2018 Technical Report January-February

headers or steam lines vibrate too much; or perchance it is relining pumps or resetting same, or cleaning your feed water heater, covering steam pipes or many other things about the boiler house. Perhaps in the engine room there has been a slight pound in one of the engines. We should investigate this and remedy it, or there may be a bearing inclined to heat during the peak load. If so, now is the chance to go after this. May be that the machine is loose on the foundation, and you have had to pull down on some of the foundation bolts. Better get after this right now, or you may have a broken frame before the end of another season. May be there is a bad oiling system which causes the use of too much oil, or the oil is allowed to go to waste. If so, I would most certainly remedy this. Some of the biggest surprises I ever ran across were in expansion coils (evaporators). They were thought to be clean, and yet several barrels of oil or sludge were drawn off, and it was wondered where it came from or how it got there. I

cost of such changes or repairs,

one will find to jot down in his memo book during the busy season, to be taken up after the run is over, would possibly be: Repainting smoke stacks, relining boiler furnaces, resetting boilers, or changing the furnace to suit a change of fuel, to secure a better CO2 reading and thus economize on fuel cost. Or perhaps it may be leaky tube ends or rivet heads, or slight leaks at the seams of the boilers. These are most important matters that should not be allowed to go any longer than it is possible to help. Or possibly there is a drip from various flanges in your steam line or headers, which is a warning that new gaskets are needed, or that your steam is the most avoided. Avoided because it is always on the list of things to do, but never at the top. Clean, Paint, Insulate and Seal.” “Perhaps the most important maintenance

the saving or gain to be derived by making such changes, giving my reasons fully for doing so. Then I should immediately seek a conference with the manager and lay before him all of these things and insist that I be authorized to go ahead and buy the material and do the work immediately after I had finished the season’s run, not waiting until the first of the year. If the manager agreed with me and said that he would do these things, but wanted me to wait until the first of January or a little later on, I would tell him, “All right; we will wait for a while, but not too long.” And when this time is up, I would again go to him and insist on getting down to business. Should he indicate that he did not mean to have the work done, but was stalling around, and I felt that the repairs and changes were important enough to handicap me during the next season, I would then look for another position. Outline of Winter work Some of the many things that

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