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Posted by Dick Bishop on June 03, 2003 at 15:54:43:
In Reply to: leaving boiler unattended posted by James Jackson on January 19, 2002 at 22:27:03:
: I work for a company in Renton Washington that will soon have us leave the high pressure grade 1 boiler room unattended while we hop in a truck and check on other machinery. has anyone else ever heard of such neglect/risk? I am currently trying to dissuade them but time is short.
Hey been fighten the issue in Ohio for over twenty-five years. What has worked for me, I was an Examiner of Steam Engineers before we were privitized, I would tell the plant officials that I know they had to have a lot to deal with in their jobs, and I knew they could not have been put in their current position if they would jepordize the safety of their staff or the public.
With this in mind I have shown respect to then and their position, I then tell them I, or the operator can agree to leave the boiler for however long it takes the boiler to go from a normal water level to one inch of water in the glass or the low water shut off stopped the firing whichever came first, with the boiler operating on a maximum load.
We call this an evaporation test, it simulates that if the flow of water stopped to the boiler and the automatic devices failed to shut the boiler down how much time could the boiler operate without damaging their equipment, or getting into a catrastrophic condition. Most plant supervision dose not understand that this can happen in seconds.