The People We Hire!

One of the ones that always sticks out in my head.
Work scope : 480V feeder junction boxes to 4 heaters about 5 or 6 of them total all # 14 thhn brown orange, yellow.
Forman
" Jason go spliceall the heater junction boxes out color to color "
Jason 20 minutes later
" hey Mark I can't seem to find any big blue wire nutts or any burndy split bolts where would they be? "
Mark " Why the duck do you need anything bigger than a red wire nut for only five #14's? "
Jason gives very confused look.
Mark " just show me why you need a biger wire nutt. Are you fliping kidding me. Jason color to color means all the brown's to brown all the oranges to orange all the yellows to yellow. Not just splice every wire including the grounds together. "
Sad thing was Jason is the son of the owner of the panel shop and has been a Apprentice for 2-3 years. Made me question a few things about where to company would be in a few years if the owner retired...
 
Not my job

Our operators make upwards of 50k a year. But they come in with the expectation of being in the control room their whole shift. Most of the problems I see are from lack of engagement and boredom and not my job attitude.

Last week we had snow and one of the fork truck drivers said "not my job" to shovel snow. One of the box stackers said " not my job" to something else last week. Both were things below what they were hired for, where is this coming from. I could see them saying that if you were asking them to do more than what they get paid to do. When I had my business if you said "it is not my job" to me you got the nastyest job I could find and I would then say "THIS IS NOW YOUR JOB"
 
What do you do for a ground at sea? Is there a system bonding jumper from the neutral bar to the ground bar on your main panel board? How is it different from shore work?

Does the NEC apply to you?

We don't have a neutral on 99.5% of our distribution. We do have one laundry panel that has a separate transformer supplying it that is center tapped, but that is the only one. Everything else is Floating Delta.

As far as the grounding goes.....well that is a sore subject with me.
I believe that every cable should have an earth (ground) conductor in it, and every piece of equipment or metal containing electrical components or conductors should be bonded as part of the electrical installation.

However it seems the common rule of thumb on these boats is, you don't need a ground for anything, ever......I may be stretching the truth there a bit, but it does seem this way most times.

You will see only 3 wire cables ran from main distribution to 3 phase panels around the ship, which have no ground in the cable, the panels contain no ground bars what so ever, and every branch circuit conductor leaving the panel will have no earth conductor in them either.
They say the entire ship is ground so it is not nessisary.

I (not being born on these ships and coming from a land base electrical background) say BS, and I run a ground in, on and into everything I do. It is certainly not going to hurt anything.

Do we follow the NEC out here?
That again depends on who you talk to.
I myself absoulutly do. (or at least try to)
Others not so much. In fact the last company I worked for the Port Engineer flat out would tell you that the NEC does not apply to these vessels.

The only inspection agency that looks at anything on these vessels is DNV (Det Norske Veritas) and they only look at electrical installations if it is a large project that requires their inspection. They will pick out small stuff when they walk through 2 times a year if they see it. But for the most part is seems like working in the wild west out here.
(The United States Coast Guard also inspects us for safety equipment, but does not look at anything like electrical installations at all)

We keep it as tight as we can but with so many hands touching everything, now and then mistakes are made or someone who has no idea what they are doing will sneak something past you. Just like that motor wiring I showed you in another post.
What I did not show you was that motor controller was tapped from the load side of a 125 amp breaker with # 14 AWG.
No need to terminate that tap into some sort of properly sized overcurrent protection or anything, RIGHT? No just stick it in the contactor, after all there is an overload on the contactor before the motor........see what I have to deal with.:mad:
(Yes I installed the proper breaker in the starter panel when I seen this, so all is well now.)

It gets scary out here now and then. (in more than one way) but its a living, I cant complain too much. It would not do any good anyway. :site:

BCS
 
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Last week we had snow and one of the fork truck drivers said "not my job" to shovel snow. One of the box stackers said " not my job" to something else last week. Both were things below what they were hired for, where is this coming from. I could see them saying that if you were asking them to do more than what they get paid to do. When I had my business if you said "it is not my job" to me you got the nastyest job I could find and I would then say "THIS IS NOW YOUR JOB"

Yeah I will never get that attitude. I often do things that are "not my job" even help other companies on site, as long as I am qualified and able to do the task why not
 
Thanks for the reply. Its definitely interesting, because the first thing I would do as an electrician is bond X0 to ground at either the transformer or the main disconnect with a system bonding jumper.

Just read the rest of the post.

These guys are correct in what they are telling you and all the ships I have been on are using the same floating delta type distribution.

You have to put aside a lot of what you learned on land when you get out here and you learn to just go with the flow and try to make things as safe as you can with what you have to work with.

It is a strange concept to be able to take a hot leg of a 3 phase 480 volt service and stick it directly to ground.
You would expect a large bang and some fireworks......but nothing happens, it will just keep working like nothing is going on.

You would not want to leave it like that but it is nice to be able to keep production going while you look around for the ground fault. Although at times it would be much easier if a breaker just tripped so you knew what piece of equipment was causing the problem. Sometimes it takes some digging to find the culprit.

BCS
 
Last week we had snow and one of the fork truck drivers said "not my job" to shovel snow. One of the box stackers said " not my job" to something else last week. Both were things below what they were hired for, where is this coming from. I could see them saying that if you were asking them to do more than what they get paid to do. When I had my business if you said "it is not my job" to me you got the nastyest job I could find and I would then say "THIS IS NOW YOUR JOB"

The one thing I miss the least from my contracting days is "Dealing With Employees"

I already have 3 kids, I was not looking for more when I hired these people.

I miss contracting and working for myself in a way, but I must admit that working for someone else does have its perks. Also my commute to work is not bad. Roll out of bed, put on your coveralls and step out into the hall.....now you are at work.
(Once I am here that is, the commute between Florida and Alaska is a bit long) :)
 
There was a nice drawing right there on the motor nameplate showing how to wire the motor.
No one as of yet has confessed to hooking this up.....I cant say that I blame them either.

This is oddly familiar to me... I worked as the head of the electronics department in a drilling vessel and most of the people in the department were just as clueless.

Here's some of my favorites:

- Get taken out of bed because a solenoid wasn't firing. I get to the room with the control panels and they already have the PLC software open and online with the function that controlled that solenoid. I ask if they checked if it was short to ground or if the coil value "made sense". I get blank stares...
I open the cabinet, drawing folder and the fuse that would have caused this is the top one. I reach up and notice the little LED light on signaling the fuse is broken. One of these technicians had just been hired and was following behind the other. He turned white on the spot. The other didn't see a problem with missing a broken fuse.

- Another was to replace an encoder as they tend to get full of gunk and it's better to replace and clean than wait for it to seize. Get taken out of bed and get told that the encoder isn't working, fuse is blown and PLC in fault.
The first words out of my mouth when I got there were "Did you guys check the drawings??", to which they confidently said yes. I go out to the junction box, pull out the drawing for that encoder and the wires are all crossed about. When asking them why, they said that they thought all encoders connected in the same way.
 
A chap I worked with connected a huge transformer up the wrong way round. It was a 415 to 24v.
Rough maths means the Tran was about a 20/1 ratio.
So he pumped 8000v into the 24v line.
The result was rather spectacular.
 
Bering C.......Thanks for the reply.

Definitely an interesting career path you have chosen! My job is rather boring by comparison.
 
Arrived at a treatment plant near San Francisco. The contractor told me none of the motors would run - every soft start on the plant was no good out of the box, and cussed out the manufacturer. This seemed a bit much to me, as I had always had good luck with that brand.

I opened a bucket and saw the LED on the soft start blinking a pattern. I asked for a manual and decoded the alarm. It was a phase reversal. I had to explain, and prove, that swapping leads on both sides would clear the fault and maintain rotation direction. They ended up rewiring the main transformer, as that was less work than rewiring every starter in the plant.

The down side was that they started coming to me to diagnose every knot head problem they had on the site. It made doing my own job a bit hard, but I charged them for a few extra days of startup and the paid without a whimper.
 
Bering C.......Thanks for the reply.

Definitely an interesting career path you have chosen! My job is rather boring by comparison.

Actually, I sort of fell into this, just happened to be at the right place at the right time.
Not sure how old you are but, the older I get the more I seem to enjoy a boring day. (At least at work)

BCS
 
Yeah I will never get that attitude. I often do things that are "not my job" even help other companies on site, as long as I am qualified and able to do the task why not

I recently switched jobs to cut down on my hours (around 60 a week) and to get more time at home (no more travel). When I interviewed with the company that I am now with, I made it clear that I didn't want to work more than 45 hours a week, and I took a healthy pay cut in the process. The company agreed to all of this.

Now it's "We'll try to get you one Saturday off a month", coupled with "You need to sit by your phone for six hours after your shift ends each night", and "You need to calibrate the power tools".

Definitely not the job that I signed up for. Nor the one that I will be at for very long.
 

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