Man, commercial construction is awesome! Why? Well besides getting guaranteed work due to the time frames of the jobs, you also get a chance to drive some big machinery. On my site right now we have a zoom boom. Man is that fun! Cruising around lifting stuff, dumping it in another spot, or just using it to move a huge pile of garbage rather than moving it by hand across the site to the garbage area. On other sites I’ve ridden a genie lift, which is a machine to lift people up to a higher place but it’s still awesome to use. If you need to take tools onto a roof and it’s like four flights of stairs it makes short work of that. You save your breath from not walking up a ton of stairs. If you ever get a chance to drive one take it, you can have a lot of fun driving these machines around.

I hate to say this but that transformer is still waiting. When the main tank is filled with oil, the oil has to be processed to remove any moisture that has accumulated in the tank. We had a crew of guys who process the oil 24 hours a day for usually three  to seven days. Our transformer took an extra three days, but finally we have squeezed out enough water that it passed into an acceptable range.

The electrical crew has made the connections, run some commissioning tests, and the old girl is just about ready to take on some power. But you just can’t rush these things, it will go back on-line only when its safe to do so.

And for those of you who have been following these blurbs, I got word back from the apprenticeship branch that I did in fact pass all of the required courses. Whoo-hoo! I feel a strut comin’ on.

Tracy.

At Dorsey Converter Station, there are breakers of all different shapes and sizes.  When common household breakers malfunction, they can be replaced with new ones for a minimal cost.  When a 600Volt breaker malfunctions, the cost is too high to replace.  We put a spare breaker into service, and take apart the broken one.  We take breakers out of service to perform routine preventative maintenance.

In our breaker shop, we have test carts set up to inject current, and test proper tripping points.  Pictured above is a 600V breaker being racked in.

This particular breaker is mechanical.  To test the springs, the push to close button is pressed.  To “charge” the springs, the lever (which resembles a one-armed bandit slot machine) is pulled.  It is very important to wear safety glasses, as the springs have been known to fly out.

This is the only electrical component to the breaker.  It is the overcurrent device.  It monitors the current, and trips under preset conditions.  This is the component that failed, and was replaced before the breaker was returned to service.

Pictured here are the contacts.  A mixture of asbestos and fibreglass chutes, called arc chutes, cover the contacts.  They are removed for maintenance.  Think of the contacts as a switch; when the contacts are open, no current can flow.  When the contacts are closed, current flows, and completes the circuit.  We cleaned the contacts with contact cleaner.  The distance between contacts is measured in the closed state, and adjusted if necessary.  Another important note of safety, always keep your fingers away from the contacts when in the open position.  Since they are held open by springs, there is no telling if and when a spring could malfunction.  The amount of force behind the close action is enough to lose a finger.

This time of year is pretty sweet. Why, you may ask? Well, the overtime. You can make a lot of money working longer hours during the day. Another benefit of the longer hours is that you can make up a lot of your apprenticeship hours as well. During the winter, depending what type of work your doing (residential or commercial) you may or may not get an 80 hours check for two weeks. You get snowed out, or the weather is way too cold, or there’s just no work. But in the summer time everyone wants stuff done and will try as hard as they can to get it done. When you’re a good worker they will call you and you have the chance for extra hours to get that work done, or possibly to make up some hours. Hey you may have to work a little longer in the day but just think of the extra money you’d be making. It helps when there are bills to pay. But don’t burn yourselves out and work yourself into having no friends. That isn’t too fun.

On days like we have been having this week I always want to make sure I have a lot of water with me. I usually drink like 3 or 4 litres of water every day at work. Depending on the type of work you’re doing that day you may need more than that. Today was bad, the worst day this week because it was so humid out it was like 6 degrees hotter than the temperature was. It makes it hard to breathe and think sometimes. Make sure you drink plenty of water and if you’re feeling bad take a shade and water break. Your employer can’t get mad at you if you need to stop for some water. Unless you’re stopping every 10 minutes then maybe they might but if you got to stop once and awhile to have a drink take it. It’s hard to keep working when you get heat stroke. It just makes the rest of the day miserable and very hard to concentrate on the job. If it gets bad then you may need to leave and that hurts when it comes to your pay check.

Ever wonder how a windshield is removed and replaced? It’s actually a lot of fun and an easier process then you might think. At my workplace, the journeyman mechanic I work with has received his window certification. In the past year we have become a credited dealership to install windows and now we install a lot of windshields on a variety of cars and trucks.

Removing a window is simple. The tools you need are a cold knife or a pneumatic knife to begin removal. First step, on this particular van was to remove the hood, window wipers, and front plastic cover. For the interior of the van, rear-view mirror, side a-pillars and side mouldings had to come off. Once everything is removed, you can now begin to cut the urethane from around the window out. (Urethane is what seals the windshield to the vehicle.) A pneumatic air knife can be used for top and the sides of the window. A cold knife must be used on bottom portion. Once the urethane is cut away, the window can be removed. Usually, it lifts right out in one piece, but some are not so easy and end up cracking and making a mess.

Once the window is removed, you clean and prime an area of the vehicle. Urethane only sticks to one thing, and that is a special primer the must be brushed on around where the window will sit. To prepare the windshield, you have to clean it and apply another special primer on the edge portion of the window, where it will contact the urethane on the vehicle.  The next step is to lay a bead of urethane on the primed area. Urethane comes in a tube, like silicone, and a gun is used to apply it. Once complete you can carefully place windshield into place.

Installing windshield is an easy and fun process. I have just learned how to remove and install windows, and I am planning on taking the next day course so I can be a certified windshield installer as well.

I had a chance to frame a garage this week. Man that was fun. Like a miniature house but with no floor.

We built it on a slab of concrete and got to shingle the roof as well. It took 3 days to get it all said and done. The one problem we ran into was in the slope of the slab. It sloped 2 inches in the floor. The walls were a little out because since the garage was a package there wasn’t much we could do to change the stud heights. It looks good though and once it’s stuccoed and finished it will look really good. Sometimes you run into a situation like this the odd time and the only thing you can do is roll with it .

Outage season is over.  With a site safety meeting fresh in our minds, my journeyman and I set out to replace a faulty CVT (capacitive voltage transformer).  This particular CVT is used to monitor voltage, and to protect a transformer down the line.

For our safety, any job at Hydro starts with a job plan.  These are written up by the person in charge (or the trainee), and they list the job steps.  Alongside the steps are the corresponding safety measures that need to be taken.  The number one job step is always to visually check our clearances.  In our case, it involved walking outside and double checking that all three phases of breakers and disconnects are open, and the necessary ground switches are closed.

Next, the journeyman hung our temporary working grounds.  I have not reached the proper level of training to do this.  He donned his 230kV rubber gloves, rigged up the hotstick, and hung the grounds.

The journeyman disconnected the secondary connections while I went up in a Genie to remove the riser from the CVT.  With the assistance of our utility staff, we rigged the faulty CVT with slings, and used a boom truck to lift it off of the structure and onto the ground.  The new CVT was lifted in the same fashion onto the structure.  I went back up to clean up the connections with a scotch pad and rubbing alcohol.  I applied Penetrox to both surfaces, and reconnected the bolts.  Penetrox is used to prevent the oxidization of aluminum.

It was a cool 2 degrees in the morning when we started, and a slightly warmer 10 degrees when we were finished mid afternoon.  If you are interested in this field, be prepared to work rain and shine.  It is important to have clothing to keep you warm, and dry.

They are fun to build and put up.  Doing that just helps the house take shape and livable.  Granted you don’t need them to live in a house but it helps with keeping the house warm because you can insulate them when you’re done.  Then if no other rooms are going to be framed in you can drywall and the basement will look complete.  It’s a nice touch to a house.  You just want to remember though not to have too much of an expansion gap between the bottom plates.  I had some friends that had to go back and fix some basement walls because of that.  Some of the nails were barely holding so you could just push them off the plate that was fastened to the concrete.  Again it’s always good to check and recheck plumb and level of openings and of the walls.  You may think that since you can’t see it too much when you got it all framed up but once the drywall goes on, you notice a lot of stuff.  More so then when it wasn’t.  It takes a few extra seconds to check and when it’s all said and done it looks better and could be the difference in a new client or no client.

Training is always a good way to get ahead.  The more you end up doing something you’re going to get better and better at it.  Side jobs are a good way to get a little more training.  Granted it may be hard to price jobs and get them done in the amount of time you thought they would take because you may not know how long it will take or how much to charge.  But if you know someone who knows the ropes it can help out with pricing and they may even help you out and after a few jobs you may be able to tackle them on your own.  I have a chance for not making money but a little extra training in framing.  Especially when it comes to layout wall plates.  It’s an easy thing to do but there are little tricks that other journey people or more experienced people know.  Getting these tricks can be good to know because they can be used later for yourself or a job you may be doing for your boss.  I’m looking forward to it because I decided to make this a life career so anything that helps advance me and make me better at it, I’ll take it.  I would suggest any of you who are looking at getting into a trade, especially if it’s the best trade ever like carpentry, take whatever chance you get for a little extra training.  On job, in school, or with someone you know who does the same as you.