8
Hit 500 hours on a single boiler rebuild and it changed my mind about rushing jobs
Just wrapped up a full rebuild on a 1950s firetube boiler for a museum in Cleveland, and the log book showed 502 hours from start to finish. Everyone on the crew, even the foreman, kept saying we were moving too slow and that a job like this should take 350 max if we hustled. But here's the thing, when we got into the shell, we found corrosion patterns the initial inspection missed. If we had rushed, we would have just slapped in new tubes and called it a day. Instead, we took the time to properly cut out and replace three full sections of the lower shell course. That extra 150 hours wasn't wasted time, it was what made the repair actually last. I know the push is always to go faster, but sometimes the numbers tell you to slow down. Has anyone else had a job where going against the 'faster is better' grain actually saved a bigger headache later?
3 comments
Log in to join the discussion
Log In3 Comments
karenlee6d ago
Allen.ruby nailed it, that's just good work.
8
allen.ruby18d ago
Tell your foreman that 150 extra hours is a lot cheaper than explaining to a museum board why their historic boiler just turned into a modern art fountain. Good on you for not letting the rush job culture win. Finding that hidden corrosion is exactly why the "right" speed for a job is the one that actually finishes the job. Sounds like you saved them a world of hurt down the road.
1
Exactly, that extra time is just part of doing the job right (and avoiding a total disaster).
3