02 Base for my son

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George B

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Foot still not doing so well. Have an MRI scheduled for the 9th to see if maybe it’s torn. Have to wear a stupid boot while I sleep which makes it hard to get any good sleep because it gets caught on and wrapped up in blanket and wakes me up. Hate this, but I appreciate you asking. I’ll update when I know more. Until then I’m gonna keep hopping along.
Stick your booted foot in a pillow case and tie it somehow. Then it won’t get tangled in your sheets.
 
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Snowbound

Snowbound

Jim
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Didn’t get a concrete grinder. Nobody had one local up there. Found one at Home Depot by my brother’s work but it was $185/day and by the time we would get it back it would be 3 days. We’ll come up with something, doesn’t have to be done right now. I may even cut out a 12-18” wide section and just pour new concrete to have a smooth transition between the slabs.
It was where they poured the new slab up to the existing pad and didn’t make sure they were even. They just allowed the concrete to flow up to the bottom of the plywood on the outside wall. Can’t roll a sled on dolly over this hump.
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And it’s the entire seam.
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So we ended up getting the plywood up on the walls. This side was up before so it went up easy after we cleaned up and dug the plywood out from other garage and carried it over.
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The other side was never up because we had the bench, toolbox and shelving in the way. After cutting out holes for outlets and switches, wood went up and stuff came back in.
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Snowbound

Snowbound

Jim
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The roof and skylights are done now too. Didn’t get a good picture but you can see the roofers donated a broom that they left on the roof.
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The roofing guy called me on Friday while we were heading up. Asked me if I was gonna finish paying him. I said, I was waiting until you gave me a total. Did it end up being what we originally agreed upon or was there anything extra that needed to be added in? I can’t pay if I don’t know how much.
So I ended up sending him the balance. He didn’t have any up charges thankfully. $6800 for a total tear off, disposal, double layer of ice and water, new ridge vent and replaced 2 skylights. I didn’t think that was too bad. Best part, I didn’t have to do it. They even fixed a small drip I had in sled garage around skylight. I think that developed when we moved it.
My brother and I did everything on Saturday, including putting new shocks on his sons sled, replaced the slides, put the skid back in and adjusted the track. We headed for home Sunday about 12:30-1, I got home at 7 so I could head to work at 10:15. Heading back up in a few weeks to get the other sleds ready for season, put them in garage, do something with that floor and get my trailer pulled out from back of property. We couldn’t get the trailer this weekend because it poured on us all weekend and I didn’t want to rut up the yard with the truck and trailer.
 
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Snowbound

Snowbound

Jim
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Few things have kept me occupied lately.
At work they finally released some funds to give us some steam this year. Better late than never. And instead of replacing the boiler, we have to upgrade it. We did all the heavy lifting and piping but someone else is coming to do the programming and fine tuning. This thing requires a laptop to program and tune. Above my pay grade.
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Burner removed.
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Had to add back up safety's to secondary safety’s which was a royal pain and will be even worse once this thing is fired.
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Snowbound

Snowbound

Jim
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Had to fix a few things I got wrong. Just where I ran conduit because the print was screwed up and I assumed but that was an easy fix.
Should be testing for leaks and firing it this week. Fingers crossed.

The 3rd and smallest boiler we have is only for heating barged prior to offload. It’s a “portable” boiler that was brought in 28 years ago as a “temporary” fix. Yeah, you read that right.
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That boiler was leaning but the trailer wasn’t. It was falling thru the trailer floor. They talked about bringing in a new trailer and transferring everything over. I heard that and was like, oh helllll noooo! So I talked the superintendent into letting me shore up the floor instead of all that work removing, stripping and reinstalling a 60 year old boiler into another trailer. I don’t even think we could safely move this trailer the way it sits. Still sitting on its original tires and the glad hands for the brakes have been long removed and I know these brakes won’t release.

So I spent my nights in the cold and snow for the better part of a week shoring up the boiler. We are sitting on limestone bedrock so I made the entire thing adjustable so I could level it up and make future adjustments if needed. This type of work should be handled on days where there are more bodies and a lot more light but here I am stuck on midnights doing this stuff alone in the dark!
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No better feeling than welding I-beam while laying next to and most times on top of a 2” rusty gas line that feeds the boiler. I just kept telling myself it wouldn’t hurt if it blew up. I probably wouldn’t even feel it.

But it’s back up and level. 2 days after I made the repairs, the boiler blew 2 tubes out and had to get them replaced. I wasn’t gonna do it. They also got rid of a lot of the old controls when it was apart. This boiler used to run on gas and fuel oil. Now only gas.
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Snowbound

Snowbound

Jim
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This past Wednesday before thanksgiving, we had a pump failure. It was on a circulating pump not a loading pump which is better but still was a mess.
Here’s the inside of the pump house that is attached to the shore tank. The pump on the left is for loading trucks and railcars and it’s suction is directly on the bottom of the tank. The pump on the right is for circulating and heating the product. It’s suction is off the side wall of tank and routed thru a heat exchanger before returning back to the side wall of tank but higher up.
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This is the routing of product. As it passes thru the heat exchanger there’s are internal tubes that we open a steam valve and allow steam to pass thru the tubes and that heat gets transferred to the product.
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When a tank product gets down to around 85° is when we start the heating process to get the product up to as high as 120° in some cases. With the majority of our tanks being million gallon capacity, typically not always full but normally we are at levels 245-260”. So when we start this process we open the suction and discharge valves and then start the pump. Always pinch down on discharge side to make sure the product is flowing and the pump isn’t air bound, which does happen from time to time. This pump will circulate product thru the exchanger for up to 5 days non stop getting the temp from 85-118°. It takes time.
So this process was started by day shift on Monday. Come Wednesday the pump was off and product was spewing from the backside or the dry side of the pump. This means the basket was breached and who knows how long that leaked for. We usually do a good “walk thru” at the beginning and the middle of our shifts looking for spills, leaks, power failures, heat traces not functioning or any signs of potential problems. Day shift said they checked it at 11am, afternoon guy said he found a lake around the tank at 7pm so who knows how long it was leaking for. Our go to in the industry is 150 gallons is all we lost because that puts us just under the recordable quantity. According to the met-tape reading it was a lot more than that but nothing I’m willing to put into words online.

So it was all hands on deck Wednesday to suck up the product and put into tanker trucks and then “control spill” of dilute scrubber tank acid to neutralize the spill. But I will say, this was all in containment and not a spill or threat to environment.
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This was how it looked this morning when I went back to check on it before my shift starts at 11pm where it’s hard to see the whole picture. It has to look presentable before Monday morning when the majority of the company is gonna find out we had an oopsy.
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Snowbound

Snowbound

Jim
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And yes, I did get paid to go this morning to check on everything. Double time too. I wouldn’t have gone out of the kindness of my heart, I’m not that devoted. But for $80/hr with a 4 hr guarantee, I’ll go check it out. Lol. Was there about an hour just hosing some more down and rolling up hoses.
 
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Snowbound

Jim
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I did find a weekend to get back up north and grind that floor down. I picked up a dust collector for 7” and 4” grinders, hooked them up to vacuums and went to town. Grinding wheels weren’t cheap but was still a lot less than renting that stand up grinder. And I have them now.
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Made a big difference and now the sleds can roll over that without coming off the wheels. Got the trailer out from behind the house and sleds unloaded and into garage.
 
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Snowbound

Snowbound

Jim
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Looking at this pump, I would say the pump was air bound and got pretty hot which caused the failure. I’ll never say that to anyone at work and throw a fellow worker under the bus. But that’s what it looks like to me. EA0BB7F0-A523-411A-8F50-5F8305A0B9FA.jpeg

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That setup right there is about $18k before this inflation stuff. I’ll try to show later tonight when I get back to work exactly how these pumps work having a wet and dry side and what “basket” I was referring to. Once you see it you’ll be like, oh ok, that makes sense. Pretty simple setup but industrial chemical pumps aren’t cheap.
 

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