Lost a whole day of work because of a stupid valve failure near Port Arthur

Last Tuesday I was on a pipeline inspection job about 30 feet down in the Sabine River. Visibility was crap maybe 2 feet tops. About an hour in my primary valve started sticking. Figured I could finish the run but by minute 45 I had zero flow and had to abort. Surfaced and found the seat had a chunk of rust the size of a quarter lodged in it. That was a $1200 day lost just on downtime. I spent the next 3 hours flushing lines and swapping parts instead of working. My tender said he heard a weird grinding sound through the comms but thought it was just the current. Any of you guys run into sudden valve failures on older gear before?

2 comments

2 Comments

robinmason6d ago

Man that's brutal. I had almost the exact same thing happen on an older pneumatically actuated valve a few years back. What finally helped me was switching to a full breakdown and inspection every 50 hours instead of just relying on the annual service schedule. I started pulling the seat and piston assembly on a Sunday afternoon when nothing else was running. Caught three more pieces of junk before they caused a failure. The tender hearing a grinding noise but not saying anything is the real kicker though. Those comms are there for a reason, wish they'd flagged it earlier for you.

gonzalez.phoenix6d ago

Same thing happened to me on a Beaumont job last spring, cost me a grand easy.