What did we do today?

[glenn1340]

Refitted end cover to an Atlas Copco drum dryer after an insurance inspection. The cover weighed half a ton secured with forty eight 30mm nuts and bolts. Both 1" drive impact wrenches the governor sent down were knackered so we had to use a four foot torque wrench to tighten them, round and round and round. Another two dryers to do next week. Why the boss doesn`t get a cheapo one from Machine Mart instead of trying to fix ones he fished out of a skip I don`t know. But hey, that`s why he`s got the big house and a yacht and villa in Spain and I haven`t

[SeanB]

Did the first breakdown today. Not the wall rattler I expected that would drop dead as soon as it got hot, but the water cooler. Replaced drier and chopped off a little bit of captube, regassed and there it cools again. Looked into the supply tank and decided the hosepipe would be good, all brown sediment inside. On the list for tomorrow is to get more 280g cans of R134A, some pencil driers and valves. First time I touched a unit for 3 months at work, other than cleaning filters ( been a cool winter here, not used to 12C lows) and turning them off.

[chillerman2006]

Nice one Sean

welcome to the minefield of service work...good for you mate

Just one question ... whats with these mini cans of 280grams of R134a ?

I am a bit of a wimp when it comes to 60kg bottles these days but mids & dumpys ok

R's chillerman

[SeanB]

Cheap and quick, as I do not do a lot of work with R134A, and a disposacan is a little expensive to have lying around on the off chance I will have to do a fridge or car AC. Sad thing is the dinky can works out to nearly double the price, just I can buy it over the long term. Plus it comes with nice pictograms on it and Engrish saying Ice Loong, dunno what the rest says.

I do airconditioning as part of work, it is just another piece of machinery, same issues, same problems with spares, just does not get used to make money, only to keep product cool, and keep staff from melting. The other stuff I work with is production plant, that mostly does not use airconditioning, though it all uses air.

Saw a lifetime supply of R22 at Metraclarke last week, 800kg refillables - just think about it, a lifetime supply in just 2 of them, though I will need a bigger trailer to move them around. May be a little difficult to carry up a ladder, and it has fittings that you can lose a 1/4'" hose set in.

Sad thing the fridge in my office uses R12, I will miss it when it croaks. Most likely failure will be a leak on the steel and aluminium evaporator, and I doubt you can get spares for a 40 year old Indesit now, or they will be more then the unit is worth.

[monkey spanners]

Did a 230mile round trip to find the milk tank evaporator i had welded up last week is leaking again.....

Guys spent £1800 and it lasted a week, and i expect its going to cost the same again....

Some days i don't enjoy the job

[MikeHolm]

looked at the refrigeration forum and drank beer.......oh and built oak stair railings for my house which has been without for 5 years

[simon@parker]

got over my hangover went to fit a flat screen tele at a friends to the wall lucky i checked it fitted bracket before trying to fit it lol was wrong size and am now on here and facebook annoying everyone still dont know how to get some fractions though lmao

[install monkey]

si get a grinder on ur mates tv cut it down the middle and then u can have half each,his half will now fit the bracket and you will have gained a fraction!!!!haha

[stufus]

Re addressed 150 citi multi indoor's and programmed a couple of G50's, i was fit to cut my wrists by lunch time,usual sh*te, drawings didn't match install .
And I missed the Irish egg chasers giving it to the convicts(just kidding Aussies)
Cheers
Stu

[simon@parker]

si get a grinder on ur mates tv cut it down the middle and then u can have half each,his half will now fit the bracket and you will have gained a fraction!!!!haha

was a lady friend and was supposed to fit it in her bedroom but alas i couldnt do it so now she cant watch porn lol

[mikeref]

Re addressed 150 citi multi indoor's and programmed a couple of G50's, i was fit to cut my wrists by lunch time,usual sh*te, drawings didn't match install .
And I missed the Irish egg chasers giving it to the convicts(just kidding Aussies)
Cheers
Stu

Hey Stufus. Missed the game as well. Think the Aussies might have had jet lag.

[install monkey]

which room was the tv going in??

[SeanB]

was a lady friend and was supposed to fit it in her bedroom but alas i couldnt do it so now she cant watch porn lol

So why didn't you make your own?

[glenn1340]

So why didn't you make your own?

if you do intend to make your own porn you`ll have to grow a moustache, aquire a dodgy German accent and become a plumber as we all know any decent bluey starts with a plumber calling on a bored housewife, who`s dressed nothing but suzzys and lacey bra, to fix a water leak.
Oh, of course you`ll need some weird background music going at varous speeds.
It goes without saying that I`ve never seen any such films I`m only going by what I`ve heard...allegedly

[Tayters]

Replaced the evaporator in a Williams fridge. Took off the line tap valve on the suction pipe and pondered - do I just blob over the hole or cut and swage it? Lets do it proper like - cut and swage it son.

Cut it then realised the cap tube runs up the suction pipe. Obvious really!

Cheers,
Andy.

[MikeHolm]

Replaced the evaporator in a Williams fridge. Took off the line tap valve on the suction pipe and pondered - do I just blob over the hole or cut and swage it? Lets do it proper like - cut and swage it son.

Cut it then realised the cap tube runs up the suction pipe. Obvious really!

Cheers,
Andy.

You're not that old son

[monkey spanners]

Replaced the evaporator in a Williams fridge. Took off the line tap valve on the suction pipe and pondered - do I just blob over the hole or cut and swage it? Lets do it proper like - cut and swage it son.

Cut it then realised the cap tube runs up the suction pipe. Obvious really!

Cheers,
Andy.

I do stuff like that too!

"oh i think its leaking under there, i'll just trim the steel cover back with a saw..... yes is deffinatly leaking there now!"

Jon

[chillerman2006]

Picked up my sparkling new motor for my new FM company

Dont laugh

A ruddy 'postman pat van' triple Huh !!

[mikeref]

Replaced the evaporator in a Williams fridge. Took off the line tap valve on the suction pipe and pondered - do I just blob over the hole or cut and swage it? Lets do it proper like - cut and swage it son.

Cut it then realised the cap tube runs up the suction pipe. Obvious really!

Cheers,
Andy.

OH that was worth a laugh!! "obvious really". So there was a moment when the pipe tried to seperate after being cut and you wondered what was holding it together right?

[Tayters]

Hi Mike,

As soon as I cut it I saw the cap tube. You know the feeling that comes over you when you realise you've made a gross miscalculation and wonder how best to slavage the situation. Well that was me.

Top of the fridge was tighter than a crabs ass so I didn't fancy pulling the whole tube out. Ended up slicing some 5/8" pipe and crimping it round and brazing it all up.
Wont be doing that again!

Cheers,
Andy.

[mikeref]

The sinking feeling that follows such a discovery, or something that changes the mood you were in real quick. Bit like going to a job and 1/2 way there, think maybe i forgot to include the refrigerant needed. Pull over and check.. nope, the bottle is not there! Any points for having every other refrigerant on board??

[install monkey]

Hi taters-bet u wished ud blobbed it now! Who puts line taps on the suction line anyway-1/2 suction line??? This is why engineers need a bit of common sense! Its all to easy for joe soap to buy a set of gauges and a bag of line taps and a disposable can of gas and hey presto he's charging £20 an hr for a botch job!!!

Hi Mike,

As soon as I cut it I saw the cap tube. You know the feeling that comes over you when you realise you've made a gross miscalculation and wonder how best to slavage the situation. Well that was me.

Top of the fridge was tighter than a crabs ass so I didn't fancy pulling the whole tube out. Ended up slicing some 5/8" pipe and crimping it round and brazing it all up.
Wont be doing that again!

Cheers,
Andy.

[Goober]

Really quiet at work for me, got bored....so sent off as many emails to my Australian colleagues with the signature....

Regards

St....... Bo......
Contracts Manager, Irishman and proud supporter of the Wallaby culling Irish rugby team.


Loving it.......

[chillerman2006]

Spent half the day at hospital, after getting covered in Rockwool and having an allergic reaction 4 hours and a big needle up the jacksy later - home for dinner

R's chillerman

[al]

Goober

What county are you from?

al

[mikeref]

Goober will be at work now. 10am in New Zealand, 8am here.

[al]

Hey this is work!!

[Goober]

Donegal........

[mikeref]

So off i go to do the banking this afternoon, cheques deposit, credit card payments and cash out when, bugger me... i happened to get this same trainee teller as i did last time i was there . I've nothing against persons learning the job but last time, this young lad held me up for some 20 mins and i had to say to him... Ah, you have to go into my account first as it is a cash cheque i'm handing you..Firstly, you have to assign $ to that card and $ to this card and hand me the $ left over. 5 mins later, he was still fiddling and had NO idea what to do . This time it took 15 mins as one of the girls helped him out, THANKYOU!!

[paul_h]

I ripped out a WWRAC that must have been 40 years old. Bloody heavy, over 100kg and it's only a 3kW system?
Lots of nice old screws to remove somehow.
Now I'm covered in itchy bumps like I've had a 100 mosquito bites. Every time I went near that old powdered up insulation it had, I'm now all irritated and itchy.
If I scratch irritated parts, and then touch somewhere else, all that area becomes itchy and full of bumps!



No not there! I just scratched behind my ear, that's all!

So now both upper arms, one leg and behind my ear are as itchy and irritated as hell!

Also, I'm not a carpenter, so my framing of a WWRAC isn't so good. And 1.6mm nails, even though it seems to be a good idea for fixing the frame as they are small and don't stick out, are too pissweak to hammer into hardwood. Bad bad bad idea.
I don't install WWRACs normally, as I'm not a chippy, builder or glazier, but for friends, family or regular customers I will reluctantly do it if I can't sub it off to someone else. This time I couldn't, trying to offload for months unsuccessfully, so I had to do it today myself.

[mikeref]

Sometimes, these horrible jobs just hang around like a bad smell. What's with the 1.6mm nails? need tweezers to pick them up . 1.6 cm.

[paul_h]

1.6mm Diameter! 38mm long. The went through the framing wood border fine, just not the old jarrah hardwood I was trying to attach the framing to.

Used them so I could nail in the surrounding trim to the wood frame and the nails not stick out in a visual sense. I thought that would be a better way of doing it than screw heads on the face of the trim like the old a/c had.

[mikeref]

[QUOTE=paul_h;242220]1.6mm Diameter! 38mm long. The went through the framing wood border fine, just not the old jarrah hardwood I was trying to attach the framing to.

Used them so I could nail in the surrounding trim to the wood frame and the nails not stick out in a visual sense. I thought that would be a better way of doing it than screw heads on the face of the trim like the old a/c had.[/QUOTE Oh, diameter thats better but they still bent, don't yar hate that! Makes you wonder what the builders of yesteryear thought when they had planks of timber brought in by horse or bullock team to a building site, and the leading hand saw it was all Australian Gum or hardwood ... We need bigger nails and hammers for this..

[paul_h]

Bigger hammer

I know, and I thought I would be good at this stuff now, since I've been recycling all the pallets and crates I've been sent this year (condenser coils, compressors, complete units) into benches and trays for my chilli plants.
I've been a man on a mission with saws and nails recently.
Oh well, live and learn. I'll have a better idea next time I expect.

[SeanB]

So you found out just how difficult it is to get those Chinese nails out of the boards. A shame of how they use lovely hardwood to make a throwaway frame, though I have gotten some lovely boxes with parts, you have to break the plywood to open them, the nails grip the wood so well.

[paul_h]

Yeah, that they do.





Don't know if they are a good hardwood, all I know is I don't have room to store them, or a bin big enough to throw them out.
So I just recycled them for something useful, including using the old nails.
But you are right, those nails and the angles they use makes it very difficult to pull them out sometimes! Those old nails grip really strong, and I don't even have a claw hammer or crowbar.

Paid the price when recycling a compressor box into a seedling tray. The nails were much harder than the wood, broke heaps of wood trying to remove them. It becomes a bit of a puzzle, working out the best what to break the crate down, what bits of wood to sacrifice, and what angle to attack at
But paid the price even though all removed nails went into a bucket, and all bits of wood with nails in to was thrown in a box, a day later I still somehow stepped on a loose nail that went through my shoe and into my heel.
I had to hobble around for about a week, even now it's not 100%.

[eggs]

Visited a couple of "customers" who used to sneer at me, driving my van and dressed in my snickers, to ask why they hadn't placed any orders for 12 months.....

Haaa Haaa, the Range Rover Sports and Merc CLS's have long gone........the tossers.....one of them even asked if I had any work for his electricians.
Trouble is he wanted paying weekly, not on the 90 -120 days he used to hold me to.....oh how I laughed..

eggs

[MikeHolm]

Yeah, that they do.





Don't know if they are a good hardwood, all I know is I don't have room to store them, or a bin big enough to throw them out.
So I just recycled them for something useful, including using the old nails.
But you are right, those nails and the angles they use makes it very difficult to pull them out sometimes! Those old nails grip really strong, and I don't even have a claw hammer or crowbar.

Paid the price when recycling a compressor box into a seedling tray. The nails were much harder than the wood, broke heaps of wood trying to remove them. It becomes a bit of a puzzle, working out the best what to break the crate down, what bits of wood to sacrifice, and what angle to attack at
But paid the price even though all removed nails went into a bucket, and all bits of wood with nails in to was thrown in a box, a day later I still somehow stepped on a loose nail that went through my shoe and into my heel.
I had to hobble around for about a week, even now it's not 100%.

This all reminds me of when i was a kid in the 60s. If I wanted to build anything my grandad would give me a hammer and big pile of old wood and say go to it......bloody farmers.....cheap sods.

The answer to getting the nails in is pre-drilling the hole, only way with hardwood.

Today I picked up evaps to use with my first combo solar thermal/ASHP test rig ......woohoo... lets see if I blow something up

[mikeref]

Blow something up! Something i say when i have my finger on the switch. Said just that to one customer yesterday, turned the switch on...POP! Oh, that sinking feeling. Happened to be a side/side domestic, so i took apart what i'd been working on, tested all o.k. Check circuit breaker, nothing out of place, finger on the switch....flick..POP!, turned it off again. This time, stripped it down again and removed all the connectors and just kept temperature sensor plugged in. Went around the back of fridge, finger on switch,....flick..POP!! Now this is getting beyond stupid! To cut a long story short, turns out the pop noise was not some electrical short but the icemaker door solenoid opening, and if i had just left the switch on, the solenoid would have dis-engaged, and processor would have completed it's self check and started up. Won't get caught again!!..Mike.

[MikeHolm]

Blow something up! Something i say when i have my finger on the switch. Said just that to one customer yesterday, turned the switch on...POP! Oh, that sinking feeling. Happened to be a side/side domestic, so i took apart what i'd been working on, tested all o.k. Check circuit breaker, nothing out of place, finger on the switch....flick..POP!, turned it off again. This time, stripped it down again and removed all the connectors and just kept temperature sensor plugged in. Went around the back of fridge, finger on switch,....flick..POP!! Now this is getting beyond stupid! To cut a long story short, turns out the pop noise was not some electrical short but the icemaker door solenoid opening, and if i had just left the switch on, the solenoid would have dis-engaged, and processor would have completed it's self check and started up. Won't get caught again!!..Mike.

DUH, don't worry, Ive done stuff like that

[paul_h]

The answer to getting the nails in is pre-drilling the hole, only way with hardwood.

I thought of that! Bloody 1mm drill snapped! Crappy Frost brand drill set.


@Mike: Are you saying you didn't blow something up and the fridge is fine?

[MikeHolm]

No, with hardwood the drill should be 1.5mm if the nail is 1.6mm. Usually, the wood will contract around the nail and hold it tight after it is in.

I'll let you know about the current ASHP that I have built and will start up today (god willing and the creek don't rise, as they say). I really want a good not too expensive DDC control for all the pumps, defrost, fan speed etc, etc etc.

[SeanB]

Old trick if you break the last little drill bit, take one of the nails and cut the head off, then file a flat on the one side and make the tip sharp but with edges. Makes a good emergency drill bit.

Was drilling late one afternoon into a concrete roof to install trunking, when the 5mm SDS bit lost it's tip into rebar. Too late to buy another, and only 3 more holes to go. Ground it to a chisel shape and drilled them anyway, it worked well enough to do the 3 holes, though it was round and blunt and very blue afterwards. Took it later and made it into a punch, good use of the old Bosch bits.

[monkey spanners]

I pressed some buttons on the dash in the van, trying to see what oil the service light thingy thought the engine had in it and eneded up with the service reminder saying it was 12,000miles over due a service.

Had to take it to the garage to get it reset with the pluggy in doodah...

I guess a little knowledge truely is dangerous

Jon

[SeanB]

Could be worse, you could have triggered the immobiliser and set off the tracker silent alarm, then have to try to explain to the trigger happy guys who turn up that it is actually your van...............

Ah well, tomorrow I do the brickie thing again, hopefully my plastering skills are improving, or at least this time it will stick to the bleeding bricks properly. Hasta La Vista to the Defy rustbucket, only thing not rusted on it is the plastic control cover. It probably will be coming out as a kit of rust.

[Greengrocer]

Client reported AC not working.
This is what I found.
IMG_0160.jpg
Looks like BBQ got out of control - yeah right! Condensing units was toast - literally. Ali coil fins gone, fan blade & motor gone, wiring a blob, only copper tubes left on coil. £3,300 for a replacement system quoted under insurance.

[eggs]

Started my 2079.......hope I pass. Otherwise I'm shutting down and going sparkin'

[TRASH101]

Started my 2079.......hope I pass. Otherwise I'm shutting down and going sparkin'

Eggs can you drop me a quote for wiring a plug top ( Don't want to see you short of work )

But good luck with the 2079 just in case you don't fancy the wiring job.

[eggs]

Well it looks like the industry is stuck with me for a little while longer....

So is it to be Refcom, Quidos or the other one whatever they're are called?...come to think of it does anyone have a voice on NicEiC, Elecsa or Napit either?

Cheers

Eggs

[monkey spanners]

Yay Eggs! you've passed!

I went with refcom as the others had silly names.

Called to a cold room that wasn't working today and found that the front half of the compressor had fallen off, that'll be why its not workin....

New system time