Loading…
4
Wrote off wire brushing the tube ends for 3 years, then a guy in Gary showed me his boiler logs
I always figured wire brushing tube ends before rolling was just busywork the old timers pushed. Then last month I watched a crew in Gary pull 12 tubes on a 300 hp unit they had brushed by hand, and every rolled joint passed hydro the first time with zero seepage. The crew I was on before that had 4 leakers out of 20 on the same size job because we skipped the brush. Took one look at the guy's maintenance log showing 6 years of no tube failures and I went out and bought my own brush that afternoon. Any of you run into a job where skipping the brush actually bit you later?
1 comments
Log in to join the discussion
Log In1 Comment
loganhart7d ago
the guy's maintenance log showing 6 years of no tube failures" could mean a dozen things and not just the brushing. Maybe that crew was just better at rolling, maybe the tubes were cleaner to start, maybe they ran better water chemistry the whole time. I've seen plenty of joints pass hydro that never got touched with a brush, and I've seen brushed ones leak too, so it's not like the brush is some magic wand. Hydro passing on the first try is great but one job going good and one job going bad is not proof of much, that's just two data points. You changed your whole routine off one afternoon and a log book you didn't write, which seems like a lot. I'm not saying brushing hurts anything, but calling it the difference maker is a stretch. Show me a few hundred joints with a real side by side test and then we can talk.
1