Wide–perspectived problem solver with creative approaches to challenging situations. Electromechanical Engineer with excellent troubleshooting skills acquiredin the military, automotive, aviation, power production, chemical and education industries. Areas of expertise include instrumentation, electronics troubleshooting and repair, Labview programming, plant operation, general maintenance and calibration. Interests include Scouting, camping, Science fiction, Historical fiction, Archery, and many other things.

First off: growing this site, as I hope for it to be a place where people can let off some steam, and maybe make things better for jobseekers and their potential employers.

I enjoy "conspiracy theories" as I like trying to make sense out of possibly unrelated events and human motivations, to produce a more or less coherent picture of the somewhat chaotic world we live in.

GB

It's something no one knows about, except people I tell, but here goes. I was working as a Night Maintenance guy in an eleven-floored, twin-towered hospital when I received a page from someone in the Emergency Room. They had heard a noise and felt a tremor in the floor and thought that someone might have crashed their vehicle into the building.... I investigated and found nothing wrong when the "Tremor" re-occurred. I asked if that was what they were referring to and they said "Yes, Just like that" Knowing the building layout quite well, I knew that the ER was above the Chiller basement, I went downstairs, into the chiller basement and while there felt the tremor and heard a loud "whooshing sound" near the ceiling. Having worked in a Boiler /chiller plant before I knew the characteristic sound of a "Water hammer" in piping... Most of you are probably familiar with it on a small scale if you have radiators and a boiler system for central heating... This is caused by condensed water being driven by steam pressure until it runs into an obstruction or sharp bend in piping. Back to the story... The Noise came from a 48" pipe providing steam to he hospital. Three boilers were located in the basement next to the chiller room. I went there and before reaching it felt the floor beneath me shake. As I said before,i had previously worked in a place where large industrial boilers were in use and had come to grips with an idea I had about the danger zones of industrial boilers. (These are my own ideas and not an official guide.) outside of a hundred yard radius, you would probably receive minor injuries. Between 100 and fifty yards, you would be horribly injured, burned and probably broken bones with 50% chance of survival. Less than fifty yards, nearly instantaneous death... I stopped and thought about running for a few seconds, then though about all the people who might be killed or injured if I ran and decide that I could not live with that, so continued into the boiler room. Upon opening the door, the basement "SHOOOOOOK" violently in "THUD,THUD THUD " manner and I froze for a few seconds.... The steam feed 48 " line"( about 1.5 meters in diameter for you metric folk) was moving about two feet at a time in perfect time with the thuds and tremors.... Reminding myself that i was "safely" within the zone of "Instantaneous Death" I figured that if it went I would probably not even realize it, so figure I would try and correct the problem. Fortunately due to prior experience, I knew something about boiler operation, and even more foutunately , the cause was right in front of me... The control air line to the feedwater valve had blown off and was flapping wildly due to its internal air supply venting. INFORMATIVE POINT: Boiler feed water valves "FAIL "OPEN") so that a boiler will flood rather than run dry as being flooded is much less dangerous than having an empty boiler which can explode violently. Back to story again. With feedwater valve closed preventing further water ingress, there remained the problem of having an overfilled boiler and water in the steam pipes. Once again previous knowledge of boiler operations provided the solution. open "Blowdown Valve" and hope for the best. After several minutes the thuds and tremors began to subside and I could remember to breathe.... Needless to say, disaster was averted...