The People We Hire!

There was a part 2 to my earlier story. The chief at that company phoned me and asked why he had been sent instead of me
I told him.
'Can you come, he doesn't seem to have a clue'

When I got there, the foreman was laughing and dragged me to one side.
It seemed like 10 minutes before he composed himself enough to speak.
He said 'he turned the isolator off on the wall but turned the roof fans off instead. You should have seen him jumping about and swearing when he got a belt.

And it wasn't the rectifier.
 
1. drove 125 miles one way just to reset a circuit breaker.

Not me, but a colleague of mine took a 2 hour helicopter journey to an offshore installation just to push the enter button because no one wanted the responsibility.
He literally got off the helicopter, went down the stairs with his survival suit still on, pushed the button, had a coffee while the computer booted and went back up to the same helicopter and home.
 
Just have to re-post this, originally form some time in 2011:

Anyone know where the Faroe Islands are? They're in the North Atlantic, somewhere between Iceland & Scotland. 50,000 people, 80,000 sheep. If you ask for directions to get there, you'll probably hear "you can't get there from here"...

Anyway, about 8 years ago, a recently-delivered fishing vessel developed an electrical problem. Looked like a Hall-effect sensor on leads to one of the navigation lights (to sense whether the filaments were intact) wasn't working, triggering the stand-by light to come on, even though the main bulb was OK. If I remember correctly, we had a TWIDO PLC in the lighting control panel, but GSM modems were still in their infancy back then, so we had no remote troubleshooting ability. Sounds trivial, right? After about a week on the phone with a "technician" (Bubba) who spoke Icelandic, Faroese, Danish & German, but very little English, I was able to deduce that it wasn't the sensor, and that the MCR wasn't energizing when the PLC was on, likely indicating a burnt fuse or a burnt coil in the MCR. After several days of trying to explain to the technician where the relay was (a simple 8-pin) and where the six spare relays were, I decided to jump on a plane.

Well, you really can't get there from here - at least not easily. The first leg of the flight to London was delayed by 4 hours. Missed my flight to Copenhagen by 30 minutes. Spent the night in airport hotel. Not cheap. Begged another airline to accept my ticket from the previous day and jumped on a little plane to Vagar. Arrived OK, rented a car, drove through miles of tunnels and along the side of countless cliffs, found the boat, changed the relay and returned to Vagar the same day. outgoing flight delayed due to fog. Finally left 8 hours later. 15 minutes from Copenhagen, a kidney stone decided it was time to come out. Nearly died before I landed. Spent the night in hospital (thankful for travel insurance). Managed to get on the flight to London later the next day, then off to Canada.

The St. John's airport we were supposed clear customs was closed due to fog. Flew to Halifax, instead, where we waited on the runway for several hours because there were no customs agents available. Finally flew back to St. John's, cleared customs, flew back to Halifax and made it home the next day.

All for a 20-second relay change!
 
I have a lot of guys that like to wire motors seemingly by just equally dividing all of the wires up into bundles. 1 bundle, 2 bundles, it really depends on the size of the wire nut they have in their hands at the time.

Funny you should say that.
I got a call that a motor would not run the other day and found this.
(Those other 3 wires must not do anything so no reason to connect or even cap them off, Right???)

Motor was wired
T4 - T7 - L1
T5 - T8 - L2
T6 - T9 - L3

T1, T2 and T3 were just shoved off in the pecker head.

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.

Bow_Thruster_Bilge_Pump_Wiring.jpg
 
Things like this may also have to do with the age old "you pay peanuts, you get monkeys". Not saying I am making heaps of money, but I might not be all that motivated either if my salary was that of an average factory production worker.

The average production workers AGREE to that (starting) wage.

Maybe they would have been promoted if they had performed better.
 
Speaking of people tying in stuff, I had what I thought was a competent electrician wire in a rotork valve, I gave him a sheet of labels as well as what conductor in the 10 conductor teck cable went to what terminal on rotork.

Glad I double checked he just tied
conductor 1 to terminal 1
conductor 2 to terminal 2
etc....

When asked why he didn't follow list which was very clear
conductor 1 to terminal 34
conductor 2 to terminal 36
etc...

He said he thought my drawing was wrong because the cable was factory labeled as to what terminal it went to. :cry:
 
Funny you should say that.
I got a call that a motor would not run the other day and found this.
(Those other 3 wires must not do anything so no reason to connect or even cap them off, Right???)

Motor was wired
T4 - T7 - L1
T5 - T8 - L2
T6 - T9 - L3

T1, T2 and T3 were just shoved off in the pecker head.

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.


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?
 
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?

I would assume that ground would be the ship hull correct?
 
I would assume that ground would be the ship hull correct?
The answer is yes. I was a reactor controls officer on a nuclear submarine a long time ago. The hull was ground. The 3 phases were always supposed to have infinite resistance to the hull. If SHTF one phase may be shorted to ground and still operate but if two phases were shorter to the hull the system shut down. This didn't happen as far as I know but I have been out of the navy for 37 years now.
 
The answer is yes. I was a reactor controls officer on a nuclear submarine a long time ago. The hull was ground. The 3 phases were always supposed to have infinite resistance to the hull. If SHTF one phase may be shorted to ground and still operate but if two phases were shorter to the hull the system shut down. This didn't happen as far as I know but I have been out of the navy for 37 years now.

That sounds like an ungrounded delta system.
 
Saturn, Peter is correct about the grounding. I was a Nuclear Electricians Mate on a carrier, and had to know the electrical system of the entire ship.

The Navy does not ground any transformer at all, not even 120V neutral was grounded. This is for battle damage. If we sustained a missile or torpedo hit and a leg of the system grounded, you wanted to still be able to "FIGHT THE SHIP" as a former Commanding Officer of mine would say.

That reliability is why you will find ungrounded systems in old manufacturing plants, but due to safety many of those old systems are being phased out.

Electrical safety takes a back seat in the Navy in that regard, since not being able to fire back at an enemy is more deadly than an ungrounded system.

I am not sure how a civilian ship operates as far as that is concerned though, hopefully Bering C will reply back and tell us.
 
Saturn, Peter is correct about the grounding. I was a Nuclear Electricians Mate on a carrier, and had to know the electrical system of the entire ship.

The Navy does not ground any transformer at all, not even 120V neutral was grounded. This is for battle damage. If we sustained a missile or torpedo hit and a leg of the system grounded, you wanted to still be able to "FIGHT THE SHIP" as a former Commanding Officer of mine would say.

That reliability is why you will find ungrounded systems in old manufacturing plants, but due to safety many of those old systems are being phased out.

Electrical safety takes a back seat in the Navy in that regard, since not being able to fire back at an enemy is more deadly than an ungrounded system.

I am not sure how a civilian ship operates as far as that is concerned though, hopefully Bering C will reply back and tell us.

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.
 

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