General equipment question

[Dleg]

Does anyone know of any instance where an "hours" meter on a piece of equipment might not actually record hours, but some other unit of time?

I just want to ask before I go all "enforcer" on somebody who has told me that he runs the leachate pump three hours a day, but the hours meter shows that the pump has been run for a grand total of 9 hours since my inspection on November 24.

:210:

 

[grover]

:210:

Is it possible this pump was on stand-by 3 hours a day, but only actively running a portion of the time?
If the gage says "hours" it's measuring "hours". It could be broken, but do you think it's more likely a difference in calibration and unit conversion- see, the pump is measureing "real" hours, wheras the worker was reporting "island" hours.

 

[Bminer]

I've used pneumatic and electric down-hole leachate extraction pumps that had volumetric counters on them, but it sounds like you are talking about a leachate sump pump. If the meter is on the pump engine, it almost certainly is measuring hours. Sounds like you need to have them run it for a day and check hours before and after.

 

[Dleg]

but do you think it's more likely a difference in calibration and unit conversion- see, the pump is measureing "real" hours, wheras the worker was reporting "island" hours.

Grover, it appears you have worked in the islands before... I think this is the most likely case.

The pump cannot be put on standby, because the sump level transducer has failed and has not been replaced (for like a year). The site manager says he comes in every morning and switches the pump (one of the two big stormwater pumps) on manually until the working transducer in the adjacent standard operations sump drops below 12 inches. Of course, I have raised the obvious - why don't you just leave the standard ops pump on auto? That's the way the facility was designed to operate... The response is "we don't want to leave the generator on all the time." To which I reply "well, that's kind of against the regulations and your permit, which require that you keep the leachate level below 12 inches (30cm) at all times."

And hence, my about to get all regulatory on their *****.

 

[grover]

Grover, it appears you have worked in the islands before... I think this is the most likely case.

The BEST part about working on Guam is 28 hours worth of flights to get there, and another 26 to return! bump Well, at least per diem covers the hotels around Tumon Bay, that's some consolation.
There are lazy people everywhere, the only difference is the local slang. Actually, I was impressed with how dedicated my local guys in Guam were- I knew the boss there was an insane workaholic who calls me at 2am local time if I send him an email I don't expect him to read until the next day, but I didn't realize his entire crew was! Well, unelss they were putting on a show for my benefit (in which case, I'm convinced!) but I suspect they were more after the overtime. Cleanest damned generator rooms I've seen in my life, though, let me tell you!

Good luck troubleshooting the pump worker!

 

[RIP - VTEnviro]

Does anyone know of any instance where an "hours" meter on a piece of equipment might not actually record hours, but some other unit of time?

I some work on wastewater pumping facilities at an old job. I believe on the control panel, we called for 2 gauges. One was an "hour" counter. Counted the number of hours the pump has operated for.

The other was an "event" counter. It counted how many times the pump had activated over it's lifetime. So if it said 100, it meant the pump had operated for 100 cycles.