That one day in Baton Rouge where everything went sideways

Tbh, I had a shift last July that still bugs me. I was on a boiler retube job and the tube sheet holes were all off by about 1/16 inch. Took me three hours just to get the first tube seated right. Has anyone else dealt with a factory screw up like that and how did you handle it without losing a whole day?

2 comments

2 Comments

jackson.wesley14d ago

...and I thought I had it bad. Last year I was working on a heat exchanger bundle replacement and found the tube sheets were drilled with the wrong bolt pattern entirely. The whole bundle was like a puzzle piece that didn't fit any board. We ended up having to send it back to the shop and wait two weeks for a redo. My foreman just shrugged and said "that's what happens when you buy the cheapest option." Your 1/16 inch gap sounds like a nightmare though, especially when you're fighting it with a tube expander and the whole thing just laughs at you.

gavin92814d ago

Hang on man, I gotta push back a little on that "wrong bolt pattern" story. That's not really how tube sheets work in practice. The tubes are rolled into the sheet, not bolted through the main face. You're probably thinking of the pass partition gasket or the flange bolt holes on the shell side. Those can definitely be wrong if someone cuts corners. I've seen it happen where the bolt holes don't line up with the channel cover or the bonnet. @jackson.wesley you're right that cheap vendors mess this stuff up, but the actual tube holes in the sheet are usually a standard layout unless it's some weird custom job. Either way, two weeks of downtime for any screw up like that is brutal. Hope that shop got an earful.