Over the years, I've had many homeowners read my books and then write to tell me they knew more about their system than the contractors that came to their houses. This was particularly true when it came to steam heating. A contractor would show up at someone’s house to give an estimate on a boiler replacement. The contractor wouldn’t bother measuring the EDR of the radiators. Nope, he’d just look at the nameplate on the old boiler and then quote on a replacement boiler that was bigger. "It never hurts to have a little bit extra," he’d tell the homeowner.

In many cases, the homeowner owned a copy of my book, "We Got Steam Heat," which I wrote for homeowners. I explained in that book that the only way to properly size a steam boiler is to match its ability to produce steam with the radiation’s ability to condense steam.