What are you doing today?

[zzebby]

I have never met you,  but feel your pain.  My lady would want me to move on also.

[Carps]

Hey thanx guys, I have a feeling life will be a little ordinary for a while, I'm just thankful to have so many friends, especially in the world of hot ridding, who even if we haven't met yet have been a great help getting this far throght it.

Hopefully I will get to meet a few more of you when I return to an event near you.

Thanx again friends.

[bucketmouth]

Carps you know I said my piece elsewhere,but this time I can only agree with you, life will be ordinary for a little while but I can guarantee you  life will get better and your memories of Ann will be a lot better.
Meanwhile you have your daughter so use  each other as an inspiration to help each other through the grieving process.

Charlie

[Beck]

Carps,

So sorry for your loss. Moving forward seems so hard, but each day it becomes just a tiny bit easier.

Tom

[Beck]

Up to now we have had a pretty mild winter. It has finally got cold and snowed here. Last night we lost power at work for a few hours. Everything is heated with steam. When the power goes down our boilers shut down and it takes hours to get them fired back up. By the time we got steam back a lot was frozen. Once there is ice in the lines the steam won't thaw it. Everyone knows the results of frozen lines - broken lines.

We have a mess and a lot of work. I'm putting in 16 hr today, but there isn't much we can do with some of the things but wait for it to warm up. Then we will find out how much is busted. It isn't supposed to warm up that much for a week or so.

I do electrical and instrumentation so I don't have it to bad. A lot of my time is spent "on standby". Our mechanics who do the pipe work have it tough.

When I spend all day at work I don't have time to play at home.

[wayne petty]

wow... that must be a mess.. i am amazed that when the power goes down.. that the residual steam in the system is not used to blow the system down to empty it  just by opening the drain valves on the return pipes..  i don't know what kind of plant you are in.. but that is how i would have it rigged.. or at least some kind of generator to keep the steam plant operating.   perhaps even an industrial sized dust collector that the electric motor has been replaced with either a gasoline or a diesel ... so the pipes could be vacuumed out in the event of a power failure.

up in bellingham wa.. cousins were shutting down moms 6500 sq ft building.. i had them use the shop vacuums to pull all the water out of the pipes.  worked great.   not a single broken pipe after a winter without any heat or heat tape going.  mom would have loved the idea.. but she never made it back there.

i was out in the back yard sweating today.. had to put up the patio umbrella to stop from melting..

[Beck]

Our reactors have low point drains with automatic valves that fail open so they are not a problem. The miles and miles of piping in the plant have copper tubing tied to them and are then insulated. The copper tube carries the steam to keep them warm. At the end of the tubing there is a steam trap that pops off condensate. The length of each copper tube run is limited.

The boilers cannot run without electric or air. Air is needed to operate the automated valves. We have three 350 hp screw compressors. The air compressors need cooling from our cooling towers. That adds four 150 hp motors and 4 fan motors. We need to run the water through a reverse osmosis system, then soften it, then put it through a deairiator. 3 big high pressure pumps feed the boilers, then a big air blower to feed air to each boiler. It would take a big generator just to make steam.

We make oil and gear lube additives, and a lot of automatic transmission fluid. A lot of the auto manufacturers factory fills come from us. The additives are very concentrated and thick. If they cool many will not pump. Some of our raw materials are worse.

We made good progress last night. Most things are back on line. Once you get it warm you keep things moving. I saw the outside temp driving home last night vary between 7 and 13. This morning it read 17. It is predicted to reach 28. It's a heat wave.

[phat46]

Yesterday morning we were at -26 officially, though my thermometer only showed -20.   lots of frozen water pipes locally, including my daughter who had the waterlines freeze to her second story kitchen sink. We had heat taped her first floor waterlines after they froze last year, but she had never had a problem with the second story pipes. They run in an outside wall that is actually an overhang from the house. The house was built circa 1880 and at some point the plumbing was added although I don't know how the got the lines where they did! Earlier this week my brother had both water lines and baseboard hot water heat lines freeze and break at his house. He moved from the house last summer and this place hasn't sold yet. He didn't check it for three days and the furnace had quit. Then the fun started. 😖

[Beck]

Some of our products you may be familiar with.

ZDDP, added in the motor oil to help camshaft wear using flat tappet lifters, is one. One ounce of our product brings a 5 qt oil change back to the level it once was. Unfortunately we sell it by the rail car.

The stink in gear lube. That's us too.

Remeber when STP was the rage? We made it for a long time.

Z7 the additive in a famous oil was one of ours.

Back in the day we were a major player in the tetra-ethyl-lead fuel additive.

We make some really good additives, but the memorable names are gone.

These products are all made by a couple of companies. Trying to save a buck, the oil companies send their needs out for bid. It doesn't matter that you made additive X for years and it was always what they wanted. If another company can make it cheaper, your out.

If you own a car, you have some of our product in it.

[Beck]

phat46,

Places where the temp gets that cold are not ment for human occupation.

I never dream of moving north. I always dream of going away from the cold.

[enjenjo]

These products are all made by a couple of companies. Trying to save a buck, the oil companies send their needs out for bid. It doesn't matter that you made additive X for years and it was always what they wanted. If another company can make it cheaper, your out.

It's pretty much the same in the whole chemical industry. I worked in it for about 10 years, our suppliers, and customers changed quickly depending on price.

[58 Yeoman]

Where I just retired from started out as BFGoodrich, making rubber chemicals.  We made one product for Goodyear, and even packaged it in Goodyear marked bags.

Tom, I know what you're going through with the power outage.  If we lost power from the power company, it automatically switched  to getting power from another substation across the river.  If that also failed, we had two big generators to keep the boiler house running.  We normally ran on a coal gen, but had two gas gens idling just in case.  Sometimes we still ended up with frozen lines.  (We made plastic resin).

[GPster]

These products are all made by a couple of companies. Trying to save a buck, the oil companies send their needs out for bid. It doesn't matter that you made additive X for years and it was always what they wanted. If another company can make it cheaper, your out.

It's pretty much the same in the whole chemical industry. I worked in it for about 10 years, our suppliers, and customers changed quickly depending on price.

22 years ago when I was working I ran a pair of distillation columns and a hydrogen compressor at a Shell Chemical Co. plant. One of the products that my unit made was Shellvis which was an additive that was used to make multi-viscosity oils. At one time all but one company ( Castrol?) used it to make their oils. Shortly after I retired (quit working for pay) Shell decided to get out of that business and sold that plant. I guess it quit being exclusive. GPster

[Beck]

I know what you're going through with the power outage.  If we lost power from the power company, it automatically switched  to getting power from another substation across the river.

We have 2 feeders coming to the plant. When one goes down the whole plant is supposed to run on the other. Lately when one goes down the other trips out. It is a simple reset, but not until after an extensive checkout.

[phat46]

phat46,

Places where the temp gets that cold are not ment for human occupation.

I never dream of moving north. I always dream of going away from the cold.

Beck, didn't you live in Alaska at one time? I sent some lugnuts to a RRTer in Alaska, I thought it was you. Not that that would make much difference, it was warmer in Fairbanks Alaska than it was here for several days. This being Michigan, it was cold, but life carried on, no businesses closed, everyone went to work,it was more of a news story, would we break the record low temp for that day?, than anything else. I did worry about people that had to be out in it for extended time, but I heard of no one locally being injured by the cold.