88. Controlling Historic Boiler Systems with Modern Tech with Izzy Friedman

September 22, 2026

Eric Johnson talked with Izzy Friedman who shares the fascinating history and modern innovations of boiler and building management systems, emphasizing energy efficiency, remote monitoring, and the future of heating technology in older buildings. Izzy Friedman shares his passion and expertise in steam systems, boiler maintenance, and energy efficiency. This episode covers practical advice, industry insights, and the future of boiler technology, making it essential for building owners, contractors, and enthusiasts.

If you want to learn how to save money by using Entech, go to https://entechsmart.com/

Episode Transcript

Eric Johnson (00:00)
Welcome back to Boiler Wild. My name is Eric Johnson. Today's guest is Izzy Friedman. He is the director of technical support and a project manager for EnTech Entech is a smart building control company. They provide a building control panel and sensors in the boiler room as well as throughout the building that help building owners.

Eric Johnson (00:23)
monitor their heating systems and to be able to save them money. And they are especially in the market with old steam systems, one pipe, two pipe systems, where the building owners will walk outside and they will see windows open during the dead of the winter. And that is just BTUs going out the window, which equals dollars going out the window. And in the world of twenty twenty six, we want to save money. We want to be energy efficient.

Eric Johnson (00:52)
And conscious of the resources that we are using. And EnTech is a way to help building owners with a solution. So I hope you enjoy.

Izzy Friedman (01:01)
Alright, so we started off really as a monitoring system. So there are two two brothers, they're Eric and Simon, Soloff Their father owned real estate up in the Bronx, some apartment buildings and steam systems, most of them are scotch marine steam boilers providing heat and hot water. And there were a few companies back then today called US Energy.

Izzy Friedman (01:24)
OAS, CompuSave, these were dial up systems, DSL lines, and they would just monitor, you know, temperature going up to the building, not even pressure. It was measuring the water temperature, return temperature, outdoor temperature, and then some of them would have indoor sensors up in the building. Used to be hardwired down to the panel, and they would monitor it and then, you know, make adjustments in the boiler room as needed on the, previous controls. So

Izzy Friedman (01:50)
he brought his son in, Eric, to monitor those buildings. and then his brother Simon, who's a more sales guy, said, you know what, let's see if we can get some more customers. And he started going around the Bronx and their father's friends who owned real estate you know, opened up EnTech as a monitoring company to monitor these buildings. fast forward to 2000.

Izzy Friedman (02:10)
they were like, okay, this dashboard is, pretty poor. Very hard for us to see the information. They built their own platform to monitor these systems. as time went by, they were like, Okay, you know, dial up is really not the way to go for monitoring system. You're losing so much information between the the dial-ins.

Izzy Friedman (02:28)
so in 2006, internet was becoming a lot more common, they said, okay, we gotta make our own control system. So it was the first internet based control system that was able to control remotely. And it was a panel that went into the boiler room, it had like this little L C D screen, you couldn't really see anything on it. But everything had to be done from the

Izzy Friedman (02:47)
computer you'd go and you log in the computer, you can make changes, you can make adjustments, and it would also adjust the cycles based on indoor sensors. So we install sensors up in the apartments or in the space. I'd say most of the buildings that we do are multifamily residential, say 25 units and up. So they would put sensors in those apartments and then based on the indoor temperature and the outdoor temperature it'll control and everything was from the website. 2015 we kind of evolved

Izzy Friedman (03:13)
into a touch screen system. We got a lot of feedback from boiler mechanics that they would walk into the boiler rooms and like, okay, this is a horrible system. I hate the system. I can't see anything. It doesn't help me. It's my enemy. So with feedback from a lot of boiler mechanics and engineers came out with the stealth. This is 2015. Had a full touch screen, all the settings were all from the panel itself. You could see all the sensors from the panel itself, make all the adjustments

Izzy Friedman (03:36)
Internet is down, it's not a problem. You can make all the adjustments. And by today, I think a a year or so ago we came out with our last version called the S2, which is the same, you know, concept but has a lot more capabilities of integrations with all the newer systems out there, condensing boilers, modbus, backnet, zero to ten, analog output, zero to ten, four to twenty, outputs to control VFDs, pumps, boilers.

Izzy Friedman (04:00)
multiple stuff and then the platform as well is designed to integrate with, multiple systems as technology is evolving and buildings are changing. So that's pretty much EnTech's history.

Eric Johnson (04:12)
Is this system only for boiler systems?

Izzy Friedman (04:16)
No. So we initially started off as in in in boilers. but by now is you know, I I usually say that anything that the this the s the system is designed for any plant, any building that has a central plant that the management owners are paying the utilities. Right. So we do chillers, we do heat pumps, when I say heat pumps, you know, mini splits, VRFs, anything that

Izzy Friedman (04:41)
the landlord is usually in charge and responsible to pay, that's where we come in. So we can do steam boilers, hydronic boilers, cooling towers, chillers, heat pumps, mini splits, air handlers, all that could tie into it.

Eric Johnson (04:57)
Which is probably most of the condos apartment buildings in the New Jersey, New York area.

Izzy Friedman (05:05)
Right. Yeah. I would say that. And we service way more than that. We service all the states around us, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, moving up to Boston, down to Atlantic City, Washington D C, Maryland a little bit, and then we have a region out in Chicago as well. and we're moving out to all the old cities that have, older buildings that have a centralized heating system. So yeah, primarily it's in the

Izzy Friedman (05:27)
older cities, and then like we would do commercial a lot, but I would say seventy five percent of our customers are multifamily residential buildings. We go from twenty five units up to thousands of units.

Eric Johnson (05:37)
the issue is that building owners, they've maybe bought a building, but it probably has a boiler plant, maybe has air conditioning, maybe it doesn't, and they don't know what their energy uses is per apartment, as far as like there's no control. They just turn on the boiler.

Eric Johnson (05:59)
if they have a boiler but they turn on the boiler it maintains the steam pressure or maintains the hydronic water temperature and it goes to the winter months

Izzy Friedman (06:10)
Right. So

Eric Johnson (06:12)
and then they may walk outside and they may see that windows are open during the dead of winter. They have no idea as to how to control their building and it seems like

Eric Johnson (06:26)
they either have to replace the boiler with something more modern, which boilers are still modern depending on who you talk to, this would be

Izzy Friedman (06:35)
Yeah, I I posted

Izzy Friedman (06:36)
on my LinkedIn a picture of a boiler from like nineteen eighty four and one guy just commented this morning, I found it fun I find it funny that you call a you know a boiler that is close to forty years an old boiler. I work on boilers from, you know, I think you said from the thirties or something and fifties. So yeah, I guess it's all, you know, people's perspective. so I'd say the solution that EnTech brings to buildings

Izzy Friedman (06:57)
since these buildings were built, you know, some of them literally the late eighteen hundreds, early nineteen hundreds, of the fifties, sixties. most of them were all built with a steam boiler or some of them hydronic boiler, but they all had a outdoor reset system. So there was a sensor outside tells the boiler, okay, it's below fifty five degrees, we have to give heat. it'll cycle the

Izzy Friedman (07:18)
the steam for the for the steam boilers it'll cycle you'll adjust the cycles based on how cold it is. and then for hydronic for the most part it just turns it on and off and it the boilers maintain at 180 degrees. I think in the in the past 20 years a lot of the systems started doing outdoor reset for hydronic as well, adjusting the loop temperature. But again it's only what's going on outside. and then there's no remote communication

Izzy Friedman (07:40)
a lot of the building owners managements they manage multiple buildings and they're not necessarily in the building the whole time they could have a superintendent but they're not seeing everything they're not in the boiler constantly unlike you know in industrial plants you have onside people 24 hours right so the solution that EnTech really brings to these building owners is first of all visibility seeing what's happening in the building right so everything's remotely if there's a boiler not responding if there's anything down

Izzy Friedman (08:05)
it shows them eyes and ears as a a beautiful app that we have. you know, a dashboard on the computer, everything could be seen. And then it also is the main purpose of the panel is to see what's happening in the building. So we put wireless sensors about twenty-five percent of the building. we we spread sensors throughout about twenty-five percent of the building, and primarily it it'll tell us what's happening in the building. So I don't really care if it's

Izzy Friedman (08:29)
below fifty five degrees if the apartments are satisfied, if the indoor sensors are in indoors satisfied. So just for example, this past year, we had a very long like end of the winter, right? So it was like two months of, bouncing between forty, fifty, sixty degrees. Those are the those are the times that we really saved our customers a lot because it could be you have a day that is sixty five degrees nice and sunny. a lot of the buildings are brick buildings.

Izzy Friedman (08:55)
and those temperatures are heating up. Right? Those the the sun is heating up the building. All of a sudden you get to the evening, sun goes down, we drop sometimes we drop to fifteen degrees in the day, you know, within a couple hours. And now if you have an outdoor reset system, yeah, the outdoor sensor tells you, it fell below fifty-five degrees, it's you know, fifty-four degrees now, let's kick the heat on. But having visibility what's going on in the building will tell you, the apartments were nice and toasty from getting sun all day.

Izzy Friedman (09:21)
And there's no need to turn the boiler on. So let's wait a couple hours till there the temperatures in the apartments start dropping and turn them on. So that's the concept of EnTech. And then the next step is running it efficiently as well. Right? So you could our system is adaptive, it learns how fast the building heats up and it'll adjust. If it's a steam system, it'll adjust the cycles constantly. It's constantly learning. So a lot of the outdoor reset systems have

Izzy Friedman (09:47)
settings that anytime blow outdoor and then the colder it gets you know the cycles adjust but it's literally constantly based on what this outdoor is our system actually learns how fast the indoor is heating up and as it heats up it's constantly adjusting like okay if the boiler turned on and heat has started going up to the building but it's taking a lot longer for the building to heat up

Izzy Friedman (10:09)
it's gonna extend the cycles or if it's a hydronic system, it'll raise the loop temperature. If it sees that the indoor temperature is, get hitting the target really quick, it'll now shorten the cycles or lower the loop temperature. So it's constantly adaptive to what's going on in the building.

Eric Johnson (10:26)
And all the sensors that you're installing in the building are wireless, so there's no need to like rip out ceilings and walls for a bunch of wires.

Izzy Friedman (10:32)
Right, so

Izzy Friedman (10:33)
we really split it into two. We have the system sensors that are anything in the mechanical room. Those are most almost all of them are hardwired. So we run wires to the panel itself in the mechanical room, but all the sensors that go up throughout the building is all wireless. They run on radio frequency and they have great reception if we have big buildings and it's too far, so they have these repeaters that we could add on. We have a special testing kit.

Izzy Friedman (10:57)
that a survey kit that we go around the building at every installation and they test what the signal is. If it's too far, they'll add repeaters. So it's a pretty simple system. There's unlimited amount of sensors. We've done buildings with hundreds of sensors. And then you just add repeaters as you go along.

Eric Johnson (11:13)
Are you putting a sensor in each apartment room or

Izzy Friedman (11:17)
No, no.

Eric Johnson (11:18)
just in the hallways?

Izzy Friedman (11:19)
No, so not in the hallways. They have we always put them in rooms that have radiators that are actually being heated from the heating plant, right? So that's a question when we go in though we do usually we do between fifteen percent to twenty-five percent of the building. depending on, sometimes the customer will want less, sometimes we want more. if we're doing rebates through the different rebate programs, some of them require twenty-five percent, some of them require twenty percent.

Izzy Friedman (11:43)
So really depends on that. But ideally it's around 20% of the building. steam buildings we catch the top floor because heat rises, steam rises. So we assume that if the last floor has heat, we assume everybody below them have heat. the taller the buildings go when we have high risers and we split it up, top, middle, bottom. and same goes for hydronic. So depending on the building, we spread those sensors out.

Izzy Friedman (12:04)
but we want it to be in a room that is being affected by the heat. So our technicians will go in and say, okay, you know, what's your coldest room? Someone will tell us, my bedroom is the coldest, but I like it that way. So I even I close the radiator. So okay, you're not a good candidate for the sensor. Or someone would tell us, this is the coldest room and I have to put I always have electric heaters to heat. Again, it's not a good candidate for our system.

Eric Johnson (12:27)
Got it. So you're not putting in every every room, you're just using enough sensors to capture an average of the building and get a snapshot and then make a assumption based on that of what the rest of the building is.

Izzy Friedman (12:41)
Correct, correct. And the advantage is that these are wireless sensors, they're easy to move around and we could throughout the time if, a tenant has something they they want heaters or they're you know, we could always move them out to other apartments. or, if we need if there's another apartment or another office that needs they have complaints, we could always move a sensor. We could also put sensors and not put them in the vote, right? So we just monitor them and they're not part of the equation.

Izzy Friedman (13:04)
we usually try to get like the coldest apartments, the corner ones, all the corners of the building. and you know, to get a a nice average, not just, you know, a little sample of what's going on in the building, but really what's an average that is gonna affect the heating, in a positive way.

Eric Johnson (13:19)
Can a contractor install this system or is it only installed by EnTech?

Izzy Friedman (13:25)
yeah, so we have s we have contractors that install it. about five, six years ago we went through some supply shops to sell it directly to contractors. We found that a lot of contractors, especially in the New York area, a lot of them were not really interested in learning a whole new system. It's you know, w putting an outdoor reset panel, you come in, you slap a panel on the wall, you put a outdoor sensor and a return sensor and you're done.

Izzy Friedman (13:48)
so we found, you know, a lot of them didn't really want to be busy with it. we have a bunch of contractors that do install for us. they'll they'll sell it and do their own installation. We have a lot of them who'll just come to us and say, Hey, could you install it for us and they'll buy it through us or referral fees, stuff like that. we'll do training if they need

Eric Johnson (14:05)
your website it says payback in six months or less on ninety five percent of the buildings that you do. If it's six month payback, is there any reason why a building owner wouldn't do this?

Izzy Friedman (14:18)
Yeah, you know how it is in sales and in real estate, everything is hard to sell. and not every building you're gonna save that much. Some buildings are gonna take longer. But again, it's money that they have to shell out and especially in New York, you talk to every property manager and property owner, every real estate, they're all hurting. Some of these buildings are literally not making money. Some of them they're breaking even. So, a company that has, multiple buildings, they'll have some buildings that they'll

Izzy Friedman (14:40)
either be losing money on it or breaking even. so throughout their portfolio they're able to make a business, but every building is is a big every expense that they have to do is a big, contemplation. So a lot of times, like why should I do it? there's a lot of rebates out there also with the different utilities. in New York we have Con Edison and National Grid. They have rebates which work with them. In New Jersey you got

Izzy Friedman (15:02)
PSE&G, and up in Massachusetts you have what is it called, Mass camera with their utilities and Chicago as well. So there's rebates out there to help, incentivize putting in these systems. in New York, especially there's also something called local ninety seven, that they're really working hard to make buildings a lot more efficient and you know requiring them to put in smarter controls.

Izzy Friedman (15:23)
So that you know, that's an incentive that pushes a lot of the property managers and owners to put in a system.

Eric Johnson (15:31)
Can this system also be installed in an an apartment? I don't know if apartments do this, are that are supplied by Con Ed. Is that a thing?

Izzy Friedman (15:40)
You're talking about district steam?

Eric Johnson (15:41)
Yes.

Izzy Friedman (15:42)
Yeah, so absolutely, yeah. We have in in New York City, we have a bunch of them. is actually is one of the things that fascinates me, the whole district steam, I love it. I'm I've been dying to try to get a tour of the Con Edison plant. if you know anybody who could hook me up. There was

Eric Johnson (15:55)
N I was gonna say,

Eric Johnson (15:56)
l it where's the invite? I'm I'm I'll be on a plane in in the next hour.

Izzy Friedman (15:59)
Yeah. Th there's a

Izzy Friedman (16:01)
tour, I think in October. it's actually it's on October twentieth, which is my birthday. Someone sent it to me and they sold out. I'm like, I would love that would be my best, you know, birthday present is to get access to you know to get to get this tour. But that's a fascinating thing. But when you you think of it from a building perspective, from you walk into the lobby of the building, from the lobby and up, n you don't really care, you know, what's below it, right?

Izzy Friedman (16:25)
In a lot of buildings you'll have right below it, there's a boiler that's generating the steam and sending up to the building. And in the buildings that have district steam, you just have a steam line coming in. so there's a valve, there's a motorized valve that we can that we control. some of them are just spring valves, right? So when there's we'll cycle it when there's demand for heat and the system calls to send up so it'll either turn a boiler on and you know make steam or open up a valve and push steam through the building.

Izzy Friedman (16:51)
Some of them have modulating valves, so we'll adjust the valve percentage wise based on how much we want how much steam we want to send up to the building. So on from from our side from the control perspective, it's pretty much the same way between controlling a boiler and district steam. a lot of people don't even know about this district steam. You know, people drive, especially people in Manhattan who drive all the time, you see these cone every almost every picture that you see of new you know, Google New York City Street.

Izzy Friedman (17:15)
You'll see these orange cones sticking out, right? With the steam. It's like iconic. And most of the people don't even know what it is. They drive around it, they walk around it. These are all vents, from the district steam system. Most of them, I believe there are usually when there's some like steam leaks or anything or something like that. until they get their the team is able to get around to repairing that leak, they'll just vent it up, up the street. it's pretty cool.

Izzy Friedman (17:38)
And then a lot of buildings, the buildings are closer. a lot of them also will you they use the steam with they have steam heat exchangers for domestic hot water. So the domestic hot water will be created from the steam. Some of them already put in you know separate water heaters for the domestic hot water. and then a lot of buildings actually send back the condensation back to Con Edison and a lot of them have to dump it. because you got all the you know, you have a building that is,

Izzy Friedman (18:02)
fifteen floors, twenty floors and you're putting steam. so they actually they have to mix it with cold water to drop it down to a temperature that they could dump it back into the drain system. I actually have a cool story. A engineer told me this story a couple of years ago. it was a building in Manhattan, midtown, that they were doing they were trying to, you know, find ways to to make the building more energy efficient and, get savings and they're like, we're wasting so much water

Izzy Friedman (18:27)
just cooling down the condensation to dump it. So he came up with this great idea. He's like, I'll do we'll do radiant heat on the sidewalks. We'll do a snow melt system. Right? We'll use the condensation, that's coming down at like, one ninety, one eighty degrees. we'll just run it through the sidewalk. We'll put, radiant heat tubes through the sidewalk. And by the time it comes back into the building, it's cold enough to just dump down the system.

Izzy Friedman (18:52)
So first day of the winter comes, the first few weeks and the homeless guy's walking by, he's like, this you know, sat down there and the sidewalk is nice and warm. A week later, the whole you know, all his friends are there and, you know, the property manager shows up and is like, Why is why did our building attract all the homeless people? They're all camping out outside. It's like, 'cause the sidewalks are warm. So they they ended up shutting it down.

Eric Johnson (19:15)
you'll find where the where the cats sleep that will typically be

Izzy Friedman (19:18)
Yeah, yeah.

Izzy Friedman (19:19)
Right.

Eric Johnson (19:20)
on

Eric Johnson (19:20)
the on the warm sidewalk and I've also seen where I don't I haven't actually been to New York City but where the steam lines are ran, I've seen it in universities where the steam lines are ran, they'll run the steam line under the sidewalk for like to pump it to buildings, but that just the radiant heat from that steam line will keep the sidewalk warm enough where the

Izzy Friedman (19:43)
Cats will hang out.

Eric Johnson (19:43)
the

Eric Johnson (19:44)
s well, yeah, cats and and the snow doesn't build up on the sidewalk.

Izzy Friedman (19:48)
Right.

Izzy Friedman (19:50)
you'll see that like a lot of there's some complexes, like building complexes that will have a heating plant in one building and then they'll send steam to, a handful. We have up in the Bronx we have complex like that. it's like four buildings, each one of them has about two hundred thirty or two hundred twenty five units and they have like I think it's eighteen inch lines running under the ground. You can see when it snows

Izzy Friedman (20:11)
You can see exactly where the lines are running. There's there's no snow there. Pretty cool. Talking about cats, one of the things that we do with our system does you know, in addition to you know, it's as I told you, like we're eyes and ears in the building, we also monitor the makeup, the water makeup into the boiler. So on a hydronic system you shouldn't be losing any water.

Izzy Friedman (20:29)
so there's no water running there. we put a water meter on it and we monitor it. If a hydronic system is losing gallons, it automatically sends an alert to the property manager or the maintenance that there's a leak. In steam, you're always losing some water. You you're losing condensation. So there's calculations based on the size of the building. Our system will calculate what's a normal usage for this building. so what we put the water meter in and it'll send an alert. A lot of times you have these return lines that are running underground.

Izzy Friedman (20:56)
you from the end of the building, they're running under the floor, and our system will detect there's excessive water loss, they'll send it. And they're like, Okay, but we have a return line. So I remember when I I started, close to twenty years ago, I remember a super told me, he's like, I always check where the cats my cat he has cats there and he always checks where the cats are hanging out. If he knows the cats are hanging out in one corner, he knows it'll be okay, we got a return leak over there.

Eric Johnson (21:17)
how'd you you mentioned twenty years ago, how'd you start or get in with boilers and then eventually EnTech?

Izzy Friedman (21:25)
So yeah, I came I came from I was working in low voltage, worked for a company that did fire alarms and security systems. so I was very familiar with low voltage sensors, wiring and stuff like that. And at the time EnTech was, expanding and looking for technicians. So a friend of a friend, referred me and I'm like, Okay, let's get into it and I started out, it just fascinated me,

Izzy Friedman (21:47)
you go into a regular building, any building that you walk into and it's, a whole nother building and then you just go through that service door or the steps down to the basement and there's a whole world behind it that runs this building. And you walk into these boiler rooms and these these I sh I post pictures a lot of times on my WhatsApp or you know LinkedIn and my friends and from even my kids, like I I have tons of pictures on of boilers on my on my phone. My kids are like, Why like wow, these are this is huge. These boils are huge. They're the size of trucks.

Izzy Friedman (22:14)
it's fascinating and you know, I really fell in love with the whole boiler industry. I'm not an engineer, I'm not a mechanic, but you know, being so many years in it and it's really a passion, I love it.

Eric Johnson (22:23)
So you

Izzy Friedman (22:23)
I think that's one of the things

Izzy Friedman (22:24)
that draw me to you is, you popped up somehow on LinkedIn, I'm like, All right, this guy's also he loves steam, he loves boilers, he loves mechanics and these are the stuff that fascinates me.

Eric Johnson (22:34)
Yeah, it's it's fascinating that we got to a point in America where the average person just assumes that electricity will be on, the heat will be on, that utilities work. when they see construction, they think of it as a inconvenience. they gotta rip up the road. now I'm late to work.

Eric Johnson (22:54)
And gotta do a detour and with some of these cities, as you mentioned, a lot of the buildings were built in the late eighteen hundreds, early nineteen hundreds, and maybe the boiler's been replaced once, but they're on their second boiler and the building owner, I don't know how you would do that 'cause you're looking at it and

Eric Johnson (23:14)
I either gotta rip up the street and probably pay the city half a million dollars just get a new boiler in there, or you buy a boiler that's built in place,

Izzy Friedman (23:24)
in in, you know, urban areas, all of them they're all built in place. They bring bring them in sections. the Scotch Marines, the fire tubes. I see them all the time. they cut it up, the old one out, cut it up, and then they'll literally bring it in, plates. These guys, labor guys are carrying in these huge plates. and then there's also sectionals. A lot of d them are also doing the sectional boilers which are easier to bring in.

Eric Johnson (23:46)
Yeah, the

Izzy Friedman (23:47)
Or easier to

Izzy Friedman (23:47)
assemble, I guess. But they're still building Scotch Marine boilers. I was in one two days ago. I went to to spec out a project that they j they upgrade they're putting in a new boiler. Brand new Scotch Marine boiler. They bring in the plates, they weld them in place. Yeah, they build them inside. There's no way to you can't just, back up a flatbed into the building and drop off a a boiler on a skid

Eric Johnson (24:09)
I see it all the time, sometimes on the pictures you post, but I believe it's a domestic hot water coil that goes into the front top of the Scotch Marine boiler.

Izzy Friedman (24:19)
Yeah.

Eric Johnson (24:20)
Is that a New York thing? 'Cause I don't really see that anywhere else. Maybe you don't know.

Izzy Friedman (24:23)
Yeah? no. I've seen

Izzy Friedman (24:26)
I've seen them I've seen them in New York, New Jersey, like at least in in in, you know, our area. I've seen it a lot. I believe Chicago also has it. I've been to Chicago, they also have it. but I I think it's maybe it's a more of a multifamily residential thing.

Izzy Friedman (24:40)
Right, if you have a build

Eric Johnson (24:41)
Maybe.

Izzy Friedman (24:41)
a building build big enough, you're not gonna put a hot water heater. You know, that's just not enough water.

Eric Johnson (24:48)
So they are essentially pigging backing off the steam boiler the domestic hot water with a coil and then it probably goes to a storage tank

Izzy Friedman (24:58)
No no no storage things. Most of the buildings, they have the Scotch Marine boiler. So in the winter it's basically free heat because the boiler's running for steam. The coil sits literally right above the water level in the winter and that space is hot and the coil runs in. I don't know how many gallons is it it could run in there, but buildings are running just off and that coil comes out and there's mixing valve.

Izzy Friedman (25:22)
So usually comes out of the boiler about 170. The boiler is maintained at 180. So that's one of the things also that we come in and we add to efficiency of the boiler. When you walk into a regular Scotch Marine boiler, there's an aquastat on the boiler set to 180. And anytime it falls below 180, the boiler turns on. So you got cold water comes in from one side of the coil, gets heated up, comes out about 170, and then there's a mixing valve that will adjust that temperature and drop it down to about

Izzy Friedman (25:51)
one thirty so hopefully up to the building they're getting it at one twenty or something like that. One one twelve I think is the legal temperature. there's a bunch of companies out there. Hobie is one of the older ones. the great guys this is a mechanical a mechanical valve that has a solenoid in the mid in the middle and you could adjust it and it automatically mixes the cold and the hot. and then you have

Izzy Friedman (26:13)
automatic ones nowadays Honeywell makes one and a bunch of other companies make them and they have a sensor and it just it's a motor that adjusts the mixing valve to make sure that the output is about 125 I think. So yeah there's no no need for storage tanks. It goes straight up. And in the summer a lot of the buildings will raise the water level to right above it. So it's submerged in water.

Izzy Friedman (26:35)
and it's so it's heated up. So what we come in we put in we add a sensor on the coil. and when we walk into a regular boiler it just has an aquastat. Anytime it falls below one eighty, the boiler kicks on, heats it up, hits one eighty, is usually like a ten degree or a five degree differential on the aquastat. We come in, we put a sensor on the coil sensor, what's coming out of the coil that is going to the mixing valve. Now if there's

Izzy Friedman (26:59)
very little usage or no usage, especially at night, that coil can maintain its temperature. Most of them also have a recirculating pump that will circulate the water through the building. so that temperature is maintaining it's cooling down s very slowly, but it's maintaining. So there's no need to turn the just because the boiler dropped below 180 doesn't mean we have to turn the boiler on. There's the coil is still satisfied. So we have our settings on coil and the aqua temperature. If both of those

Izzy Friedman (27:24)
drop below the set point with the differential, then we'll turn the boiler on. So on a regular day we're saving at least, two, three cycles of hot water, runs per day for the building. So already there you have efficiency. And then if the mixed we have we also monitor the the post mixing valve what's going up to the building. So if it goes if it spikes above, which is a that's a it's a hazard, someone could could get scolded

Izzy Friedman (27:47)
it will send them an alert right away and if it drops below a certain set point then we know there's some issue, they're not getting enough adequate hot water, it'll send them an alert as well. So this way they could address this the issue before the tenants call in.

Eric Johnson (27:59)
That makes sense. is a lot of the New York City, New Jersey area, is a lot of it natural gas or do some of these apartments still use fuel oil?

Izzy Friedman (28:10)
I think it was like ten years ago there's a big big shift to get away from oil. They banned several of different oils. there's like one or two types of oil they're allowed to use. I would say for the most part, by now most of the buildings switched over to firm gas, so they're natural gas fully. There's still buildings that are run on oil. I think I think more you know, more most of the buildings that I still see running on oil are smaller buildings.

Izzy Friedman (28:34)
smaller boilers. And then there's also dual fuel. So you'll have they'll have they have oil and gas. Also, there's there is an issue in New York City with shortage of gas pressure. So especially in the very cold, I think it's below twenty degrees. If if it's below twenty degrees, any building that is on dual fuel is required to switch over to oil. and then if they don't, if they're on gas, they'll get penalized. I think they pay, I think, seven times.

Izzy Friedman (28:59)
the price of the gas plus a penalty per day or something like that. So they ha they're required to switch. Some of them have automatic systems that anytime belows it drops below twenty degrees, it automatically switches to oil. So you still have oil buildings, they still dual fuel. But I would say for the most part, everybody switched a lot of them switched over to natural gas.

Eric Johnson (29:22)
Are there I you're probably in the retrofit market a lot, but are there any electric boilers?

Izzy Friedman (29:29)
I haven't seen a lot. There's actually there's a company that we're working with that is that made one for retrofit buildings. Miller Proctor, Nicholas, they're up in Mount Vernon. they're also part of Hudson Heat. and they use the Oilon heat pumps. they have two units, two heat pumps, they're electric.

Izzy Friedman (29:47)
They could either use electric, solar, any other kind of heat sources in the building, and it's a two-step, two-stage system. And they'll come into a regular steam building, building that has a steam boiler, they'll pipe in their cyst into it, and it's a high temperature heat pump, so it'll heat up the water to 240 degrees, and once that's pumped into the boiler, the boiler will automatically make steam. So that's a fully electric heat pump to produce steam in the building.

Eric Johnson (30:14)
Are a lot of these buildings once again I've never been to New York, but a lot of buildings that are very, very old, are they sticking with boilers? Or if a building owner chooses, is there a preference to get away from boilers for a certain cost or for the air conditioning side of it, or do they add air conditioning on top of a boiler?

Izzy Friedman (30:35)
I would say at least in in the circles that we run,

Izzy Friedman (30:39)
most of the areas, most of the buildings, they're not talking about, the the Manhattan and the higher end buildings, the luxury buildings. most of them only provide heating in the building. The tenants, if they want AC, they have to put window units. and so those buildings if they need to replace for the most part, they're all replacing it with another boiler. if it's a steam system, they're still building steam boilers and not really replacing anything.

Izzy Friedman (31:02)
there is slowly, slowly, if a building's changing or doing a whole gut, they'll put in heat pumps, mini splits, stuff like that. the newer buildings have chillers or PTECs, some of them will put electric. But again, I think a lot of New York is rent control or rent stabilized. and they and they require they're required by the city to

Izzy Friedman (31:23)
pay the utilities. So just an example of a customer that we had came to us a couple of years ago. they rehabbed the whole building. It wasn't a big building, it was like twenty four units, I think. and they're okay, we're we have to rehab the whole building anyway. Let's just pull the boilers out and put heat pumps in. And there was, great incentives back then. I think they were pretty much free from the utilities we're paying.

Izzy Friedman (31:45)
to cover that and they put it in. But then when they came to start, renting, they weren't doing their not market rate, they were doing, rent control or subsidized, they have to pay the utilities. You're like, oops. Now we basically gave the tenants full heat and cooling and they have full control over it. and it's electric. It's not cheap, right? So we ended up hooking up to it, integrating into our system and

Izzy Friedman (32:10)
basically capping out what the what's the max and minimum that they could control their thermostat. So we still left the tenants with, the ability to control and, adjust their comfort, but also, on the other hand, the management, to be able to have them some energy savings and, some control over that.

Eric Johnson (32:27)
That makes sense. I'm just trying to 'cause if you talk to the average person, they'll be like, boilers, you guys still do that? I'm just trying to determine if the New York, New Jersey market, if the boiler i industry is still growing, if the sales of boilers are still steady, or so

Izzy Friedman (32:43)
Absolutely. Absolutely. It's not only New

Izzy Friedman (32:46)
York, New Jersey, it's all over. We work up Connecticut, Massachusetts, All these big buildings were designed like that and they're rentals. Most of them are rentals. Right. So if you're doing condos, all the buildings that are condos, and we did have a customer a couple of years ago that cut out their boiler. was a co op. Was it co op or condo? I think it was a co op. And they decided to invest and they

Izzy Friedman (33:09)
cut out the boilers and switch the whole building to heat pumps. But you know, you go up to their roof and just rows and rows of the outdoor units, and they're you know, repiped the building was a massive project, but they did it. But it's not that common. we work with a lot of boiler companies, especially now. Now's the season, right?

Izzy Friedman (33:27)
Right before the winter. These guys are all busy putting in new boilers, replacing old boilers. A lot of them are you know, if you're if you're in the hydr if you a hydronic system, then you're lucky. There's a lot of options, a lot of condensing boilers, high efficiency boilers, a lot of options in that, you know, as well. Steam also. But steam, you're not really you know, you're upgrading, you could put different burners on, you could put parallel

Eric Johnson (33:51)
Parallel position.

Izzy Friedman (33:53)
Well you're right and all that. So you you there is some efficiency but you're not you know, you're not really jumping a lot on your efficiency of the boiler, but in with hydronics there is. you're going from an old atmospheric boiler or, a non condensing boiler that was running at a hundred fifty degrees or a hundred and eighty degrees, and you're putting a high efficiency boiler, you're dropping those temperatures down, yeah, that'll bring a lot. And yeah, it is booming lies. Lochinvar Laars, RBIs, all the time. These guys are still selling hard.

Eric Johnson (34:19)
So the labor market in the northeast area, still a lot of demand. what is the job title like? Are they like a steam fitter who would be working on these boiler systems?

Izzy Friedman (34:32)
ca calling mechanical mechanics, boiler mechanics, yeah, steam fitters I guess is I guess you can still call them steam fitters, but the steam fit when you think of steam fitters you think of, back in the sixties these guys with, huge wrenches doing twelve inch pipes and stuff like that with wrench.

Eric Johnson (34:52)
Yeah, threading, I don't know the Dan Holohand books, threading twelve inch pipe.

Izzy Friedman (34:55)
Yeah, yeah. And I've

Izzy Friedman (34:56)
seen those. I've seen those. I've been into old buildings and you walk into New York, even Boston has those. and you look up and you see like how the heck do these guys thread these fittings? It's crazy.

Eric Johnson (35:07)
Yeah, I've I think

Izzy Friedman (35:08)
Mind log.

Eric Johnson (35:08)
the biggest I've seen is a ten inch threaded gate valve and I don't understand and I tried to ask like who who was threading these things 'cause it seems like it just disappeared overnight and these aliens are just gone.

Izzy Friedman (35:24)
Yeah, yeah.

Izzy Friedman (35:25)
It's like almost like, you know, who built the pyramids? How did they build the pyramids? You know, you try to these are these are massive

Eric Johnson (35:29)
Yeah, that's that's

Izzy Friedman (35:32)
things you try to think

Eric Johnson (35:33)
going back to people and the trades and everything,

Eric Johnson (35:37)
Most of all these buildings and everything were built with people who didn't have more than an eighth grade education and you

Izzy Friedman (35:44)
Right.

Eric Johnson (35:44)
know, the Dan Holohand books they always talk about, he would walk into buildings and he would see how these systems are designed and he's like, Man, who did this? They really knew what they were doing and

Eric Johnson (35:56)
they're almost a work of art of how steam works and how it travels through the building and how simple it is to heat a building and then we have

Izzy Friedman (36:05)
I always say

Izzy Friedman (36:06)
steam science, yeah.

Eric Johnson (36:08)
Yeah, then we have people coming in after the contractors who don't understand low pressure steam, and then they start hacking it apart, they start changing things, they change the water level of the boiler, and now it doesn't work, and then the building owners get frustrated of well, why doesn't this system work? Something must be wrong. It's like, Well, we should actually probably put it back to where it was because this building was built in maybe nineteen ten. I can guarantee this steam heating system worked pretty good.

Eric Johnson (36:37)
Good up until we started making tons of changes to it and maybe the boiler was replaced. And I've seen some pictures where the boiler's in a pit and then they fill the pit and change the water level of the boiler. And maybe maybe it works, maybe it doesn't, but there's there's so much learning and science that behind the low pressure steam system, and I've always been curious if

Eric Johnson (37:00)
I assume it's just because it's so expensive to retrofit a building it's not worth it. steam heat works so good that why would a building owner go to change it and when you can just replace replace the boiler and be good for another fifty years probably. Is that is that correct? Do you see a lot of radiators getting replaced?

Izzy Friedman (37:22)
Yeah, so like you you mentioned the big one of the biggest problems, I would say in in in these buildings are, back as as you call it as Dan Holohan says, he calls it the the the dead men, back in the day and then over the years they had all these people, some of them should not be allowed to touch stuff and they walk in and they change stuff, okay, you know, like shoot, I need you know, the pipe cracked and I have to replace a section of pipe, but I only have

Izzy Friedman (37:45)
a two inch and this is a four inch pipe. Okay, screw it, we'll put some reducers and we'll we'll do it. And you really see that a lot of buildings that over time they have people who are, basically messed up with science. so one of the issues that we come into a lot of buildings is that the owners are complaining, the building's not balanced. Half the building is hot, half of the building is cold. I need you to fix it. So our control system comes in and is able to control the boiler, but it

Izzy Friedman (38:07)
can't really adjust valves and everything. But the great thing that our system does is we spread the sensors throughout the building, you get a a feel of what's going on. You could see once the boiler turned on, how fast certain sides of the building heated up, certain sides cooled down. over the years stuff were changed and and buildings were thrown off balance. and yet it causes a lot of issues. great story about a year ago

Izzy Friedman (38:28)
I was walking a building, specing it out and the manager told me, Yeah, we have a big issue in the building, certain floors never get heat, certain floors are always hot. So I'm walking around with the super, I'm like, So let's let's walk the building, let's see. So sometimes you really see that tenants are covering the radiators, they put furniture, it's ugly and essentially block the heat from coming in. But this building I was walking around, all the radiators are exposed for the most part.

Izzy Friedman (38:52)
so I'm like, okay, so tell me what floors are heating up, what what ones are so he's telling me and I'm like, Okay, what do you do when a tenant says that they're you know they're they're not getting heat? What do you do? He's like, I j I changed the air vents, the one pipe system, one pipe steam system. I says, So what kind of vents are you using? He's like, Yeah, you know that they're so expensive. so I do it. I just go to the home depot and I buy a case that they have the contractor pack. I get a box of a hundred of them.

Izzy Friedman (39:18)
I have them downstairs in my basement and I replace them. I said, Okay, c let's let's go downstairs and see could I see them? I go in and they're one size. All of them. And throughout two two years or so that he was been there he's like he saved his boss money by buying these, contractor's pack, instead of buying them individual and he basically replacing the whole building with the same size their vents. So

Izzy Friedman (39:40)
you literally took steam science that some engineer put a lot of time in calculating pipe length and pipe size and vents and what every radiator what size vent it should get and you just threw it out the window without knowing what you're doing. So you you basically threw a building off its balance. So we came in, we put sensors throughout the whole building and kind of created a graph of, what sides of the buildings are heating up way too fast, what of them are taking too long.

Izzy Friedman (40:05)
And they rebalanced the building across, a whole season, a couple of months. but yeah, it's definitely one of the big issues around everywhere that a lot of these buildings they're hiring, these guys, that are not qualified and whatever they have in the van is the part that they're replacing and it messes with the science of steam.

Eric Johnson (40:21)
What do you think the best way is to learn a low pressure steam system when a lot of the system you're looking at is older than the person working on it and you can't Google it?

Izzy Friedman (40:33)
Yeah.

Izzy Friedman (40:34)
What do you mean you can't Google it?

Eric Johnson (40:35)
Like they're looking at a valve from a manufacturer that went out of business in the seventies or and they don't know what's going on. They're looking at a one pipe steam system they can only read about it. It's not really I don't think anybody's installing a one pipe steam

Eric Johnson (40:51)
in commercial aspect in new

Izzy Friedman (40:52)
Right, brand new. Right.

Eric Johnson (40:54)
buildings. So it ends up being you have you have to learn what a one pipe is either from a book or just from an existing installation and then figure out what is actually wrong with it to try to make it run correctly. So I was just I didn't know if you had any resources or personal experience of trying to teach people one pipe steam or any

Eric Johnson (41:20)
old steam system piping and radiation of hey this is what you to look for and all that stuff to try to try to get educated.

Izzy Friedman (41:31)
are we allowed to do shout outs? Unpaid advertising?

Eric Johnson (41:34)
Absolutely.

Izzy Friedman (41:36)
Dan Holohan and heating help dot com, that's like really like it's like the Bible of of steam and low pressure steam. I was lucky enough to to be at two of his lectures, and it's just fascinating. and you go on to to to that website then you know the amount of people who are there to help.

Izzy Friedman (41:53)
is fascinating. You post an old picture and that you could guarantee that someone's gonna come up with a thing. but for me, I don't have any mechanical background and any engineering background. I find people, you know, over the years that I've been in the industry, I found people that are knowledgeable and all of them have passion for steam. I have a few you know, I made I made some good friends through this industry.

Izzy Friedman (42:13)
and people who are really passionate and love it and that those are the people that, you go reach out to, I take pictures, send to somebody, what do you think about it? By now I like a three, four gut friends already that like I'll shoot to all of them and I'll get responses and, you really learn a lot. you're always learning, always learning. So I think that would be my advice is to find someone who's who has knowledge and most of these guys who are have knowledge are willing to share.

Izzy Friedman (42:41)
I know a lot of guys who are competitors in the same industry, but, they still work together because they have the passion for that.

Eric Johnson (42:49)
Yeah, for a person I would say the biggest thing is you gotta show a little bit of effort. If you just send a picture or you just constantly ask for help without any effort,

Eric Johnson (42:58)
it gets very difficult for somebody to constantly help you. But if you show a willingness to learn and you show some effort, there are tons of people that love to share their knowledge and experience with you. And personal knowledge and lived experience is always better than reading it in a book, although reading in a book will give you especially like the Dan Holohan books, he spent most of his life on Long Island.

Eric Johnson (43:27)
and in the New York City area. So a lot of his books are based on the low pressure steam and that will give you a lot of the why.

Eric Johnson (43:36)
behind what you're seeing and also will give you some reference versus just having to call people or send pictures and that's what I ran into when I was learning is I thought like I'm like how am I ever gonna learn all this stuff? It seems like there's so much to know and it's not written down. And then I finally started opening some books, especially by Dan Holohan and you know going on heatinghelp.com and looking at everything else. I'm like, like some of it is written down and you can actually read about it.

Eric Johnson (44:05)
And

Eric Johnson (44:05)
this is the why behind, why this is here and especially with air vents and low pressure steam, air venting is such a huge thing because a lot of people forget that when a boiler system is off, are the steam pipes full? And they'll be like, No, they're empty. I'm like, no, they're full of air. And a lot of and a

Izzy Friedman (44:22)
Yeah, right.

Eric Johnson (44:23)
lot of a lot of people forget that you gotta get all the air out and

Izzy Friedman (44:25)
Venting, yeah.

Eric Johnson (44:27)
and that steam is not air. And that

Izzy Friedman (44:30)
That's one of the things

Izzy Friedman (44:31)
I see a lot now in New York is master venting. a lot of the buildings are doing it for efficiency. Part of the efficiency programs is adding venting at the end of the lines.

Eric Johnson (44:40)
so your your system it learns how fast the building heats up. Have you seen change or have any examples of installing the system and then you saying, hey this heats up too slow, changing the air vents and then now it heats up faster and now the runtime goes way down on the boiler?

Izzy Friedman (45:00)
Right. So it really depends on the customer and but yes, without there's a lot of energy studies going on, a lot of energy consumption programs. so these a lot these energy firms, we work with a bunch of them, they'll reach out to us, and we'll give them the data and they'll do master venting. it's part of the, local law ninety seven, program is one of their measures that they want is venting.

Izzy Friedman (45:21)
measure the return line, the pressure. We ha we put pressure transducer on the boiler, so we're monitoring the pressure, how fast it builds pressure and then how long it takes till the return heats up. So those things best, bring energy efficiency to the boiler.

Eric Johnson (45:35)
If I was a building owner, what does the process look like from I want to save some money? I call EnTech. How long does the process take? And what is the what does the process look like for you to start going, hey, this is what it's gonna take? And then do you give them a estimate on how much they will save?

Izzy Friedman (46:00)
Yeah.

Izzy Friedman (46:00)
the process is pretty simple. either reach out to us or we have sales that go out and, customers, okay, I want to put in a system. we look up what the building has. Most of them, we're able to get specs and say, Okay, it's a one steam boiler or it's a hydronic boiler with two pumps. we're in over nine thousand buildings by now. So almost every system that comes across our desk we've done already. so we'll

Izzy Friedman (46:21)
create a proposal of you know what's the cost of the panel putting it out like that. and then in terms of energy, how much energy they're gonna save, because we have so many systems, we have over 9,000 buildings, we'll take our system will look for a similar a bunch of similar buildings. and it'll do a consumption report on that and we'll see, okay, building this size should be running this much amount of fuel and this is how much it ran last year. We'll take their energy bills from the past year.

Izzy Friedman (46:47)
their gas bills from the past year and we'll run an analysis and see how much they're how much they're using and how much the a building like that should be using and we could give them a rough estimate of how much energy they're gonna save. But again, we're not throwing out numbers. We're telling people, we could save up to forty percent. our average is about I think it's like fifteen percent savings on the building 'cause you got buildings that are, run very efficient, especially in like

Izzy Friedman (47:12)
Some of these older buildings, But I I come across not that often, but I see this you have like a a super, the maintenance guy of the building, he's been there for thirty years and he doesn't need a control system. He knows exactly he walks outside, sniffs the air, is like, Okay, today's forty three degrees. He walks back into the boiler, adjusts the knob,

Izzy Friedman (47:30)
and he's running the building and you could come in with the the greatest energy efficiency system, you might save him a little bit of energy, but he knows. He he has the the tenants come down to the lobby, walk out and they're like, it's great heat, it's a little bit too hot. He knows who who's the complainers and he knows exactly what's happening in the building. You're not gonna save him that much. And you got buildings that when we come in and I always tell our sales guys

Izzy Friedman (47:53)
One of the first things you do when you walk into a building to spec it up in the winter, you look up. Right? You count how many windows are open. The more windows open, the more savings they'll have. And you really see there's buildings that are running. We put in buildings, and we monitor it the first day, you see it's eighty degrees. The average apartment is eighty degrees. That's crazy. So those buildings off the bat you're saving them forty percent on their bill.

Izzy Friedman (48:17)
So that's the the process of proposal and everything. And then usually our installations takes one day. Most of the installations is a one day process. They come in the morning, run around the the apartments or the offices, put in the wireless sensors, and then go down the boiler room, hook everything up, by the end of the day, everything's up and running.

Eric Johnson (48:35)
Is the panel, it's a touch screen, it's got lots of settings. in the panel is that interface do you only have one panel for steam and hot water systems and then you set up all the settings and tell the panel what the system is?

Izzy Friedman (48:49)
Right, it's a one panel system. a one panel for any kind of system. and when you set up it has outputs, all the outputs and inputs are all universal. on our latest model, which is the S2, we have four channels of digital sensors. All our sensors are the each one has a like a barcode on it, like a an ID. I could tie it into any input that I want, and then I label it. So if I put in an outdoor temperature sensor.

Izzy Friedman (49:14)
I go in, I say okay, the sensor ending with 53E is the outdoor temperature, labeled it. return, supply, all those sensors, just label them up. And then the system already knows, okay, I'm if it this is the outdoor sensor, it's gonna be used for the heating system. same thing goes for the outputs. We have on the panel itself, we have three outputs, dry contact relays, normally open, normally closed. And then I could go in and set it up. I want this to be a boiler, number one is gonna be a pump.

Izzy Friedman (49:40)
Number three is gonna be a fan or whatever you want it to do. and then we have analog outputs, analog inputs, zero to ten, four to twenty, stuff like that. All that gets adjusted. Now if we need more outputs, we have expansion panels that would add on. So if I go onto the panel, I open up the list of my outputs, there's gonna be three relays over there. The moment I hook up an expansion panel, we have expansion panels that have two relays, and then we have sixteen relays.

Izzy Friedman (50:06)
So you put it on automatically the list gets longer. so everything ties into the main system. We also have Modbus, so we could tie into all the high efficiency boilers, VFD pumps, and by now we have most of the mainstream boilers and pumps and VFDs already into our system. So just for example, Lochinvar boiler, we come in, I we tie into it,

Izzy Friedman (50:29)
On every boiler, you set what bridge number it is, right? What boiler number it is on the RS45 or the modbuffs. I go into my panel, I say, okay, bridge number one is a Lochinvar Automatically it pulls in all the data from that boiler. Number two, number three, so it automatically pulls it in. Same thing goes with VFD pumps, Gundfoss Armstrong,

Izzy Friedman (50:51)
I set the modbus address to it. I go onto the panel. I set okay address number five is a Taco pump and I already have it already preset in it and it'll read all the inputs and outputs on the pump.

Eric Johnson (51:03)
on a hot water system? Are you turning the pumps on and off?

Izzy Friedman (51:07)
So depends on on what's going on in the building. if it's just that if the boilers are just for heat and there's separate hot water, for the most part we'll run the pumps only based on outdoor temperature. So as long as you're below fifty-five degrees, those pumps will run. And then we'll control the loop temperature by controlling the boilers. In buildings that the boiler supplies domestic hot water as well, then you have to shut down the the pumps.

Izzy Friedman (51:32)
unless there's a three way valve or a diverting valve on the loop going up to the building, then we could continue running the pumps based on outer temperature and we'll adjust the valve to maintain the loop temperature going up to the building.

Eric Johnson (51:44)
So just think about this in the big picture, the real savings is you figure out how to reduce the runtime or the amount of cycles by a couple cycles a day and a little percentage a day, and then that ends up leading to a huge fuel savings that which compounds over the entire winter.

Izzy Friedman (52:05)
always tell customers or anybody like once you hit the dead of the winter, you're running. the boiler's running most of the max. The savings is the shoulder months, right? the fall, the beginning of winter when it's just falling below fifty five or forty five, and then at the end of the season as well. And this especially this past year, we had a very long, end of winter, for like about two months we were

Izzy Friedman (52:28)
bouncing up and down. Some days we're we're at least by by us, we're we're dropping like fifteen, twenty degrees a day some of the days. sixty sixty, sixty five during the day and also not night you drop to like forty five. So those are the days that you really save the most. for steam system you're able to adjust the cycles based on what's happening in the building. and with hydronic as well, you could lower those loop temperatures

Izzy Friedman (52:52)
based on what's happening in the building.

Eric Johnson (52:55)
Buildings with district steam in the summer, do they just shut off a valve in the basement to keep the steam from coming into the building?

Izzy Friedman (53:04)
So some of them are still the using steam to make domestic hot water. They have heat exchangers for

Eric Johnson (53:10)
Yeah.

Izzy Friedman (53:10)
domestic hot water. I would say most of them actually are using domestic hot water. I think as you know the prices went up the steam usage. I see some of them again, it depends on the space. A lot these buildings they because they didn't have to have a boiler room, all

Izzy Friedman (53:26)
extra spaces, storage space, office space, shops, whatever. There's no real room to put in hot water heaters. But I've seen buildings put in separate hot water so in the summer they just sh shut the king valve off and they use a gas heater for domestic hot water.

Eric Johnson (53:42)
Not that any of it would be in use, but do you see a lot of coal infrastructure of delivering coal to the buildings and coal hoppers?

Izzy Friedman (53:52)
I've seen coal hoppers and I've seen boilers that used to be coal. definitely see bo some of I've seen boilers that are still operating that were converted. I personally have never seen a coal system, although it's funny you mention. on Monday or Tuesday I went down to a building where we're doing installation and I'm talking to the superintendent there and he's like, I also work for the public school. I work on the boilers there. Says, so you're the fireman. They call them in in in New York City,

Izzy Friedman (54:14)
back from the day when they used to fill the coal into the boiler room into the boiler, they they named them the firemen. Some of them came later in the when they're already converted to gas or oil burners and, they never even touched coal, they still get the title of firemen. So he's like, No, I actually shoveled coal until two thousand. to some of us two thousand is, twenty six years ago, it's like a decades ago, but you know, to me it's like, Wow,

Izzy Friedman (54:36)
That that recent, and he like, Yeah, they use he he was shoveling coal. He actually sent me pictures of him, shoveling coal in the in the burners. But I I personally never haven't seen you can still see, some of these buildings you can still see some evidence that they used to use coal, but I haven't seen any boiler running on coal.

Eric Johnson (54:53)
Yeah, it's coal in the commercial that's been I well I guess twenty six years ago isn't that long ago, but a lot of especially in the northeast, they would try to get rid of that due to the emissions. But I I've always been fascinated when I went into old buildings seeing coal rooms or the coal hoppers or I I

Izzy Friedman (55:13)
Yeah. You see the hoppers,

Izzy Friedman (55:16)
you know, you see one at the corner of the building is like a room and like the whole floor is in a slant. I remember when it in the beginning I came like, What is this? Why is it what why is this and then I then I learned, you know, these to be coal here. You st you you've seen the coal anywhere that are still using coal?

Eric Johnson (55:33)
No, no, I I've actually never seen coal. I've seen like the oldest I've seen is I used to work in a it's a retirement home now, but it was built

Eric Johnson (55:46)
early nineteen hundreds and it was they in the back of the boiler room they had a HRT boiler so horizontal return tubular boiler all brick set and everything and it had and now I know what it is but I used to look at it. I'm like, what is this thing? But it had this automatic coal feeder in the front of it and it would just feed the coal obviously

Izzy Friedman (56:08)
Great.

Eric Johnson (56:09)
into the HRT boiler. But you know, they had the doors open and it had

Eric Johnson (56:15)
you know, four, four or four and a half inch tubes on this boiler, but it's all brick set and it's all tucked away in the corner of this basement of this building over probably a hundred and thirty years old now. And I would look at it and just be like, wow, like this

Eric Johnson (56:30)
Like this is the original heat of the building and it's still here and obviously not used anymore. But I also used to work in another building where they still they d it's not coal, but th they were using bricks set boilers and the boilers they're

Eric Johnson (56:46)
HRT boilers and they put burners on the front of But it was set up in a way that and I don't know if you ever seen this, but the whole boilers are like a wall. Like the entire front of the boiler is a wall and you

Eric Johnson (56:59)
you can't see anywhere else on the boiler.

Izzy Friedman (57:01)
You don't see the boy there.

Eric Johnson (57:02)
they used to do things right back in the day and they put all these custom doors on and everything. But I walked in and I'm like

Eric Johnson (57:10)
Wow, that like the entire side of this boiler room is just a wall and these are the boiler I'm like, where are the boilers at? These are the boilers and they would have all the burners on the front.

Izzy Friedman (57:19)
where did they get clean the ashes out from it was like I guess the back room, a different room from the back?

Eric Johnson (57:26)
Well, it you would have all the access doors under under it, but when they set the boilers and everything, they built the boilers so that it was like this giant square box there's no spacing in between the the pressure vessels and so when they brick set everything so that but by the time they finished it, you would have your fireside access doors on the bottom where you would

Eric Johnson (57:46)
have shovel in the coal and I guess clean out the coal. I've I mean I've never seen it actually work, but there's there would be no no no way else to access it except f through the the front fireside doors which would just be the tubes and the tube sheet. But I I've always been fascinated by super old boilers like that, especially

Eric Johnson (58:10)
it's like who designed this stuff? How did they know what what to know? And it was all

Izzy Friedman (58:17)
They figured it

Izzy Friedman (58:18)
out.

Eric Johnson (58:19)
It yeah, it was all in books. Like I enjoy buying I bought some books from believe nineteen ten about the boilers and just reading it and stuff has changed but so much stuff is the same and it's fascinating and you know, I every day I try to explain what I do to people. They're like, What's a boiler? What's steam? I'm like, that old thing and I'm like, No, boilers are still used, they're still making boilers.

Eric Johnson (58:46)
I'm not sure if the actual boiler market is growing. I I believe it's probably shrinking just due to a lot of residential boilers are not being used anymore. People are not doing it to probably due to cost, but in the commercial space,

Eric Johnson (59:05)
I believe there's a lot of people get away from boilers due to education. They think they're dangerous. They think they're scary. knows about and they all

Izzy Friedman (59:14)
Also technology,

Izzy Friedman (59:15)
when you think you you tell you tell someone, they used to shovel coal into boilers to make fire look at you know, like like, you know, what are you how how old are you? Were you a dinosaur? Like this fireman was telling me, he's like he's like I still miss it, he's like I loved it. He knew exactly how much coal to put in, based on how how you know how cold it was outside. He's adjust the vents. He told me that you know he said he he he had it down to science. He loved it.

Izzy Friedman (59:39)
He like knew like he'd fill up a certain amount of coal and knew okay now he has an hour to run around the building and do some maintenance. he did mention that at one point they did install these automatic feeders, these grates that would automatically feed like for overnight. but I said it didn't really work that well. They used to get jammed up. but he he loved it but nowadays you tell someone who's installing high efficiency condensing boilers,

Izzy Friedman (01:00:01)
He he can't even comprehend it. we wanna be a lot more modern, we wanna be technology, everything, the touch screens, these boilers have touch screens nowadays, right? You adjust all the settings from the touch screen. A lot of them you don't have to bring in a wrench. You know, bring y bring in a screwdriver, nothing to adjust these. Bring in a laptop and you hook up to it. even the Siemens, the the Linkageless systems, you come in with with the laptop and everything gets adjusted.

Izzy Friedman (01:00:25)
So definitely technology is is moving up. in the old cities they're still gonna be using boilers for many years. People are nervous, AI is taking over the world. there's always gonna be a need for someone to, thread a pipe, put in a boiler, go in, do maintenance, combustion testing, all that stuff.

Eric Johnson (01:00:44)
Yeah, the

Izzy Friedman (01:00:44)
It might assist

Izzy Friedman (01:00:45)
you, but someone still has to hold the wrench.

Eric Johnson (01:00:48)
the AI conversation

Eric Johnson (01:00:51)
Yes. so AI is really good when it has all the data and context. And I think a lot of humans forget how much data and context that they assume subconsciously in their brain. Like if you were to walk through a building, you are taking mental notes, whether you're not writing it down or not, of like, you know, it's this, it's this, it's this, it's this and then you're like, I've seen s systems like this and yeah, it'll it'll work like this, but people will plug in three sentences

Eric Johnson (01:01:20)
into the AI. The AI only knows those three sentences. It doesn't know all the other context. if you were to put in four pages of context, it would probably give you a pretty good response.

Izzy Friedman (01:01:32)
I saw a meme a guy wrote, he was like, I solved my issue but s just by writing the prompt and I realized I had the solution. Just by writing the prompt to say, yeah, he already figured out,

Eric Johnson (01:01:43)
I really like n I don't know if you use a Google Notebook LM where you can upload all the manuals and then ask questions about all the manuals and every all the resources that you upload and it only uses the resources, so it's very good at staying on task and very good at giving you the exact answer that you need versus just randomly searching the internet.

Izzy Friedman (01:02:08)
Right. So we use I use Claude for the most part and anytime I need like manuals I always ask, show me the source and I'll bring it. I'll bring it to you. There was there's a company, I can't remember her what the name and she basically they build an AI and you upload all the manuals that you have for all the equipment. and they a lot of them already store and it will only pull information from those manuals.

Eric Johnson (01:02:34)
Yeah, that's that's what Google Notebook LM is. It only pulls from the resources that you upload, which is

Izzy Friedman (01:02:42)
Yeah, Field Mind. That's

Izzy Friedman (01:02:43)
what that's what the company yeah. Field Mind I

Eric Johnson (01:02:45)
Field mind?

Izzy Friedman (01:02:47)
Yeah. I looked into it. I you know, I really wanted to do it. We never really moved ahead with it, but the concept is amazing. You upload all the any kind of equipment you ever work on, you upload those manuals and it'll only use that source. 'Cause yes, I've had times that one of my guys, you know, I sent yeah, Chatgpt told me that I need to do this and this and this and then you look okay, ask

Izzy Friedman (01:03:07)
look for sources and it pulled off, you know, from a different model boiler that doesn't have that feature. you're scrolling through you know a boiler f you know, boiler menu and he's like, Chatgpt said that you should change this and this and setting and you can't figure out what it is and then you say, Okay, give me the source and you see, okay, pulling it for a different model and that doesn't have that feature. you have to know also how to look.

Eric Johnson (01:03:30)
Not that you would need it, but if I were to s stand in front of a EnTech touch screen panel would and ask ChatGPT, would it give me a good answer or would it struggle?

Izzy Friedman (01:03:42)
good question. We have to I have to try it out. Never tried it out.

Eric Johnson (01:03:42)
Well, it's yeah,

Eric Johnson (01:03:45)
you're you're probably the expert, but I've I I I always wonder 'cause I sometimes I try it out and sometimes it gives a good answer 'cause it's really good. I love to ask it when I know the answer because if you don't know the answer, don't know what to expect, it'll always give you an answer. It'll never say, I don't know.

Eric Johnson (01:04:01)
you have to have a little bit of discernment on whether th that is the correct answer or not. I found it really good with if I need to do something on my computer, I can ask it and I'll say, yes, do this, do this, do this, do this. But then sometimes I I'll I will find it does hallucinate and it'll make up a process. And then I say, hey, that doesn't exist. And then it goes, yeah, you're right. It doesn't. You actually can't do that.

Izzy Friedman (01:04:21)
Right, you're right. Yeah, like

Izzy Friedman (01:04:24)
yeah, those those funny videos are going around of the guy lying dead on the floor, Yes, yeah, peanut you are allergic to peanuts, you know, you shouldn't be eating peanuts, sorry, is my mistake.

Eric Johnson (01:04:35)
and that's and that's why if you are new to the boiler industry, always try to find a company that has lots of experienced people in it that you can learn from finding mentors and also put yourself out there. heatinghelp.com LinkedIn, any kind of social media. There's some Facebook groups.

Izzy Friedman (01:04:52)
Yeah.

Izzy Friedman (01:04:53)
There's a lot of people out there. Yeah.

Eric Johnson (01:04:53)
that for boilers that you can

Eric Johnson (01:04:55)
ask questions, learn from people, get their contact information, don't abuse their help, but there are more than enough people that are always willing to jump on the phone with you, even if they are your competitor, because there's enough to go around. Not one service company could service all the boilers. That that's not possible. And also one service company can't cover the United States. So everybody has different experiences that you can learn from, but there are also

Eric Johnson (01:05:22)
tons of books out there especially by if you're on low pressure steam there's nobody better than the Dan Holohan and even even Ray Ray's Ray's out of Pittsburgh I don't

Izzy Friedman (01:05:32)
Yeah, the boiler and detective, yeah.

Eric Johnson (01:05:35)
know. D do you do any I see Pennsylvania. Do you have you done any work in Pittsburgh?

Izzy Friedman (01:05:40)
We've done we've done very few, like a handful. Maybe I should probably reach out to him.

Izzy Friedman (01:05:44)
he's also yeah, he's also a fascinating That's why I said like that I've made friends over the years with people in the industry. because I don't just use people as like, okay, hey, can you tell me how to do so and so? All right, bye. No, I I I I became I literally have like friends because of this. And you know, it's a really you build you build a relationship. It's a relationship thing. You

Izzy Friedman (01:06:04)
Build a relationship with someone and it's a two way. People call me for advice on controls and ideas and stuff like that. nobody wants to be used as a an information center. Some people love to give out information, but again you're getting you know, if you have a relationship and a friendship, that's when you're gonna get the information that you need and yeah, you have to you have to find the right people and invest in in in the relationship to be able to get knowledge.

Eric Johnson (01:06:27)
Absolutely. A hundred percent agree. And then as far as EnTech goes, what's what's the future look like? more marketing and more installation, anything new down the pipeline as far as technology improvements, or is it just getting awareness out there for building owners on how to save money?

Izzy Friedman (01:06:44)
Well, we're we're always adapting to the technology what's happening out in in the field. so when condensing boilers came out, we hopped on it right away, built out modbus platforms, to be able to integrate with that. Heat pumps are out now, the last few years we hopped on that as well. We tied those systems into our platform. we're constantly adapting and adjusting, becoming smarter. our systems are becoming smarter.

Izzy Friedman (01:07:07)
and be able to cover more and more stuff into the buildings. we're going into water conservation now also we have sensors for for water leaks toilets which is one of the big costs of buildings also so a building could have five toilets that are just running the tenants could care less and we have these sensors that tie into this to the toilets and will generate an alert.

Izzy Friedman (01:07:28)
that there is a excessive use of water and be addressed. So that's like that's one of the things that we're currently doing as well and expanding

Eric Johnson (01:07:35)
Yeah, that makes sense. I I had a running toilet in my old house and I would shut it off but I randomly didn't shut it off for until I could fix it for a week and then the the city sent me a letter. They're like, Hey, we noticed your water bill is way up. I'm like, I thought I was only using a little bit of water. It ended up being a lot of water.

Izzy Friedman (01:07:54)
Yeah. Yeah yeah, you don't even realise.

Izzy Friedman (01:07:56)
All you have y you know, it it's gallons and gallons and if you have a you know, a hundred unit building and you have ten leaking toilets, that's that's a huge bill.

Eric Johnson (01:08:05)
same thing with a steam system or even a hot water system. People see a drip and they're like, it's only a little drip. It's like, Well if you put a buck under that, maybe it's a gallon an hour, two gallons an hour, times that over twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, it can be end up being a lot of water and you're paying for that directly versus let's just fix

Izzy Friedman (01:08:22)
Right. So with steam

Izzy Friedman (01:08:24)
it's even worse than that because any leak on the return line that you have on a steam system, first of all you're paying for the water to refill the boiler. You're paying for the the fuel to reheat that water. Every time you're bringing in, new water into the boiler, those minerals are eating up the boiler. You're going through tubes, you're deteriorating the boilers,

Izzy Friedman (01:08:44)
Maintaining an old boiler, maintaining a boiler is, water treatment. and every time you're adding new water to the boiler, those eat the tubes.

Izzy Friedman (01:08:51)
we you got in the middle of the winter they never replace those tubes, they plug them. So you walk in at the end of the season and you got the third of the tubes are all plugged, you know what that means? That means that that third of the heat just went up the chimney.

Izzy Friedman (01:09:02)
So you're heating up New York City or New Jersey or Connecticut, Chicago, whatever. Yeah, you're not you you're not doing any service to anybody. You're just paying for that.

Eric Johnson (01:09:12)
I I see the the plug tubes and I still I'm shocked at that they allow that.

Izzy Friedman (01:09:19)
Well, a lot of buildings you can't shut down a boiler for two days. Two, three days. especially in the middle of the winter, they have to shut the boiler down. It has to cool it has to be I think one to two days just to cool down enough that someone could go in to to climb in there. Cut the tubes out, that's a whole you know, some sometimes it's a full day, sometimes it's a couple hours and then, reheat it. that's three days that you can't shut down in the middle of February on the east coast when it's thirty degrees out.

Izzy Friedman (01:09:43)
So they plug them and then in the summer they open them up and replace all the tubes. This is the now's the time that I hopefully by now most of those most of those people already changed those tubes and if not, now's your time. Now's your wake up call.

Eric Johnson (01:09:59)
Yeah, we are we are mid September. It is it's probably probably getting in the sixties, maybe, overnight in the northeast.

Izzy Friedman (01:10:09)
Yeah,

Izzy Friedman (01:10:09)
some day I don't know, biases last night was eighty as a gross humid.

Eric Johnson (01:10:14)
but yeah winter winter is coming if you are a building

Izzy Friedman (01:10:15)
Jersey, New York weather. yeah.

Eric Johnson (01:10:20)
owner. it is coming, I guarantee it.

Izzy Friedman (01:10:21)
And if you haven't, you know,

Izzy Friedman (01:10:22)
took took take care of your your maintenance on your boiler, yeah, you're running out of time.

Eric Johnson (01:10:27)
Yes, and if you call up a service company or a contractor, they are probably already backlogged and booked. They are not sitting around

Izzy Friedman (01:10:34)
Yeah, they're all bulk.

Eric Johnson (01:10:35)
waiting for you to call and going, man, we had no work

Izzy Friedman (01:10:38)
Mm this is their busiest time.

Eric Johnson (01:10:40)
how do people find you, contact you if they wanna learn more?

Izzy Friedman (01:10:43)
We got our website, EnTechsmart.com find me on LinkedIn as well, Izzy Friedman. on LinkedIn. I love LinkedIn. I love sharing stuff. I get a lot of comments. again, like you were saying before, people walk around the street of a city and don't really know what's happening behind the service door and or down the steps to the basement. And I love sharing that stuff with people.

Eric Johnson (01:11:05)
if anybody's listening that can get us a con ed tour, hit us up. I

Izzy Friedman (01:11:10)
Yeah.

Eric Johnson (01:11:10)
w I I want I want in, I'll fly in to

Izzy Friedman (01:11:12)
You'll fly in, we'll go together.

Eric Johnson (01:11:14)
yes, I I

Eric Johnson (01:11:17)
always wanted to see the Con Ed, especially and I see some videos online of a guy getting a tour and he's a little bit bigger YouTube channel and everything. But I'm like, all you gotta do is know the right person to get you in the door, but it's you gotta you gotta find that person.

Izzy Friedman (01:11:35)
And while you're

Izzy Friedman (01:11:35)
already here in New York on that trip, try to get into the Empire State as well. Empire State, is the golden standard of a two pipe system, right? They're running on one point I think vacuum. if Dan Holohan talks about it, anyone in the steam industry, when they talk about a two pipe system and vacuum system and you know, running a a steam building properly, the Empire State is like the golden standard.

Izzy Friedman (01:11:59)
that's the second place I wanna s I wanna go get a tour.

Eric Johnson (01:12:02)
thought I read that they are doing a major renovation. Do you know anything about that?

Izzy Friedman (01:12:07)
But on their heating system?

Eric Johnson (01:12:09)
Yeah, and the whole building and I maybe don't quote me on this. I thought that they were trying to get away from the the the steam heat.

Izzy Friedman (01:12:18)
Yeah. Wow. That's gonna be a big let down to all the steam nerds and yeah.

Eric Johnson (01:12:26)
when I talk about, a steam system only needing one pound, and I always reference the Empire State building along with probably 'cause Dan Holohan did it and everybody else did it. I'm like, this giant

Izzy Friedman (01:12:35)
Yeah, he always talks about it. They're not even running

Izzy Friedman (01:12:38)
they're running on on vacuum.

Eric Johnson (01:12:40)
Yeah. And I mean it's it's ounces, vapor stats and all that stuff,

Izzy Friedman (01:12:45)
Drive by today, I'll go see. I'm actually heading into the city now. I'll be there like two, three blocks away from Empire State. I'll go see if there's any construction going on around there by their boiler room entrance. I'll let you know.

Eric Johnson (01:12:58)
Yeah, hit

Eric Johnson (01:12:59)
hit up before they tear out the boilers. So

Izzy Friedman (01:13:01)
Yeah.

Eric Johnson (01:13:02)
I appreciate you coming on and sharing your knowledge and wisdom. If you haven't already, go connect with Izzy on LinkedIn and if you are a building owner or know somebody, or if you're a contractor that works in multifamily units with Steam, or a hydronic,

Izzy Friedman (01:13:18)
Hydronic as well.

Eric Johnson (01:13:19)
anything with boilers that the

Izzy Friedman (01:13:21)
Any cold city

Izzy Friedman (01:13:22)
that provides heat to a building, commercial, residential, hit us up.

Eric Johnson (01:13:27)
Yep. And EnTech can save you money and it is actually one of the few touch screens in the boiler industry that I think is very well designed and set up 'cause a lot of they seem to be ancient. the interface and everything, the responsiveness. I played around with it at AHR last year. And if you're going to AHR, will you have a booth?

Izzy Friedman (01:13:49)
probably the Chicago

Eric Johnson (01:13:50)
Yeah, in

Izzy Friedman (01:13:50)
this year.

Eric Johnson (01:13:51)
in Chicago. So if you go to AHR, you can also stop by the EnTech booth. Appreciate you coming on.

Izzy Friedman (01:13:57)
Yeah, it's great. I really appreciate this and keep on doing what you're doing and I love your podcast. I love all your interviews and these are things that not everybody sees and talking to the people behind the scenes, yeah, I love it.

Eric Johnson (01:14:10)
I always wanna share people's stories and kinda record it, kinda make a log of 'cause the experience is dying away from the industry and doing podcast episodes of people that know something and if you can listen to a podcast and learn one thing from somebody, it's set in time. It's always there, it's permanent, and more people can learn from instead of having to call every day. So that's that's one of the reasons I love this podcast.

Izzy Friedman (01:14:34)
Or to use Chat GPT and got

Izzy Friedman (01:14:35)
the wrong answers.

Eric Johnson (01:14:37)
Yes. Yes. It's it's not quite there yet.

88. Controlling Historic Boiler Systems with Modern Tech with Izzy Friedman

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