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Rant: The worst week I've ever had on a shutdown at the Gary plant | Boilermakers - Freelance Forum - The Community for Independent Professionals

brooke_foster51•5mo ago

Rant: The worst week I've ever had on a shutdown at the Gary plant

Last Tuesday, we had to pull a big heat exchanger bundle with a crane in the rain. The rigging slipped and it dropped about a foot, bending a bunch of tubes. Then, the new gaskets we ordered were the wrong size, so we lost a whole day waiting. The foreman just kept saying 'figure it out' while the plant manager was breathing down our necks. Has anyone else had a bundle pull go that sideways?

4 comments

4 Comments

oliviajenkins5mo ago

Wait, it dropped a whole foot?

vera295mo ago

Exactly, OliviaJenkins. A foot is a huge drop in water level for a lake. It changes everything. The boat dock at my cousin's place is now sitting on mud, completely useless. You also see old fence posts and foundations that haven't been visible for decades.

johnkelly5mo ago

Remember hearing a loud bang once when a sling let go... scared me half to death. We started using those bright colored lifting straps with the sewn eyes instead of wire rope, way less chance of slipping on a wet bundle. Had a foreman like that too, OliviaJenkins, always just telling us to figure it out without lifting a finger to help. You gotta slow everything down in the rain, double check every choke point, even if the bosses are yelling. Lost a day once waiting on gaskets, so now we always lay the new ones on the old flange before the old bundle even comes out.

anthony_jackson314mo ago

Vera29, are you sure the whole lake really dropped a foot? That sounds like something folks say after a dry spell when they start seeing things that were always there just below the surface. I've been around lakes my whole life and water levels go up and down with the seasons. Sometimes people see an old stump or a rock that was always covered by a few inches of water and they swear the whole lake is drying up. And a foot is a pretty big claim for one dry summer. I'd want to see some actual measurements before I started worrying about fence posts and dock damage.