Polaris High Efficiency Gas Hot Water Tank – Part 6

By Jeff Ivany on March 3, 2009

Our Polaris High Efficiency gas hot water tank is once again not working. It’s spewing out good old error code 1 – Pressure Switch Closed. Woo-hoo! I love when the pressure switch is closed because it means I get to call my buddies at Direct Energy and have them come out and order some new parts to try and fix the Polaris hot water tank for another few months. No, not really – this sucks.

Polaris gas hot water tank

Polaris gas hot water tank

I now have a stack of yellow receipts that I just leave on top of the hot water tank so each of the Direct Energy techs can see what they have done in the past. It’s sort of funny when one of the guys (Joel is his name) comes as he’s been here a few times. I almost feel like I should offer him a beer as he’s been to my house more often than some of my work buddies!

Anyways, Pressure Switch Closed is supposed to be a self clearing fault on the Polaris HWT but in my experience, it never clears itself. I’ve had numerous parts replaced – some have been done multiple times. I think the total value of replaced parts on the Polaris HWT is now over $4000. Yeah, I know, good thing I’m renting it and I don’t have to pay for those parts!

My “buddy” Joel tried a bunch of things the last time he was here (which was only last fall) and he had a couple new parts ordered and installed. I was hopeful at the time because both he and the second tech both seem to understand the Polaris HWT and it’s quirks. Unfortunately, they also both said that most people in the area with the Polaris hot water tanks are now pulling them out because they suck so badly. That really is unfortunate because the tank really does work well. It’s just too bad that they are not more reliable. Well, maybe they are reliable for some people but just not in this neck of the woods.

Updated: Yippee! I have hot water again. Interestingly, this time the tech didn’t actually replace anything. He spent some time going through the diagnosis and as soon as he hooked up his ammeter, the unit started to work. Bad ground! It turns out that who ever installed the unit (uh, Direct Energy guys installed it) had taken a short cut when hooking up the ground wires in the main power shut off switch. They just hand twisted the copper wires together with no marrettes! He cleaned that all up and the Polaris hot water heater is working fine now. Hopefully this will be the end of the 4 years of problems!

Posted in General, Kemptville, Review | Tagged , , , , , | 7 Responses

Hydronic Heating Coil One Year Later

By Jeff Ivany on January 22, 2009

Almost a year ago I did a hydronic heating coil replacement on our heating system as the original heating coil had developed leaks. I’m happy to say that the heating coil is still working fine and there are no leaks! I’m rather amazed at my simple plumbing skills as I had never done any copper soldering work before.

My parents were nice enough to give me a fantastic new self igniting MAPP gas torch at Christmas.  Now I’m all set to tackle the next plumbing job – proper heat traps on the hot water tank. That project should help keep the cold water in our cold taps from being hot!

Since installing the new coil, we’ve done some tweaking of our forced air system to try and address issues we had with heating.  We now have it balanced reasonably well with all rooms getting a decent amount of heat.  The only thing I’m considering is upgrading the blower to a more powerful unit to try and move the air a little better to the farthest reaches of the house.  Our long runs to upstairs are still not quite getting enough air flow. It’s not a huge difference but if the doors are left closed for too long it becomes noticeable.

Oh, and I guess I missed my chance to off load the old hydronic heating coil.  Copper and aluminum prices have dropped back down due to the “economic crisis” we are currently going through. That’s what I get for being lazy. :)

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National Film Board of Canada

By Jeff Ivany on January 21, 2009

The National Film Board of Canada (NFB) has recently put a lot of their films online for your viewing pleasure.  I just poked around a bit and found two of my favorite films.

Log Driver’s Waltz is certainly one of the things I remember most about watching TV as a kid.  This little video was on all the time in between all of the kids shows.

I don’t think I ever knew the proper words but I recognized that song anytime I heard it.

Then there was also The Sweater which was about the kid who got sent a Toronto Maple Leafs jersey by mistake when he ordered from the Eaton’s (wow, there’s a name I haven’t thought of in a long time!) catalog.  All of his buddies (and himself) were huge Rocket Richard fans.

The National Film Board has done a great job here.  I’ll have to spend some more time looking through the other films online and see what other fantastic memorable films I can find.

Note: For some reason I had a really difficult time getting these videos to embed in my page. I tried copying the HTML as provided by the NFB but in the end I had to strip it down quite a bit to get the videos to play. If it seems slow or doesn’t work well, just go directly to the NFB website.

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Bell Canada Still Sucks

By Jeff Ivany on January 19, 2009

Bell Canada Still Sucks!

Bell Canada still sucks, even with a new logo.

Bell Canada still sucks, even with a new logo.

I know, I know, everyone knows that Bell Canada still sucks.  There’s nothing new about this statement.  I’ve bitched about Bell Canada 611 before and I’ve complained about ExpressVu and Mobility also.

Well, after receiving my latest bill from Bell Canada, I was painfully reminded yet again that Bell Canada still sucks.

Background of the Problem

In mid-December I decided that I had paid too much for my Bell Internet for too long.  It was time to can their ass and move to Primus.  Bell was charging me $47.95/month while Primus was/is offering pretty much the exact same DSL Internet for $34.95/month.  Oh, and I would also be able to purchase the modem so I wouldn’t keep paying that damn $2.00/month “modem rental fee” that mysteriously showed up on my bill one month a while back.

The Offer

Yeah, so I didn’t actually dump Bell Internet like I should have.  I managed to get to the “retention agent” pretty quickly and that’s where I got conned.  I was offered a deal – $36.95/month for 12 months and my home phone would be reduced to $9.95/month for the first 6 months and then go up to $14.95/month for the last 6 months.

Damn, that’s not a half bad deal considering I was just calling to cancel so I could get a better rate for internet with Primus.  I figured that staying with Bell would save me the hassle of actually switching and I could put up with one more year of their crap.

The agent even went the extra mile and emailed me a confirmation number with a summary of the offer. Swell.

What Went Wrong?

I wish I knew!

I received my Bell bill today and popped it open to check and see what my new monthly charges would be.  Well, when I saw a bill for almost $250 I nearly lost it.  I didn’t even have to look at the bill to know they had really screwed it up considering my “normal” bill is less than $150 and with the new offer, it should have been very close to $100.

I immediately grabbed the phone and called 310-India.  Oh, no, I mean I called 310-BELL. While swearing like a trucker at automated Emily to get to a real person, I discovered why my bill was so high.  For some reason Bell had decided to active the second phone line that goes to my house. I’ve never had that second line active since we bought the house and I have never made a request to activate the line. Now I’m paying for two phone lines and the activation charge to setup that second line.  On top of that, they had changed my internet so I was now paying $50.95/month!

Needless to say, the offer I was given by the retention agent didn’t quite show up on my bill.

I spent almost an hour on the phone with three different agents getting dicked around.  Even with my confirmation number, they couldn’t figure out what I was talking about. They were able to see when I made the call and everything but apparently they couldn’t figure out how to read the numbers on the screen in front of them.

I did finally manage to get the second line removed and apparently I’m going to get a retroactive credit for it.  Unfortunately I have to wait until next month to find out if that actually happened as Bell is apparently unable to generate new bills on any day other than your billing date. In the mean time I’m supposed to over pay due to their screw up this month.

As for the offer I was given, I still don’t have that.  I’ve got an “investigation” number though and supposedly I’ll receive a call within 5-7 days to inform me of the results of the “investigation”.  I think I already know the response I’m going to receive. Something like:

The offer that you were provide was not properly documented so we are unable to extend that offer to you.  Instead, we’ll give you a token $5 off of your bill for a couple months to try and keep you happy. Oh, but we’ll still charge you $52.95/month for internet that you can get elsewhere for $34.95/month, just because we think we can. Oh, and for making us look bad we’re going to say that you agreed to a 3 year contract at some point too.

Here’s hoping they don’t end up canceling both phone lines at my house.  That would be just classic Bell Canada.

What’s Next?

Once this is fixed, I’m switching to Primus. Bell Canada still sucks and I don’t want to give them any more of my money.

Posted in Bell Canada | Tagged , , , | 14 Responses

Getting Delisted from Google Sucks

By Jeff Ivany on January 9, 2009

Getting delisted from Google sucks a whole lot as you can see from the graph below.

Google Analytics graph showing how our visits were impacted by being delisted from Google

Google Analytics graph showing how our visits were impacted by being delisted from Google

Some of you may recall that my site was cracked late last year. This resulted in a large quantity of hidden spam links getting added to my site which resulted in Google removing Ivany.org from their search engine.

I was averaging somewhere around 200 hits a day (not bad for a silly little site like this) and I watched that go down to about 3 in a matter of hours. Ouch! I did get a few direct visits from people I know and a very small number from other search engines.

On January 3, 2009 I was added back into Google and that day I jumped back up to to about 75 hits. I’m not back to where I was before I got delisted yet but I hope to get there soon.  I’m still showing up on the first page for most of the major topics on this site so I can’t complain too much.

I have learned a few things from being delisted though and I’ll try to put them together into a couple posts over the next couple weeks. There was one big warning sign that I missed simply because I didn’t know what I was looking for.

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