Eric Johnson (00:00)
Welcome back to Boiler Wild. My name is Eric Johnson. On this podcast, I talk about boiler industry topics as well as personal development. Wild is part of the name of this podcast, which is an interesting name. I think it's a cool name. Let me know if you think differently, but everybody so far that I've talked to thinks it's a cool name. Wild stands for work hard, invest yourself, lead others, and develop yourself into a person of excellence. We should always strive to get better. And in the boiler world, that is very important.
Today I want to talk about the difference between should and shall. This is a very minor difference, but it can become a very major difference, especially if you are working with contracts or working with code books and how you word what you are either telling your clients, telling the owners, and this is especially important on boiler startups, or if you're doing like a gap analysis.
There's a huge difference between shall and should. And if you don't know the difference, it could come bite you. And there are people that will exploit the differences. And if you get a real picky owner, they will start questioning, well, do I have to do this? And are your recommendations, are they required? And that really...
is part of it, but the most important part is to know how to read a code book in the should and shall and knowing the difference. So let's get into it. Shall is mandatory. You shall go install the boiler this way. And that is mandatory, undisputed, you have to do it. And that is very specific in the code book. And when you see
something, something, something shall be done that is 100 % mandatory, has to be done. And that's like a boiler having a safety valve installed on it. know, a boiler is required, shall have a safety valve installed on the boiler. It is mandatory. You can't have a steam boiler without a safety valve on it. And...
should is recommended. Well, you should test your safety valve once a month, but we don't require that, but we are recommending that. Saying that as maybe like a service company towards a end user or a customer. The code book says one thing, but you know, past experience, this is what we recommend.
You should do this, but you don't have to. And the important part is should is recommendations, shall is mandatory. And this can trip a lot of people up, especially when they are making recommendations, especially on boiler startups. And there is a difference between what you prefer should be done and what shall be done on a boiler startup.
There are many times that you will see a boiler installation that is probably not the best and they don't have all the bells and whistles and they're not trying to install the boiler in a way that is the best. They are really only trying to get the boiler installed so that they get steam and that's the bare minimum and maybe the owner doesn't have a lot of money and they're just trying to do it very, very budget.
and they skip a lot of those couple accessories that may lead to a little bit more problems on the road but are not required on the upfront. So you as a rep company, as a service company, you...
prefer to have maybe one thing or the other thing or have it one way or the other way or say like hey this piping here it really should be like this and then they would ask you is well does it have to be like that will it not work like this and if you say well it'll work like this but it's really not correct and
That means essentially that they don't have to change it. You prefer it a different way and maybe for like service, a piping arrangement is easier one way versus another way. so right now, I don't believe it's code, but I could be wrong, but on the vent line, so you have a double block and bleed vent line. So the normally,
open gas valve between the two block valves on your gas train.
Typically for a good installation, you will have a union or a flange right after the valve so that you can easily inspect the outlet of the valve, see if it's leaking by and disconnect it from the vent line that is going out of the building so that you can easily remove the valve and do maintenance on the gas drain. So you should have that union or flange, but if an installer just
pipes straight out of the valve and pipes it through the roof, are they required to have the union or flange? No, at least I don't believe. I'm not 100 % on the code books on that, but that is just one example of it will make it difficult for service later and you may have to add a flange or union later.
but that's the difference between it should be this way versus if the code book said within the first 12 inches after the normally open vent valve, you shall have a point of pipe disconnect, either a union or flange so that the valve outlet can be inspected. That would be the difference between should and shall. And if you would see that, then.
you could point to that and say, well, it has to be this way per code. So it has to get changed versus, well, we prefer it this way so that we can do service and regularly inspect this valve. And this is how we think it should be done, but we can't force you to do it that way. Another example of that is the water softener. And this is a huge one and I don't know why it's missed. It is so easy.
people will install a water softener and if it's field installed, they typically just get the twin tanks with the heads and everything and then they pipe it in. And sometimes the installer will pipe it like the manufacturer wants, sometimes not. But a lot of times the installer is none the wiser and doesn't put a soft water test port in. So it would be maybe a quarter inch or maybe a half inch.
ball valve, little line coming off the soft water, exit of the softener between the softener and say the feed water tank. And if they don't put in a little test port, that is something that super helpful with water chemistry and is super helpful with boiler service and keeping the boiler room operating. But I don't believe there are any codes out there that say.
you shall have a soft water test point. Now you may be able to find a soft water test point somewhere between the water softener and the feed water tank, but a lot of times I found that there is no easy way to get the soft water test and you are either disassembling something or removing a gauge in order to get a sample. And in that case, if it is difficult to get a sample, it will not happen.
and then the customer will wonder why in a couple years why their boiler is full of scale and you ask them, hey, well you really need to test your soft water on a daily basis and they go, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, where do we do that? And you're like, well, you actually got to remove the gauge here and then move this valve and move that valve and then make sure you rinse this out and this is how you get the soft water test. If it's difficult to do, the customer probably won't do it.
and or they'll just leave the gauge removed or pipe removed or whatever in order to get that test point, but you should have a dedicated test point. So when you are doing a boiler installation that is brand new and the water softener is installed and you walk through as the startup person, you can point that out and say, hey, we don't have a soft water test point.
we recommend that this gets installed. It is much easier to install while the contractor is there. They have all their piping there and they probably had the fittings there and it's not hard. You just add a little T and a little reducing valve and go down to half or a quarter inch. Cause a lot of plants don't put in like a pipe sample system where they should.
that's not done in a lot of plants just due to cost that gets removed from the budget because it is a little bit extra but it makes things very, very simple for the water treatment side of things which is probably the number one killer of boiler rooms so it's ironic that water treatment is always, seems to be the last in line for people to get thought of but is the number one killer of boilers and piping. But if you go, hey,
I recommend that you have a soft water test port, but that's just a recommendation. If the contractor goes, all right, yeah, we'll add it. That's no problem. And then, you know, they put Jimmy and Jimmy adds a software test port in a half hour. That's something that is a value add to that customer that should be done in the water treatment manual or in the water softener manual. It will probably say, Hey, you need a
Soft water test port, but I don't believe there are any codes out there that say you shall have a soft water test port But a properly installed water softener will have a test port that is right after the outlet of the water softener That will allow the water cheater anybody To test the softness of the water coming out of the water softener Same thing with the water coming into the water softener. You should be able to test that as well
along with the feed water and boiler system. If you don't have a spot to correctly test your boiler water and sample your boiler water, that is something that is very, very difficult to get if you don't have a spot for that. Sometimes boilers that are smaller don't have fancy surface blow down systems that will have a test port and maybe they don't even have a surface blow down system. So sometimes you're just taking a sample to the sight glass.
which is not ideal. So I would recommend as a installer or as a startup technician as, hey, you should have a boiler test port for this boiler and for that boiler. But I once again, don't believe there's any codes that says there shall be a way to test the boiler water at the water level surface of the boiler. The boiler water that is going to be sitting on top of the surface,
So the first six inches, that's what is gonna be coming out of that surface blow down piping is gonna be different than the boiler water that is sitting on the bottom of the boiler and is gonna be coming out of the blow down piping for the bottom blow down. That is a huge differential that you need to keep in mind. So if they say, well, just blow down the boiler and get the water coming out of the...
blow off tank, well then you can say well actually the blow off tank is having cooling water also mixed into it so that's a diluted sample and then I've had people tell me well shut off the cooling water and get your sample of it running out of the blow off tank. So and I've had to do that before in getting a boiler water sample because there was nowhere else to get it and you shut off the cooling water, you run the blow down a little bit and yes it's hotter than 140 degrees going down the drain.
but you gotta do what you gotta do. And obviously don't do that with PVC drain pipes, because you will melt them. But that is kind of what you have to do.
Another example of this is we'll go on the mandatory side, the shall side is the number of valves required for a boiler gas train. So if you have a boiler gas train and well, I should say fuel train, but if you have a natural gas fuel train, the number of valves is mandatory depending on the input size of the fuel train and it will differ I'm sure around the world.
But typically, if I am remembering correctly, boilers up to two and a half million, I believe can have one valve as long as it has proof of closure in it. And then after two and a half million, it shall have two valves. And one of them, the downstream one, shall have proof of closure. That is...
Example, don't quote me on that, I'm little rusty but any large boiler, say 20 million B2 input, shall have two block valves and it shall have a bleed valve that is normally open. That is why you always see that as a standard on the fuel train, that's why you don't see
one gas valve randomly or three gas valves. I'm sure you could have three gas valves if you really wanted to, but two are mandatory. So in the code books it says shall be done. And when you order your boiler or any other equipment, any manufacturer is gonna follow the code. So if you say, this is the standard codes for our system and this is the codes for the area and all that stuff.
they'll make sure that it follows the requirements, but they know the requirements of the boiler that they're building. So if you're building a boiler that's 500 horsepower, they know what is required to be in that boiler and how to build it for ASME and all that stuff. So they take care of that, but it's really the install side of things where things start breaking down and it comes down to the installation company and the inspector and...
I know a lot of times you would think in a perfect world that the inspector would catch everything, but they don't. And that's why Boiler Startup is so critical for you to catch those shall things that are lacking from the installation versus the should things, which are just recommendations and maybe can be done in the future. Maybe it can be done now if they have the budget. But when you are writing up recommendations,
If you have a report and somebody really scrutinizes the report, you need to make sure that you are writing up should and shall correctly because if you write up, you shall have a software test point, they'll be like, well, what's the code for that? then you may come back and say, well, that was just a recommendation. They'll say, well, you acted like you said it was basically required here.
And oh, well, we recommend that it's required for a good water treatment program, but it's not a code. And a lot of people are sticklers with that, especially when money is running out at the end of a project. And maybe there's been a lot of delays with the boiler system and they are just trying to get things done. I've seen it time and time again, and you need to have...
you have to be careful with what you write up in your recommendations because as a boiler startup person, as an installer, you may see things that you prefer, but once again, your client will say, well, is this mandatory, is this code? And a lot of times you have to back things up with this shall be done this way. Another good one is the non-return valve and the...
isolation valve on top of a steam boiler on the steam outlet. You shall have a non-return valve when you have a man way on your boiler and have two boilers and battery and have them connected together if it's a high pressure steam boiler. Like that's a requirement. So you can't just pipe up two high pressure steam boilers and pipe them together into a header and not put valves on the steam outlet.
Another shall requirement is that there has to be a spool piece and that's the nearer boiler piping. If a spool piece is required on the boiler piping that is coming off the header, sometimes you can sit the valves right on the boiler. Sometimes you need a spool piece, but if there is a spool piece, that spool piece is a special pipe and cannot be modified unless you are the
special company in order to modify it with I believe a ASME PP stamp and the boiler manufacturer should supply the spool piece but the spool piece has to be properly sized and Typically the spool piece will choke down for steam velocities But that is a another topic, but you can't just cut it. I've seen them
field cut and change but that is not allowed because it is, well I'm sure the welder did a great job, it is not allowed because that is a code piece of piping and it has to be done to code, has to be inspected by an AI and the company, if you look at a spool piece, will actually attach a little stamp to it and it'll have a little data plate.
So that's what I have today, short and sweet. Make sure you are recommending things that should be done to your clients. Those are value add, and then make sure that you are pointing out things that shall be done, which are code requirements and have to be changed and are not correct. Make sure you know the difference. make sure you inform your coworkers of the difference. And when you are reading your code book,
or you are reading instructions or recommendations, make sure you are using should and shall correctly. That is always a wise choice.
And when I see those words used, especially if somebody just uses should, I know that that is a recommendation and shall hopefully that they know is a requirement. That is an easy way to distinguish them. in the chaos of the boiler startup and however long that takes, there are going to be a lot of recommendations and a lot of misses that were missed on the installation, but you have to be specific on
what is required and what you prefer. if you got any value from this episode or any other episode of Boiler Wild, please rate it five star in your podcast app. We are getting a couple more five stars. That is great. It helps others find this podcast, share this with a coworker or a friend.
If you enjoy this, I have 71 episodes so far. So we are rolling along, steaming along with this podcast and we'll be not too far from 100 come summertime sometime. So I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you have a great day and stay wild.
