Wilkins Mechanical Services, Inc.

After 134 years, furnace retired

By DEAN SHALHOUP, Telegraph Staff
shalhoupd@telegraph-nh.com

Published: Thursday, Dec. 30, 2004

NASHUA - Even though it was still working and keeping his home reasonably toasty, Marc Plamondon knew, just before Christmas, that the time was right to replace his furnace.

First, he was offered a new one, including installation and all the peripherals, absolutely free.

Second, his old one was going on 135 years old.

That’s a tad on the unreliable side, even for the toughest, best built of home heating systems. Typical ones average 20, sometimes 25 years; if pampered,maybe they see 30.

To be sure, the decision wasn’t a difficult one.

Plamondon, the city’s Ward 4 alderman, got a new Smith Series 8 furnace by winning a unique holiday-season contest run by Bedford plumbing and heating supply house Wilkins Mechanical Services. The company promised a brand-new furnace to the entrant who had the oldest, still-functioning residential heating system in New Hampshire.

The cast-iron, “snowman” style steam boiler that has kept everyone who has lived in the 1870-vintage Elm Street house warm for six score and 14 winters easily trumped the second-place finisher, a 1901 model still chugging along up in Concord, according to Wilkins vice president and general manager Todd Lavery.

Plamondon said he knows his old snowman is the original, because his grandparents told him so - they bought the house in 1945. As a youth, he visited often, and in 1990, bought it from them.

The system first burned coal until Plamondon’s grandparents converted to oil in 1952. Each fall for years, he recalled with a laugh, his grandfather would say, “Sure hope we can get one more winter out of this baby.”

To help nurse it along, the senior Plamondons even called upon divine intervention.

“They had a whole bunch of religious icons hung up around it,” Plamondon laughed, pointing to the dark, rough-hewn rafters above the boiler.

First thing Wednesday morning, a crew from Wilkins arrived and sawed, pried, and twisted the rusty iron pipes one by one until the behemoth was free. Then came the real fun.

Adam Summers, a reedy youth blessed with long arms and a strong back, pulled. Counterpart Kevin Alfonso, slight of stature but not of will, pushed. Soon the snowman lay, officially retired, in the backyard snow.

Plamondon, who has been out of work for nearly a year, stood back and watched with his Scottish terrier, McGruff, as the men eased the shiny new replacement down the stairs.

“I couldn’t be happier about this - it came at the perfect time,” he said, adding how he’s feared for several winters now that every cold night could very well be the boiler’s last. With his savings dwindling and no steady income, he added, he might not have been able to handle the expense of a new one.

A Wilkins “advance crew” found the boiler and pipes covered with asbestos, which had to be professionally removed before anything else was done. That meant abatement, disposal, state Department of Environmental Services paperwork, and a visit by certified air quality inspectors.

That all might have thrown a monkey wrench into things, Plamondon said, but Wilkins came through.

“They got companies to donate their services . . . they were great. They all went out of their way for me,” he said.

Lavery said it was the willingness of local firms Alpha Asbestos Abatement, Waste Management, and Covino Environmental to donate their services that kept Plamondon’s cost at zero.

Many more entries than expected came in as soon as the contest, the brainchild of owner Bob Wilkins, was announced in early December, Lavery said.

“We stopped counting at 30,” he said. “We saw some really old ones, a lot from the early 1900s. It was fun looking at some of them.”

Why sponsor such a contest?

“We wanted to do something for someone for the holidays, and this was a fun way to find someone,” he said. “I’m grateful to the other companies for joining in with their generosity to do this for Marc.”

Turns out, it was a last-minute whim that saved Plamondon from coaxing the old snowman through another winter.

“I heard the ad on the radio, and blew it off - I don’t ever win contests,” Plamondon said. “It came on again, and by the third time, I said, ‘What the heck,’ and wrote in, remembering my grandfather telling me it was the original.

“Hey, maybe this means I’ll have a great 2005.”

Dean Shalhoup can be reached at 594-6523 or shalhoupd@telegraph-nh.com.

Website publishing by permission.Originally published by The Telegraph of Nashua, N.H.,

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