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Don't you find it odd that it is the littlest problems that are the hardest to diagnose and repair? Give me a blower... not a 10-pound a month refrigerant leak in a supermarket.
Give me scorched and melted metal, not a chafed wire hiding in conduit that only blows fuses at night.
Spare me the service calls that I show up to only to find that everything for now is working right.
Give me three-phase equipment, not single-phase self-contained equipment.
Large is easy. Small just kills me.
I had a situation where I was called into a store in the Cumbria. (thats in the Lake District, northern England)
The history of the call was this.
engineer attended site, adjusted thermostat, left OK.
engineer attended site, adjusted thermostat, left OK.
This had went on through 8 service engineers over the space of 3 weeks.
Now, the store was situated miles from the nearest engineer (about 250 miles). So I figure, just by reading their report sheets that they are pissed at getting the call, running to site and doing the bare minimum.
I attend site and the manager has lost interest in the company.
I take it on the chin, try and calm him down and go to have a look at the cabinet (a multi deck dairy). I look at the cabinet and its dial thermometer which is showing the correct temp??
The cabinet is empty so I take out the base plates to see whats wrong with the stat..........
The bloody phial has been moved to the bottom of the coil and jammed into the coil !!!!!!
I remove the phial and place it back in its correct place then stroll of to the plant room.
The cabinet is on a single unit which is running non stop.
One look at the sight glass tells me there is non to little gas. I check the LP switch to find it screwed right in !!!!
There is oil all over the compressor where I find a leak on the discharge valve.
I vac the system, charge it up, recommission the controls and after 4 hours work, and a 2 day stay to keep the manager happy, one multi deck working the way it should.
I ask you .......... what the crud do some "engineers" think they get paid for?
[Edited by WebMaster on 20-04-2001 at 10:33 PM]
Going back to Dan's post one of the easiest leak finding jobs I had was with an AC unit that was out of gas.
Did a pressure test with OFN, lugging bottles up on the roof of course, but only needed 5psi to find it.
Power cable badly fitted, chafed on the suction pipe, arced a nice 1/4" hole in it and lost the charge. Certainly a job I didn't need at the time but at least it was easy to find :)
By the way Dan, I could tell it was Friday by the rash of posts from you and after your varied posts it reminds me of my favourite saying - Wouldn't life be easier without customers?
Brian
[Edited by Brian_UK on 20-04-2001 at 11:32 PM]
don't know about you, but my life would be terrible without customer. ha ha ha danQuote:
Originally posted by Brian_UK
Going back to Dan's post one of the easiest leak finding jobs I had was with an AC unit that was out of gas.
Did a pressure test with OFN, lugging bottles up on the roof of course, but only needed 5psi to find it.
Power cable badly fitted, chafed on the suction pipe, arced a nice 1/4" hole in it and lost the charge. Certainly a job I didn't need at the time but at least it was easy to find :)
By the way Dan, I could tell it was Friday by the rash of posts from you and after your varied posts it reminds me of my favourite saying - Wouldn't life be easier without customers?
Brian
[Edited by Brian_UK on 20-04-2001 at 11:32 PM]
Large is easy. Small just kills me. [/B][/QUOTE]
Life would be very bore without the small and difficult to find leak. my two cents worth. dan
Had another one of those killer simple electrical things happen today. The control circuit breaker tripped shutting the rack down. According to my tech, every fuse on the Com-trol is intact. And every load downside of the breaker is through the Com-trol. It is a Hill-Phoenix rack with Com-Trol and a 10 amp control circuit breaker, drawing 3 amps. I told him to shake the wires and cycle all the relays. Nothing. Big mystery. Something simple.
But it ain't all that simple when the entire rack shuts down. Missing something. Waiting for it to re-occur and cause big problems. It is not so much "if" as it is "when."
Dan
You might want to try an infrared thermometer. Sometimes a poor connection will show up as a hot spot. Also look for signs of heat (darkened spots).
I broke the quoting rules here. My responses are separated by dashed lines, even though this whole thing looks like a quotation.
don't know about you, but my life would be terrible without customer. ha ha ha dan
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A bitter irony, indeed, other Dan. Smiling.
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By the way Dan, I could tell it was Friday by the rash of posts from you and after your varied posts it
reminds me of my favourite saying - Wouldn't life be easier without customers?
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Some things are just obvious, aren't they? Evenings and weekends are what I have to spare. Our accountants would be so happy to finally balance the sheets... no receivable problems, no payable problems, no inventory problems, no customers. Debits: 0. Credits: 0.
This is what my accountants desire. I am the beefhead for taking on new and risky business. But often I feel that the prisoners are running the asylum. And that life would be easier without people having to pay and people having to collect money? Then I could fail to fix things for free and everybody would be happy!
Dan
Just one question........don`t those customers who you keep
moaning about ,pay for your luxurious house and lifestyle ?....KNOBBER!"!!
and to the geezer who questions the engineer who moved the phial on the dairy chiller, good job he did , or you would have jack sh#t to do or moan about.......thank god for muppet engineers!!.......they make my overtime and pay for my 5 bed £250.000 house......Cheers Muppets and Condenser blowers alike
P.S.....my kids , who are at private school also say, jolly good job chappers!!
Well, Big-n, would I be the knobber? I am from the US, so I am not entirely sure what a knobber is. What's a knobber, dare I ask? Is it similar to "Bone-head?" :)
Dan
By the way, I didn't notice anybody in this thread complaining about customers, other than Brian's use of irony, which was exactly the opposite.
<i>Well, Big-n, would I be the knobber? I am from the US, so I am not entirely sure what a knobber is. What's a knobber, dare
I ask? Is it similar to "Bone-head?"</i><br>
The Prof, always the wordsmith, found these two definitions to that term on the net....
<ul>
<li>A male homosexual transvestite prostitute</li>
<li>Male red deer in his second year.</li></ul>
That's the problem with using slang language.... very imprecise way of explaining your point of view... :)
Gee. That would make me a sophomore.Quote:
Originally posted by fridgetech
Hmm, okay, so who's our dear male homosexual transvestite prostitute in his second year at the red light zone.
Dan
Infrared thermometers are all but magical instruments. Infrared photography, thermographic photography etc.Quote:
Originally posted by Gary
You might want to try an infrared thermometer. Sometimes a poor connection will show up as a hot spot. Also look for signs of heat (darkened spots).
My service manager all but fired his service supervisor for buying an infrared thermometer for a supermarket store manager. Any guesses as to why?
Dan
What readings does one get pointing an infra-red toward the sun? Toward the moon. Toward a charcoal. Toward a mirror? Just curious.
Dan
How many calls per day did you get from this location? Heheheheh!!
My point exactly. I have a love/hate relationship with infra-red thermometers. It is mostly hate. Great stuff, but also like providing a monkey with a zippo lighter. I feel the same about digital hygrometers or psychrometers, dew point sensors and a host of other fine devices.
A mercury bulb thermometer may be only readable to 4-degrees of accuracy. But a wanked out transducer with 1/100 of a degree of accuracy should always be checked more than trusted. Checked with some sort of old fashioned and inaccurate device that may be out of fashion, but never tells a big lie. A sling psychrometer comes to mind.:)
Dan
Ill title this the (call from hell)
I picked up a new account a week ago. Commercial rtu, 35 foot
tall building, no a/c.
Send out tech for a breaker that keeps tripping.
Gets to sight, every thing o.k.
Next day same call, breaker keeps tripping. This time I attend the site myself. Check of electrical panel, all ok.
On to the roof, Find compresor drawing high locked rotor amps.
Unit was overcharged, hauled out and up the reclaimer to
the bloody roof. Took out 8 lbs, still amps high.
I install hard start kit and get the amps down to an acceptable level.
2 days later get the same call, this time the compressor
is dead. Windings open, cool the compressor with the hose(water)
no luck. Customer wants replacement compressor A.S.AP.
Next day install new compressor, had to reconfigure the piping,
copeland from 1972. Suction and liquid drier, 5 lbs of r-22,
and Im ready to commission the new compressor.
Lights ,camera, action!!!!! Condenser fan motor will
not turn!!! Ive had it!!!
Dan you can have all the big stuff you want, Ill take the
little, no ladder, self contained units. Gotta go, pager is beeping,
time to do it all again!! GREAT SITE!!