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View Full Version : ALMOST had an air injection system



Bruce L
03-01-2020, 04:46 PM
Finally got my money back today,so writing to rant about my dealings with h2o. Ordered a system last May,made deposit on it to get the early order discount. Explained in great detail my setup,with the steam away on top.Mid June the shop says they need a detailed drawing of the pans to build the system correctly. Order a roll of Bristol board from Amazon so we can draw the pans to scale. We very carefully measure the flue pan and syrup pan,detailing flue locations,dividers,braces,fittings,etc,enough to actually build a duplicate pan. Summer ticks away,then fall,still no air injection system. Finally dealer calls me on December 22 to say he is delivering the system. That’s where everything starts going downhill quickly. I looked at the system,all wrapped up in plastic Saran wrapping,ask him where is the tubing for the syrup pan? He said that would be extra,you mean I drew both pans,and shelled out over $2200.00 for tubing in the flue pan alone? Next we go to install the system,flue pan is 3’ wide,that’s 36”, the system is in three pieces,which are clamped together with sanitary stainless steel clamps. The two outside header pieces are 14” each,and the center header is 19”!! Simple math that adds up to 47” in total for a 36” wide pan,plus the tubes are less than 8’ long for a 10’ flue pan!!! I had also explained about the steam away on top of the flue pan that would need to hook the system up with a flexible stainless steel hose or something through the drain port on the steam away,they sent a pipe to go straight up through the steam away,or thought I could slide it ahead or back to slip the pipe out behind it and leave the flue pan partially uncovered! I phoned the dealer up promptly,he was disgusted and said he would be talking to the shop after they came back from Christmas break. He called me second week of January to say they admitted that they had made a mistake,the system they sent me was for another pan that went out the same day,but it was 5’ wide,so that excuse didn’t wash either. He told me that they would build me a new system within a week,which I highly doubted as the first system took 7 months to build. The weeks went by with more excuses every week,until he finally asked me if I would like my money back last week,as the individual that builds the system was going on holidays until mid March,right in the heart of sugaring season! In coming to pick up the system today he apologized profusely,which I didn’t blame him for,but WOULD NEVER DEAL with this company again. He told me that their suggestion would be for next season to lift the steam away up,remove the flue pan from underneath it and ship it down to them so they could build it to fit!!! He told me that they admitted that they had never looked at the drawings until last week and had many questions about them.

Father & Son
03-01-2020, 04:58 PM
That would be very disappointing and aggravating. I don’t understand how anything can be built without a plan or drawing especially a custom order. With the plan not being used how did they know if you had a 2x6 or a 5x16.

Sugarmaker
03-01-2020, 05:06 PM
Well That is not a good thing. These are custom systems for sure. I dont have one, but its not rocket science either. I see a couple guys close by build there own.
Good luck.
Keep boiling.
Regards,
Chris

BAP
03-02-2020, 06:51 AM
That has to be really disappointing for you. Sounds like they just sent you one for one of their pans because they were behind the 8 ball. Certainly is very poor customer service. Hopefully you can deal with another company this spring and get one ordered and built for next year.

Bruce L
03-02-2020, 08:15 PM
That has to be really disappointing for you. Sounds like they just sent you one for one of their pans because they were behind the 8 ball. Certainly is very poor customer service. Hopefully you can deal with another company this spring and get one ordered and built for next year.
I kind of think it was a Friday night special also. Header pipe had a lot of burnish that wasn’t cleaned up,couple of the tubes had holes on the sides rather than the bottom,and couple of spacings in the tubing were off by over 3/4” compared to the rest of the set up,would be pretty tight on some flues for sure