 hours.
then in my case, and I've done this my whole career, then I've said to the boss, okay, I worked 24 hours on the job, now I'm taking 48 hours or 36 hours or 72 hours off to replenish my ⁓ strength and my brain power and then we'll go back and we'll do the next problem job. And they respect that because they know you put your work in while you were there.
Eric Johnson (1:01:29)
So you would agree that to make a good service technician that the person has to have some level of intrinsic interest in the work that they are doing.
Roy Voorberg (1:01:44)
Absolutely, And I don't care whether you're that's as a boiler technician or it's an automotive mechanic or it's a doctor, okay, or a painter. The people who love their work, they do a way better job at it. And it shows in the end results when the job is all said and done. So I think it's important for young people.
if they're going to pick the boiler career, boilers and burners, and it's a fabulous career. I've toured half of the world because of my work in the boiler business. And I think that career is something that you can.
enjoy doing and you can get other enjoyment out of it because it's going to take you to places that you would never go. Who gets to walk through an automotive manufacturing facility where they're making cars from Toyota or something like that? Who gets to walk through them normally? Nobody. But if you're a boiler technician, you walk into them. Who gets to walk into a huge bakery where they make thousands and thousands of pastries a day and they've got lots of boilers and burners in the process?
cooking tunnels and baking tunnels and work on those burners a burner technician gets to go there nobody else does i get to work in ⁓
atomic ⁓ plants and nuclear plants and uranium factories where they made the fuel cells for boilers in ⁓ nuclear plants. You you name it, it's been ⁓ so interesting to work in all these different places and see these different processes. it's just for me, it's just so much fun. ⁓
And I try to let young fellows know that when I work with them about the opportunities that I've had. And they could have them if they apply their skill set to the job.
Eric Johnson (1:03:42)
Yeah, I am of firm belief that if the person doesn't have that intrinsic interest, the company should just give up and move on to somebody else. ⁓ because being a technician or any kind of thing that working on boilers, it requires such a level of knowledge that if you are trying to train somebody who doesn't, who is not actually receptive of the training.
I don't think there's any ability outside force that can force a company, any amount of pay even, that can teach somebody to care if they don't already care as far as like to do a good job, that their work is done correctly, to take the time to be a problem solver and not just, they told me to show up at eight, I show up at eight, I leave at 430.
I close off my minds and I don't think about it till eight. And if there's a problem, I call my supervisor and tell him to figure it out. I, yeah.
Roy Voorberg (1:04:53)
Yep.
No, you're right. It's a personality trait really to have the right skill set. I think, but you know, I've found over the years, I see a guy walking towards me on the job floor and I can just, I hate to be stereotyping, but I can just about peg you from 25 feet away by your appearance and your type of walking mannerism. If a guy is strutting nice and strong and happy,
He's going to be a good technician. He's slouching and he's dragging his feet and he's kind of, man, I don't want to be here. You know that person right away and I don't want him on my team. I also do a lot of volunteer work and over the years you sit around the boardroom table and they talk about the right people on the bus and we have to have the right people in the boiler room bus as well.
because if you have someone who has a bad attitude, he can be more hazard to you than a boiler that explodes is.
Eric Johnson (1:05:53)
Yes. So I think this is interesting since you kind of had two careers. What makes a good police officer?
Roy Voorberg (1:06:00)
A caring personality, number one. I'm to say you've got to like other people, you've got to like to help people and you've got to want to help people. So a caring personality is going to be that. And an inquisitive mind because you have to do a lot of investigative work, which is a lot like troubleshooting. So you're troubleshooting a different item. It's people's lives now or circumstances, but you're going to do investigative work. And that's what troubleshooting is all about. So those two sides of it.
they kind of line up together. And so I think that a good policeman is someone who cares and who is a good troubleshooter. And I know many, many good police officers. I still have many good friends at the police department who are that way. But I also know a lot of people at the police department who are not gifted with that skill set. And they are, in my opinion, ⁓
going through the job motions the way we have some technicians going through the job motions. They get the job done from A to Z at the end of the day, yes. But is it done as well and is it done as completely? I would say no, it's not. So I think that, and that applies not just in boilers and policing, it applies in all job levels that you, if you have an interest, you do better. If you have a certain personality skill, that also does better for you and for that
project or that career choice.
Eric Johnson (1:07:27)
I think the ability to care, that's huge. As far as being a police officer as well, but being a technician and understanding that if you're working at a large facility.
and you're called, one, you're representing the company and your work is your signature, but the person that called you, let's just say the supervisor, the maintenance manager, they care about getting the equipment fixed because they care about their job and it's this chain. So if the technician comes in and is just like, whatever, they don't care to fix their equipment, and just.
writes the job off, doesn't fix it correctly and leaves. Now the maintenance manager looks bad to their supervisors when the boilers aren't running. And it's this whole chain of reaction. And I've always been of the belief that you have to care about the customer and see things how they are kind of seeing things, even if they are wrong. Like a lot of people will have a one-sided mindset, but it's...
It's having the ability to, okay, why am I being called out for this problem? Why is this important to them? Why do they not want to pay for a new burner? If I am saying, well, you just need a new burner. Well, we don't have the money for that. So like, what are the other options? Like you have to care about the customer situation and how you treat or go about the service call. know, if it's a church that doesn't have tons of money, hey,
we would normally replace this, but we have a gently used one at our shop or something that we can come put it in. It'll be fine. Everything's tested. We won't sell you new one. We'll try to save some money here versus like a manufacturing facility where you just go, ah, we'll replace everything. It'll be 10 grand. They're like, oh, that's it. 10 grand. All right. Yep. Here you go. And it's, it's having that level ability of caring of what is important to your customer and having.
I guess we could talk about this. How big is personal skills and communication for being a technician?
Roy Voorberg (1:09:42)
Great question because it is paramount. just this morning, I have a project in Ottawa that I've been working with a contractor and the manufacturers rep fund and there's a problem on that particular application ⁓ with in my opinion anyway, excessive draft on the stack. So we're having issues with the burner because of excessive draft. Okay, so.
I had a meeting with the contractor and the manufacturer's rep and said, this is what I think is wrong. And they said, well, can you write us a report so we can take it to the client and to their engineering company? I said, yeah, absolutely. Because you need to be able to articulate to the people what's wrong and show them what's wrong with reports and show them what's wrong in a technical sense, but also in a practical sense. Say, listen, here, this is what I think is happening. Here are.
I listed six optional solutions how to correct their draft problems. One of them is course very expensive with full draft control, but there are also more what I'll call entry-level draft control methods. So give them a bunch of options and write it all out, articulate it to them in words and verses that they can understand, not just with technical garbage, but with layman's
vernacular so they can actually follow it along because they're not used to dealing with these type of scenarios and problems and dilemmas. you have to be able to explain it to them in a way that they fully understand and comprehend it. And once they get the basic understanding, now you can start talking more technical and more detailed with them, I think. And I think a guy who can do that will excel. The same is in policing. When I took all my police training,
One of the biggest lessons they teach you is being able to articulate why you took the course of action you took at any particular situation, whether it's for using force with someone in an arrest or why you made an arrest or why you made a traffic stop, you need to be able to articulate that to the judge when it goes to court. Well, the same happens in boiler work. You've got to be able to articulate it to the customer who's paying the bill.
Why does he need to pay an extra $10 instead of already the 50 he quote you were quoted? So.
Eric Johnson (1:12:09)
when you do the work that is.
somebody else couldn't fix it. How often do you see a problem of where somebody just kind of skipped over the basics versus a problem where you're like, wow, that was really interesting. ⁓ You really would have had a very high level of knowledge in order to solve that.
Roy Voorberg (1:12:30)
Right, right. So the call that I helped the young fellow with two hours ago was a wiring mistake. It was a new burner installed just a week ago by another firm, by a third company, so they couldn't get it to work. They called a second party in that was there yesterday. They couldn't get it to work. They called our company in this morning and we got it to work within two and a half, three hours of being on site.
we found a wiring mistake that was made by the first installation company. We do a lot of startups, what I call third party startups. So someone else sold it, someone else installed it, and then we come along and commission it.
Well, the biggest part of commissioning is not getting the fuel-air ratio set up, but it's checking all the wiring in the installation, every pipe. And a technician has to know electrical work. He has to know piping work. He has to know pressure vessel work. has to know pumping systems. has to know venting systems. Okay, all of that he has to know. And here in Ontario, the guy who installs it is not responsible for the mistakes. It's the guy who starts it up that's responsible for the mistakes of installation. So it's our job as a startup
commissioning technician to know exactly what is right or wrong with the system before you ever go. And if it doesn't meet the specs or the criteria, you better not put it into business and put it into service. You could test it, but don't leave it running. Lock it out when you're done and walk away till it's fixed. And so we find a lot of mistakes, tons of wiring mistakes in particular, because often installation companies will hire an electrician ⁓
to do the wiring but today he's wiring a garage door tomorrow he's wiring a boiler the day after he's putting lights in a house so it's not his expertise to know about control circuit stuff on a boiler and that's all very specialized wiring and if you don't wire the chain of ⁓ safety limits in the proper series link ⁓ you know things can go amiss in a hurry so it's important to know and to understand what it is you're
trying to wire up. So we find a lot of wiring mistakes, number one. Number two, we find a lot of physical mechanical mistakes with the piping and application of installation. It's just horrendous because a lot of that work is done on bid spec and the cheapest bid gets the job, right? You and I have seen all kinds of pictures on LinkedIn and other places.
where you see a piece of equipment piped in and you just look at the picture you and I stand there and laugh at it and we go like who in their right mind tried to do this but yet there's guys out there in their right mind it's okay so ⁓ you know it means that we have different levels of technical ability those who
install and those who commission are really two different level of tech of people and I think there should actually be a pay change as well from an installation license to a commissioning license I Mean I I would say that I dictate that that pay change myself today, but a lot of companies Don't recognize the difference they say well, he's licensed. He's got a g1. He can do that. He can do the piping
Well then if he's that good at it, why don't you have him started up? well no, I wouldn't ask him to do that. Well then that means you know he's not quite as good as you think he is, or you would like him to be, right?
Eric Johnson (1:15:58)
there's a very high level of knowledge needed to walk into a boiler room, probably for the first time. And maybe somebody staring at you and maybe a couple of contractors are staring at you and they're like, all right, we're all ready. And you're like, I don't, I guess I'll ask you what your process is, but you're going over all the equipment. And when I was doing startups, I was essentially trying to rule out
Is there anything major that prevents startup or like the process of startup today? Like is the boiler installed upside down or like something crazy or like, do we actually have gas pressure? Do we have power? Is the power ran correctly? Are there actually wires going to the burner? Are all the like, depending on the size of the boiler you get, lot of contractors will just plot the boiler down and they won't do all the field wiring.
because the boiler manufacturer doesn't do the field wiring because different sizes made the burnership separate all this stuff and They're like well, you know, that's that was an honor prints So you see all these wires just hanging off the side of the boiler and you're like, ⁓ wait This is not we are far from it start up. So like I what is your process? and Do you just look over everything? Do you just do you separate it? Do you have your own checklist? How would you recommend somebody?
absorb all that information and try to understand is this correct, is this not correct, and then proceed in the startup.
Roy Voorberg (1:17:36)
Yeah, that's also a good question, Eric. ⁓ And I run into that every day, not every day anymore, but every week when I go to do a new startup or a restart of a piece of equipment that's been out of service for a period of time. ⁓
But one of the, you made a mention of what we call near boiler wiring. So that's the assembly of the boiler. It was shipped in four components and then it's mechanically bolted together by a contractor, but nobody looks after the nuts and bolts of wiring up those pieces. That near boiler wiring, that can take a couple of days for a guy to do if it's not been done. But I walk into a boiler room, they say, well, we're all ready. I say, that's fabulous. I'm glad to hear that. Listen, here's 25 bucks.
you go for a cup of coffee while I walk around the boiler room and have a look at it with nobody bothering me.
And I buy them a coffee, get them out of my hair, and I walk around with my own little mental checklist. And I start with fuel supply, and then I look at wiring supplies, and I work at wiring connections, and then I look at is the boiler bolted to the floor or not? Is the piping firm? Is the venting in place? Is the venting the right venting for the type of appliance, right? I've been to places where I go to start a power burner and it's got B-vent on it. Well, it's not acceptable in Canada to use B-vent on a power burner.
it's only you know acceptable for an atmospheric burner so stuff like that so i i just walk around and i look at it and in the old days you you walked around with a notepad you made notes of it all today you take your phone and you walk around with that and you just take a picture of everything that's wrong and i do it and then when they come back from the coffee then i say okay guys you want me to start it up but let's look at these pictures i've got here that i just took this is wrong this is wrong this is wrong this is wrong we're not going anywhere today you're gonna have to fix it
They all get their nose out of joint, of course. And I understand. They thought they were done. And somebody like me comes along and says, hold up, you're not done. You still have another day's work or week's work, whatever. They get their nose out of joint. But that's the way it is. It's too bad. It's either they're going to get the job to do it and do it correctly, or somebody's going to pay me to do it. And they're going to pay me way more money because I demand more money because of my
years of and expertise. So it's not prudent for them to have me pay be paid to do that work. They're going to be better off to pay themselves to do it. And we get them to fix it. And sometimes I say, Listen, I'm here, I'm going to stay on the job for a day or two with you and coach you through a lot of this stuff so that you can get it done quickly and efficiently. And I'll make sure that you're connecting it correctly. So that we save time when we finally do start to put power to things and
put fuel through pipes and put water through the boiler and put steam out into the header, etc. And I think that they find when you approach it that way where you say, listen, I'm willing to stay and coach you a little bit. Yeah, I'm going to bill somebody for that hours, but that coaching might actually be well worth its weight in gold to get the project moving along. And so I do that and I take that approach to do that.
Sometimes you run into a pretty hard block wall and they say there's no way so then I say okay. Well, that's fine. You don't want to do the repairs. That's fine We'll leave the repairs so leave it the way it is and I just start packing up my own tools and I start You heading back to my vehicle. Where are you going? I said, I can't start it not done. So I there's nothing I can do here I'm a startup technician today. I'm not an installer. That's your job. So I don't want to take your job
especially if you're a unionized guy, next thing I know the union will be here chomping on me because I'm taking your job away, so let's not go there. You get it done and like I said, I'll help you. when they're cooperative, it goes well. When they're not cooperative, it always goes in the end the right way, but it takes longer to get that achieved. But I think by and large, when you could show someone and say,
look at this flange it should have eight bolts in it but it's only got four bolts in it I can't put 250 pounds of steam pressure on the flange it's only got four bolts in it it's not good for my safety number one it's not good for the plant safety and it's certainly not good for your safety because I'm going to demand you stay here until we've done pressure testing on all the piping and if the only way can pressure test the steam piping is with steam pressure you're going to stand here and watch it so if it blows you're going to be here when it blows buddy
Eric Johnson (1:22:14)
The piping manufacturers didn't say, hey, you know what? We're just going to drill an extra four holes in these flanges just because we feel like it.
Roy Voorberg (1:22:23)
No, exactly. Exactly, they did not. Those are there for a purpose and a reason. All right?
Eric Johnson (1:22:29)
Yep, yeah,
that's always important. So how'd you get hooked up with Autoflame? Why Autoflame?
Roy Voorberg (1:22:37)
⁓ Okay, that's an interesting one. I had my own company. I was importing burners from Holland from Zantingh And in Autoflame's very first couple years, because they're in UK and the burner company was in the Netherlands, they got connected very quickly together and they started putting Autoflame on their brand new Zantingh burners. And so I had to learn in a heartbeat how to get these things up and running. So I...
I was fortunate enough to be able to go and get a course from them on it. I've been to Autoflame several times, right, to their old plant and now to their new plants. ⁓ And ⁓ really, really enjoyed working with parallel positioning equipment, which in the original goes, Autoflame was only parallel positioning temperature or pressure controllers. They had no flame safety function whatsoever. It was interconnected with your
your own Honeywell, your own Fireye your own Eclipse, whatever it is, flame safeguard you had, it was incorporated into that one. And that was in what they called the Mark 1 edition of the Autoflame. Today they're out to Mark 9. ⁓ But it's fairly new. The most common currently in the field is Mini 8s and Maxi 8s, as I call them, the full blown, full screen.
parallel positioning today with integrated flame safeguard I love working with it it's fabulous equipment and not only is Autoflame fabulous I think it may be in my opinion and I'm biased maybe it's one of the best ⁓ but there are a number of other good systems out there too and I have worked on all of them I've a number of years I was a certified trainer to do the Siemens LMV stuff as well and now I mostly
do only Autoflame but I still have all my books on Siemens and I've done a few Siemens startups of late as well so I can still do it I can still manage to get that pulled together but I enjoy the ⁓ the technological abilities that parallel positioning with electrical servos etc has and how fine you can dial in the burner combustion control system and how well you can tune the PID
and how easily you can make it communicate with the building management system. As in the old days, building management system meant that I was putting all kinds of pressure switches and pressure trollers and temperature sensors somewhere going to our big panel full of relays and those relays had to send a signal to a BMS somewhere of some sort. yeah, today's electronic equipment and I'm, I think, a rare breed because of my age still being involved in electronics like this.
The young fella I helped on the weekend down in the States, I think he's in the Kentucky area somewhere this weekend. It's all Autoflame equipment. One of the jobs I did in ⁓ Bermuda a couple weeks ago, that was all Autoflame equipment. You know, because I've tried to become a specialist in it and I've enjoyed doing that. I know many, many, many of the people at Autoflame.
Right from the owners, the original founding father of it, down to the current sons and daughters who were involved. I know them all personally. We've sat down at a table today for dinner, et cetera, when I've been at their training sessions. And we still, if I really have a conversation that's needed, I can call them on the phone and talk to them and say, hey, I got one of your pieces of equipment and I'm having this or that concern. How do we go about fixing that? And they...
They've appreciated my input over the years and I've appreciated their cooperative spirit and work ability so I've enjoyed working with the product and I think that it does a lot of good for a lot of clients.
Eric Johnson (1:26:42)
How does somebody get it, start learning or get good at Autoflame? I know they have classes at their tech centers that are one to two days, but it is really, mean, I guess this would be with any parallel positioning system. Does it really just take time of commissioning a burner or troubleshooting a burner and spending hours and hours and hours in front of a burner in order to learn it? Or is there another way that you would suggest learning?
Roy Voorberg (1:27:12)
Well, Autoflame has a great couple of day training course and I teach the same course. I have my own portable Autoflame systems with servo motors and everything. A little bit like your board behind you there on the wall. ⁓ But then instead of for mod motors and linkage, I have it for Autoflame systems. So have a couple of them and I physically...
have them and I have pieces that I hand out and show around to the classroom and everything and we talk about the functionality of it both academically and then physically they get to program a combustion curve and I lay out a curve that they have to do that looks like a sawtooth saw intentionally tough because it teaches them how to go through an entire commissioning process and then ⁓ they take those skill sets and they go into the field.
Now, are they going to be able to program a live fire burner right away the first time without some supervision? Probably not. But they're going to know enough about it that they're going to be able to get that thing running at least at a decent flame quality. ⁓ And they're going to be able to... ⁓
with phone call questions to a guy like myself or one of the tech support people at ⁓ tech centers or at Autoflame, they'll be able to get the final bits of it ⁓ tuned in. And absolutely by working on it day in and day out, they will become more and more versed in it. Just the same as in the old days, you and I would have to do with linkage. You what's driven and what's driver?
You know, kids today don't, you say that to them, well, is it, are you working on a driven linkage or a driver linkage? And they would look at you and say, well, what are you talking about? Right? Well, it's a gear, linkages are gear, gearboxes. So it's power in, it's power out. So which one are you doing? Power in or power out? Right? And you learn that by working on it. This is the same with parallel positioning. And it doesn't matter whether it's Fireye or it's Siemens or it's Autoflame. If you have the, the fortune to be able to do
physical work with it day in and day out, you will become way more versed with it and more good at it because of the fact that it's fresh in your memory day after day. If I go to an old Mark ⁓ V or Mark IV somewhere that is way different than the current models, I have to stand there in front of the thing for a little while and look at it and scratch my brain because
and then get my fingers on the screen after a few moments muscle memory does kick back in and I say, yeah, now I remember from 25 years ago how that worked. And it's the same with you and me. If we drive a car today, we're good at it. We don't drive for six months and then because we had a broken leg and then we get back behind the wheel, well, we don't drive as well as we used to because we haven't done it for a while. It's the same in the burner business. you know, guys, unfortunately they...
They try to be masters of all the burners that are out there. And I'm not so sure that that's a good thing. I think it's better off the company say I have this guy who's my parallel positioning guy. I have that guy who's my oil guy. have that guy who's my electrical specialist. Because I think as a team you might do better than one guy having to know everything and remember it all. Will he get it done? Yes. If he's a good guy, he'll always get it done anyway. But what is the most efficient?
It's a guy who specializes in that. And ⁓ that's why if you look at the automotive industry, and I compare a lot of what we do to automotive, that's why they have transmission shops and they have muffler shops and they have guys who specialize in foreign cars and guys who specialize in domestic cars because they all have a little bit quirky things in them and you can't remember everything about every car, right? So you can't remember everything about every burner, every parallel positioning package. But
Are the concepts the same? The concepts are completely the same from one to the other. But they all want to make theirs special so they name it a different name or they package it in a different way and you have to know their procedures to be able to do it. And if you do, you're good at it. If you're not good at it, you've got to play with it longer to get good at it. I think it's a matter of having the blessing of being able to spend time on it, you know.
Eric Johnson (1:31:44)
So how long does it take to make a, what you would define as a good boiler service technician, a good burner person who that you would say that person has well-rounded knowledge. How long do you think that takes?
Roy Voorberg (1:32:04)
If it's the right person, I'm going to say that.
probably within five years they're going to be a well-rounded technician. Okay? ⁓ And I think if they have worked as five years through the apprenticeship style of training ⁓ and then been working five years as a qualified technician, so they now have a total of ten years under their belt, they're going to be a sensational technician as long as they desire and they apply themselves. Okay? But they have to want to be able to do it too.
It's it's again. We talked about that earlier. It's a mindset and if they have that mindset Man, there's nothing going to stop them
Eric Johnson (1:32:44)
Yeah, that's, you have to apply yourself and you have to, I've seen it where people have 30 years experience and they stop applying themselves.
It's almost as bad as having somebody that's new. They know what's correct, but they almost don't stop. They stop doing what's correct because they start wanting to take shortcuts and everything. And, ⁓ I mean, it's, it's hard to do day in and day out, especially with a problem when you're by yourself and you are racking your brain, trying to figure it out. Of course, nobody from tech support is picking up.
probably the day before a holiday. And it just ends up being this everybody's staring at you, you feel alone and you're like, man, I have to figure this out. so that's, it takes a special kind of person to be able to have that kind of pressure and not just, ⁓ we're done and we'll just come back Monday after the holiday and we'll just resume and.
I'll just say I don't know how to figure it out and they can just send somebody else. Because at a certain point in time, there is nobody else. You're the end. You have to be the one that fixes it.
Roy Voorberg (1:33:55)
Right.
No.
That's right. And that's why, you know, I've been in this business for over 50 years and I'm still learning. I always say to myself and to people around me and to young fellows with me, say a day that goes by that I don't learn something new today, that was a waste. I need to learn something new every day. And if it's not on the job, then I'm on my computer.
You know, I listened to your ⁓ podcast where you interview ⁓ Ray Wohlfarth and you guys talk about it. I'm a little bit like that too, where I'm almost like a boiler geek. Okay. I'm always digging up stories and bits about it, ⁓ about boilers here and there and looking at pictures and looking at explosion results. And although in Canada, we don't normally call them explosions or incidents. Okay. It's, it's an incident. We had an incident on the job.
⁓ But I look at those things and study those things and figure out what went wrong here. What can I learn from that mistake so that I don't make the same mistake someday? yeah, it's keep learning, keep learning. And I love learning. It's fun to learn something new.
Eric Johnson (1:35:12)
Do you think at the current rate, which is way behind, ⁓ the current rate of training new people, bringing new people on, and the gap that's already here between very knowledgeable seasoned people like you and the next generation, I want to say, do you think we're going to regress in?
lessons learned or like guardrails of the industry or like forget some hard lessons just due to like, I mean, there's tons of studies and labor things out there that in the next by 2033, people like you will be retired. And there's this gap where you
can relay hard lessons and knowledge to younger people, but if there's nobody like you around, those hard lessons and knowledge are no longer relayed and then we start making the same mistakes.
Roy Voorberg (1:36:22)
No, absolutely. You are correct. It will happen if we don't have the opportunity to pass on. It's one of the things that I ⁓ emphasize when I'm on the job, like last week when I was on the job with the Peabody Burners and the young fellow that was there with me. I worked all day long like I was mentoring him. I said to him, I'm going to...
And he was keen to hear it. I said, I'm going to tell you what I'm looking at, why I'm looking at it, and what I'm doing every step all the way around the boiler. When I'm commissioning, after every adjustment, I do one walk right around the whole boiler. And I smell the boiler, I listen to the boiler, and I look at the boiler vibration or for heat spots or whatever. I said to him, this is what you need to do. You're going to work with me. You're going to walk around the boiler with after every adjustment. that together we get to know what this boiler smells and looks like normally.
because then when it's not normal we'll pick it up in a heartbeat and I I everything I look at I would I would tell them I'm looking at that switch I'm looking at that gauge I'm looking at this temperature and I'm looking at it for this reason and we need to do that and young fellows have to be willing to accept that being shown to them and mentored to them by ⁓ senior technicians
And if we can do that, it's great. Unfortunately, there is looking to be a bigger gap every year that goes by because less young fellows are keen on becoming technically involved. They want to do everything on the keyboard of their computer. And if they go into Autoflame, they're going to do a lot of keyboard work because a lot of it is touchscreen work and with your fingertips, no problem. You can tune the boiler up with...
if it has a lot of flame on it, wearing your wedding suit and a tie. Okay, no issues whatsoever, you can do it. But to get to that point of ready to start up and commission, there's going to be some blood, sweat and tears and a few cracked knuckles. And the young fellows don't want to do that anymore, I find. Because I think society as a whole has failed them. Society as a whole said the only job that's any good to you is a
electronics job, computer programming job, an office job. And yet, I've got proof positive that this is a good job and it's a good paying job if you know what you're doing. I hope young guys will learn that.
Eric Johnson (1:38:49)
sucks.
So how do we advertise burner industry, boiler industry? How do we advertise it in a positive light that people want to sign up for a lot of hard days and a lot of mental problems when there are, and this is, I see this all the time, the blue collar, the trades, such a good trade, you can get paid 100 grand and all this stuff. But it's like when you're starting out,
there's a lot of better options. Yeah, they may not have the best options 10 years down the line, but there are a lot of better options that are equal or better with half as hard days. And, you know, if you have to drive to a job for an hour in your personal car and you have to work an eight hour day, 10 hour day, drive back and like there's no way around it. There's going to be very, very hard days.
no matter how great technology is, how do we advertise as an industry to young people and attract them without lying to them? I see a lot of companies are lying or intentionally misleading people of saying like, they're just leaving all the bad out. They just say all the good, everybody leaves out all the bad, but everybody's gonna find out eventually.
Also on the flip side, every job has bad. The people working in AI jobs and all the hot jobs, all the Google jobs, FAANG and everything, there's lots of bad there, but nobody says that. They just say all the good. So how do we advertise to the younger people or anybody? If you're 40 years old and want a career change, you still have plenty of time to learn boilers and burners. So how do we advertise to anybody about the opportunities and...
Roy Voorberg (1:40:21)
Absolutely.
Eric Johnson (1:40:48)
Also explain to them all the good opportunities and also the hard of what it actually means to work in a boiler room, mechanical room, or to solve hard problems.
Roy Voorberg (1:41:02)
Well, that's one of the reasons I agreed to chat with you on the podcast was because I think it's an opportunity to explain, you know, in a conversational style to young folks that this is a great ⁓ trade in a great industry and it can be a great lifestyle for young fellows to get into or middle-aged guys to get into even, for sure. And that's why I try to always put on a positive.
smile and approach to it and have an enjoyable demeanor while I'm talking about boilers and burners because it is something that's passionate for me and to me and I want young people to learn that. So podcasts would be one way to so that they can just sit down and listen with earbuds in after phone and they can listen to the story that you and I just described and know that yeah.
This is a job that has some unique and interesting challenges. has some opportunity for trades. It has some opportunity to travel, et cetera. Was it always easy? Heavens no. There were days I worked 24 hours a day. There was one project I recalled that I worked from Sunday night at 10 o'clock until the following Sunday night at 10 o'clock on the job site. Yeah, I slept here and there in my truck for a couple hours at a time, but we had a major boiler catastrophe and we had to get
rental boilers, end up in running and I was there to project manage it the whole time. ⁓ Certainly those jobs come along that are horrendous, but they come along in every career choice too. And the boiler business is not any different that way. There's going to be tough days, absolutely, but there are going to be so many rewarding days. When you have a problem job that four or five, six guys came in before you and they couldn't fix it and they threw their tools on the floor and walked away,
and then you come in and you get it up and running. Okay, the satisfaction that you feel in that job, the job satisfaction, the pride that you can take in that is beyond anything. I sometimes say to my wife, that's even better than sex. Okay, but the fact of it is that it's a reward when you get something going that nobody else could get going, you know, and I have that, I take my trucks and my cars to it.
particular job shop here in town and they do all my repair work on the cars and trucks. just physically can't crawl under a truck anymore to do oil changes, etc. But I take it to them and when there's a unique problem, I tell them I expect you to fix it and I'm going to leave it with you until it's fixed 100 % because if I have to take it anywhere else, I'm never coming back to your shop. And they get it done. They get it fixed, right? So we as
Technicians have that the opportunity to be that last stopgap and and say to somebody you got a problem Tell me about your problem. Okay, you'll want to almost be like you're all like a boiler counselor Okay, and you listen to their problem and I learned that when I worked in the factory You know 50 years ago That the best thing you can do is to if a guy calls you and says my machine is not working you sit down with him and say hey
What did it sound like when it worked correctly? What sounds did you have? What smells did you have? What did you see? Explain that to me first. Because I've never worked on your machine, so I need to know what you expect. And you do the same in the boiler business. And you would be amazed that the operators, 9 times out of 10, can almost direct you to what is wrong, because they know the boiler so well. They can't physically pinpoint the piece, but they can tell you the circumstances in which it's going awry.
know the system well enough to understand it, you can fix it and you can be the hero. And everybody loves to be a hero. We all love a hero. That's why Superman and the rest of them all sell millions of dollars worth of comics a year because we all love heroes. So why not be one? Here's an opportunity to become a hero.
Eric Johnson (1:45:05)
Become a hero with real purpose that I think a lot of industries, especially office jobs, a lot of people sit in an office in cube farms, which are just, I mean, you may have 20,000 square foot floor in your office building and it's just cubicles. And you stand up, I mean, it's like all the movies, you stand up and it's just people hunched over, typing on keyboards.
input numbers on ⁓ spreadsheets and you do that for 10 years and it doesn't even take 10 years. But they're like, what, like if I didn't come into work tomorrow, would anything change? Like, what is my purpose here? And what am I actually doing to make the world go round where boilers you can, like if a boiler is down, the product isn't coming out the other side of the warehouse.
Roy Voorberg (1:45:49)
Yeah.
Eric Johnson (1:46:00)
And if you get the product going, or if you get the boiler going, the products and the widgets start coming out and the feedback loop is very, very quick. And it can be, as you said, very, very rewarding.
Roy Voorberg (1:46:01)
Exactly.
Eric Johnson (1:46:13)
there's all kinds of other like uses like healthcare, sterilization for steam and heat, especially in Canada. like if hospitals didn't have boilers, like you'll know if the OR lab is down because they don't have the correct humidity because the boilers are not working, you will know. All the hospital administrators will know and they will have...
pallets of cash throwing at anybody because rescheduling surgeries is the worst thing a hospital can do, especially, know, hey, we're going to have your double knee replacement surgery. It's going to be in six months. All right. And then the day comes, ⁓ we have humidity issues. We have to reschedule. It'll be another six months. They don't want to do that. They want to get their cash and that comes with caring like
What about that 55 year old person that was going to have double knee surgery but the boilers went down because you didn't care enough to fix it correctly the first time. You know, what is their life like? yeah, it's the caring and having the ability and being the hero in every, in very, very small situations, a lot of, you you won't make the news typically. If you make the news in the boiler world, you probably did a bad thing. You probably had an incident. ⁓
Roy Voorberg (1:47:25)
Mm-hmm.
Exactly.
Eric Johnson (1:47:42)
But yeah, I mean, that's huge. You gotta, as we said, you gotta care, gotta have some kind of interest and yeah, I think, is there anything else you wanted to cover or say?
Roy Voorberg (1:47:55)
And I think we've covered an awful lot already, Eric. It's been fun chatting with you. I appreciated the opportunity, actually. And maybe down the road we can do it again with some other topic related to boaters, but maybe on a particular application or something. That would be fun. I appreciate the opportunity that we've had, you know. ⁓
Eric Johnson (1:48:15)
How do people find you?
Roy Voorberg (1:48:18)
⁓ Well, through LinkedIn they can direct message me through LinkedIn. That's not an issue. I'm on LinkedIn all the time and that's the easiest way to get all to me. They can also send me an email, just Royautoflame at gmail.com and they can send me an email.
Eric Johnson (1:48:32)
⁓
Can you spell out, I advocate for LinkedIn all the time. I want all the people to find you. Can you spell out your name for the audience so that they can find you on LinkedIn and follow you and see all your wisdom?
Roy Voorberg (1:48:43)
Yeah, so it's Roy R-O-Y
and it's Vorberg V-O-O-R-B-E-R-G and ⁓ I'm with Morriston Mechanical on the LinkedIn site and they can find me there and they can DM me ⁓ right through LinkedIn and I'll respond pretty quick. You yourself know how quickly I usually respond when you send me a note on the direct message so.
Eric Johnson (1:49:10)
I always appreciate your posts and your knowledge. mean, that goes for all people on LinkedIn. A lot of people, you know the people that are just posting the AI slop and to post to post, but there are a lot of great people in the boiler burner industry who care, who post experiences and want to help. And if you are working for a company where you don't have somebody senior to help you,
Don't feel like you're alone. There are other people willing to help that as Roy has said earlier, he's helped people. I mean, I help people that I've never met in person all because one, I care about helping people, but two, like it just, I mean, that's being a good neighbor, but your neighbor doesn't have to be the person living next to you. So yeah, I think.
Roy Voorberg (1:50:06)
Exactly, exactly.
Eric Johnson (1:50:08)
I
think using social media, using LinkedIn like that for something positive. And that's why I always advocate, get yourself out there, learn and learn from other people's experiences. You'll be 10 times better than only learning from your own experiences.
Roy Voorberg (1:50:26)
Absolutely,
Eric. Thanks ever so much for having me on.
