# And they are blaming the Building Official, Why?



## mark handler (Mar 7, 2015)

Meriden mayor “outraged” with building department over resident’s heating issue

http://www.myrecordjournal.com/meriden/meridennews/6997042-129/meriden-mayor-outraged-with-building-department-over-residents-heating-issue.html

March 6, 2015 08:11PM

By Molly Callahan Record-Journal staff

MERIDEN — A resident frustrated with heating issues in his grandparents house prompted Mayor Manny Santos to write a scathing letter to a city department over its handling of the matter.

On Thursday, Santos wrote a letter to City Planner Dominick Caruso on behalf of resident Robert Angiletta, whose parents’ house on Fleming Road isn’t being heated properly after a propane heating unit was installed in 2013.

ngiletta contacted city building officials after disputing the heating situation with the contractor that installed the system. After a city building official said the department tried to “mediate” the situation between Angiletta and the contractor, Angilletta contacted Santos. Santos chasised the department for its handling of the situation.

“I write to document my outrage at how Meriden constituent Mr. Robert Angiletta and his parents have been treated by our Building Official’s office, and the apparent incompetency of said office,” the letter begins.

Santos didn’t speak with Caruso or Building Official David Zwik before sending the letter, though did speak at length with Angiletta.

“My concern is that the department may not quite be understanding the angst that a lot of taxpayers are going through when they contact that office, which is why I felt compelled to send that,” Santos said Friday, adding that he regularly receives complaints from citizens about the building department.

Caruso expressed frustration however, that Santos didn’t check with him or anyone else in the office “to find out what actually happened” before sending the letter.

“Our department has been working to try to get this resolved, and we’ve been trying to get it resolved in a way so that in the winter they wouldn’t have to shut off the heat” to the Fleming Road home. “I am checking though to make sure that we did everything in a timely manner and that we were taking care of it.”

Angiletta said Friday he first contacted Blu Energy, a subsidiary of the Cheshire-based Arbor Energy, in 2013 to have the electric heating at his elderly parents’ house switched over to propane heating. The equipment was installed in October 2013 for a total cost of nearly $17,000, though it hasn’t been heating the Fleming Road home sufficiently, Angiletta said.

“My parents are elderly, they want the house at 72 degrees in the winter,” Angiletta said. “On some of these extremely cold days, it doesn’t go any higher than 65 (degrees), and that’s just not good enough.”

Angiletta said at first he “tried to work things out” with the contractor from Blu Energy, “but I didn’t get anywhere with him.” Representatives from Blu Energy could not be reached for comment, Friday.

When that failed, Angiletta turned to city building officials for the enforcement of potential building violations created by the contractor during the work. He felt if the violations were corrected, it would have resolved the heating issue.

Building Official David Zwick said Friday that a permit was filed with the city Oct. 29, 2013, the start of the whole process. Prior to the issuance of the permit however, the city requested from Blu Energy a heat loss load, or a calculation of how much heat it would take to heat the house on a five-degree day, the standard temperature for which such calculations are made.

That calculation is used to determine what size unit to install in a house, and still hasn’t been submitted, Zwick said.

The city ultimately issued the permit on Nov. 20, 2013, “the argument being that it was winter and these people would need some heat,” Zwick said.

The first city inspection of the system in operation was Jan. 17, 2014, at which point it was failed not only for the lack of heat loss study, but also for reasons including “homeowner claims equipment is under sized,” and other equipment-type issues.

Between January 2014 and a more recent inspection on Dec. 10, 2014, Zwick said the building department has been “going back and forth, trying to mediate the dispute between the owner and the contractor.”

“We went out to that Dec. 10 inspection and called the owner and the contractor together to see if we could get a resolution,” Zwick said. “The contractor had a small list of things (to complete); eight basic items you could break down into 50.”

The unit failed inspection again in December, for similar reasons as before.

With still no resolution however, Angiletta called the Office of the State Building Inspector, a branch of the state Department of Administrative Services. State Inspector John Tye went out with Zwick on Jan. 12 of this year and cited 33 building violations. On Thursday, Zwick sent a notice of violation to Arbor Energy Founder Bruce Owen, giving the company 30 days to correct those violations.

As the dispute continues, Angiletta said he just wants to see action.

“The bottom line is, I just want something that my parents paid for to work, and to keep them warm.”

mcallahan@record-journal.com (203) 317-2279 Twitter: @MollCal


----------



## cda (Mar 7, 2015)

permit issued with out required calcs.

mayor did not check all facts

house apparently had heat already, so not a  rush issue?


----------



## ICE (Mar 7, 2015)

> State Inspector John Tye went out with Zwick on Jan. 12 of this year and cited 33 building violations.


That trumps my record for a furnace.  I can't even imagine 33 things that could be wrong with a furnace.  Of course this was in a newspaper which means that there is a reporter involved.



> total cost of nearly $17,000


The story should be about that.



> but also for reasons including “homeowner claims equipment is under sized,”


That's called padding the bill.  I get comments from homeowners like "they left greasy footprints in the carpet".  But if an undersized furnace cost $17,000 I can't see anyone pitching a bitch to spend even more.


----------



## cda (Mar 7, 2015)

ICE said:
			
		

> That trumps my record for a furnace.  I can't even imagine 33 things that could be wrong with a furnace.  Of course this was in a newspaper which means that there is a reporter involved.The story should be about that.
> 
> That's called padding the bill.  I get comments from homeowners like "they left greasy footprints in the carpet".  But if an undersized furnace cost $17,000 I can't see anyone pitching a bitch to spend even more.


I wondered about that also

But more than Likely talking about a whole new system

The bells and  bells that go with a gas fired system

And either buying or leasing a propane tank

And piping for the tank

Guess 17000 would have bought a few years of electricity plus recovery time for converting


----------



## Mark K (Mar 7, 2015)

A permit was issued without the apparently required load calculations this raises the question of whether the problem is with the basic heating system or one of how it was installed. If the problem is a result of an undersized heating system then the number of code violations, while they need to be resolved, is basically irrelevant and only confuses the issues.

 Not clear but at what point was the electrical heating system disconnected.  This should not have happened until there was a permit for the new gas heating system.  If the electric heating was disconnected prior to there being a permit for the new heating system the house should have been tagged as being out of compliance.

If the City had required the load calculations and not issued a permit until they had them the building department would be in a better position to deal with the political fall out.

Attempting to mediate the dispute between the Owner and the contractor was probably not a good strategy since the building department does not have any responsibility to do so.  This only drew the building department into the dispute.

No good deed goes un punished but in some respects the building department brought the fallout on itself.


----------



## Frank (Mar 7, 2015)

We got into a similar one a couple years ago except the issue was the furnace was oversized.  I played with the Manual J calcs for the old existing house (1950's)   (which can be none) and came to the conclusion that depending on what assumptions you make about the insulation in the walls, window characteristics and building tightness; the results can vary by more than a factor of 2 on the "right" size.  And much of this data is unknown for an existing house without destructive investigation.  Another case woman was complaining of cold when went from oil hot water radiators to heat pump in house with uninsulated walls and very little attic insulation.  Adding attic insulation greatly improved the situation.


----------



## ICE (Mar 7, 2015)

> Prior to the issuance of the permit however, the city requested from Blu Energy a heat loss load, or a calculation of how much heat it would take to heat the house on a five-degree day, the standard temperature for which such calculations are made.


We don't require any calculations.  I find it odd that the building dept. can tell someone what size furnace to install.  And even more surprised that they would.  As Frank points out, the determination can be way off on an existing building.  If the building dept mandates a certain size and it doesn't do the job, what then?  Mittens and wool socks on the AHJ's credit card?

Of course I am in southern California.....and you're not.


----------



## cda (Mar 7, 2015)

ICE said:
			
		

> We don't require any calculations.  I find it odd that the building dept. can tell someone what size furnace to install.  And even more surprised that they would.  As Frank points out, the determination can be way off on an existing building.  If the building dept mandates a certain size and it doesn't do the job, what then?  Mittens and wool socks on the AHJ's credit card?Of course I am in southern California.....and you're not.


Directly or indirectly it is done with other parts of a building.


----------



## Frank (Mar 7, 2015)

Ice energy code requires to be sized by manual J, but as the below example shows the unknowns in an existing building make the calculation no more accurate than local HVAC contractors "this has worked before" sizing


----------



## mark handler (Mar 7, 2015)

Frank said:
			
		

> ...as the below example shows...


???...as the below example shows...???


----------



## cda (Mar 7, 2015)

mark handler said:
			
		

> ???...as the below example shows...???


"No calcs" "no permit"

"No calcs" "no permit"

"No calcs" "no permit"


----------



## Mark K (Mar 7, 2015)

The code requires compliance with the code not that the heating system will perform to the satisfaction of the owner.

Maybe this is payback for building officials and inspectors that believe that there job is to protect the owner from all problems.

I am going to guess that the Contractor is taking a hard position and is not trying to resolve the problem.  The Owner then searches around for somebody he believes he can apply pressure to.  The problem is that the building department is not in a position to resolve the problem.  I see this same dynamic all the time with the building official playing the role of the owner and the project engineer playing the role of the building department.


----------



## fireguy (Mar 8, 2015)

Was the contractor licensed and did they know what they were doing?  How many contractors were contacted?  What was the process to decide who to hire?  The most qualified, best trained or just the cheapest?

1. the B/O allowed a shortcut in the process and the contractor took advantage of the B/O being a good guy.  The whole thing went downhill from there.

2.  the newspeople got involved.  All they know is how to stir the pot.  Questions they should have asked would be the qualifications of the contractor, the scope of the job, was the job done to code? ( No, not all the info was given to the B/O)

3. What was  the inspection process and was the inspector qualified to inspect the job?


----------



## MASSDRIVER (Mar 8, 2015)

1. The building dept. _requested_ information, but apparently did not require it.

2. There were 8 corrections. Wait, no...50 corrections...damn, I mean 33 corrections. What kind of Charlie Foxtrot operation is this town?

3. The east is locked into an unusually cold and nasty winter, and is breaking weather records. Sometimes your house ain't gonna be 90 degrees inside when the outside is the same temperature as nightime on Mars.

4. $17,000 may be the right price for that installation depending on the house.

5. Homeowners may be lying, or stupid, or retarded, or have lying, stupid retarded people making noise for them.

6. Mayors in general have a propensity for over-estimating their relative importance in the world, and sometimes just need a good punch in the face to reset their calibration.

Brent.


----------



## pyrguy (Mar 8, 2015)

I won't comment on the process followed. I will comment on the price. I was once quoted  over $10, 000 for a warranty replacement on two heating units. The warranty paid the full cost of the replacement units and labor. I didn't go with that dealer for the replacement.


----------



## MASSDRIVER (Mar 8, 2015)

pyrguy said:
			
		

> I won't comment on the process followed. I will comment on the price. I was once quoted  over $10, 000 for a warranty replacement on two heating units. The warranty paid the full cost of the replacement units and labor. I didn't go with that dealer for the replacement.


I agree, it SOUNDS high. But that's the common refrain from 99% of customers. I like to ask "why does it sound high? I thought it sounded just right."

But what if the electric furnace was some wall mount unit, and along with the new furnace came new ducts, thermostat wire, registers, and all the cutting and remodeling, maybe attic mount with platform and framing, that the story may have omitted, along with gas line upgrade and whatever else it took to get propane to the unit, plus patching and finishing?

That amount of work may be what generated so many correction marks.

But we don't have that information.

Brent.


----------



## mjesse (Mar 9, 2015)

MASSDRIVER said:
			
		

> Sometimes your house ain't gonna be 90 degrees inside when the outside is the same temperature as nightime on Mars.


This.

and not every cubic foot of your home will be the same temperature, especially with a forced air system


----------

