Where have I been for so long?

1/16/11
I've been rather negligent about posting on this blog for a while. Let me "esplain".

In October I worked in the outage at the Power Plant. I worked as an "entry attendant".
This is where I sit on a chair, usually in a freezing place somewhere in the shut-down unit of the power plant, with a clip board in hand and watch every.single.worker who goes in and out of the confined spaces.

The picture you see here is from a floor view. The workers climb a ladder then squeeze themselves into these pipes through the tiny entry.

The air hoses, vacuum hoses, blast hoses, compressed air hoses etc all are put into the entries as well.

Since it was a confined space, I had to check the air, twice a day, morning and after lunch, and record the names of every person who went in and out of those spaces and make sure everyone was out safely at the end of the day before I could go home.

The hours were straining. We worked from 7 am to 7 pm, which meant we were up by 5:30 am, lunches packed and out the door by 6:30 and on the job by 6:45. I rode with my hubby to and from work. We got off at 7pm but really didn't get home until 7:30. We made tomorrow's lunch, tonight's dinner, showered and dropped into bed exhausted. 12-hour days, 7 days a week for 4 weeks. By the time I was done I was so exhausted.

I was laid off on a Tuesday at lunch time, so I jumped in my car and headed to Salt Lake, since I only had 3 more choir practices before our concert.

First stop was to see my newest little Grand Son, Patrick who had been born the week before, but I couldn't see until now because of the outage. What a beauty he is!!! Dimples in both cheeks. His sister is so darling as well. I loved my grand children fix I got that day. Then off to choir. And back home that night. I don't get back to the carport until midnight usually on Tuesdays. My "hard-hat hair" was pretty awful, but I was so glad to be freed from bondage, I didn't care.

Soon after that, my daughter from Denver showed up unexpectedly and we got to keep her sweetie pie children for a day while she headed up north to help take care of her sister, the new mother.


Aren't they so delightful? While D2 was slaving away for D3, making casseroles, cleaning and taking care of her, we got to play with the kids. She sent her dad a text and asked how they were doing. His answer? "L is taking a nap and C is playing with knives." "yeah right, Dad" she replied until he sent her a picture of the evidence. "might have known Grandpa would get out the knives." YIKES!!!

I spent the next two weeks just recovering from work. 

Then there was Thanksgiving

 the Christmas Concert,

Christmas

Now after recovering from the holidays. . .

. . .well, not quite. All my Christmas decorations are still up.

(ed note, they came down the 2nd week of Jan.)

I am currently working on 5 identical quilts to match this one I made a couple of years ago. I knew if I made one for one of my children, the other 5 would want one as well. So this quilt goes to the first born grand daughter who gets baptized in each of my children's families.

Two grand daughters get baptized in March. The firstborn of my second son, a grand daughter gets this quilt. Her cousin, the second born of my oldest son gets a different one. But I haven't designed it yet. Still working on these other quilts. Of the other four of the BeAttitudes, three first born grand daughters will all get one the same year, in about 6 years from now. So no worries for now, but as long as I am thinking this through, I am working on all at once. WHEW.


Now that the New year has come, of course come the resolutions. Lose weight is on my on the top of the list and we have started P90X. It is a brutal form of exercise and takes you through muscle confusion, doing something different each day from legs to arms, chest, abs, yoga, etc. I've been on it for only a week and don't love it so far. But does one ever come to look forward to exercise? Especially when those quilts are hanging over one's head?

On other projects, I have taken to etching glasses for Christmas and wedding gifts. My daughter has the most beautiful handwriting so I asked her to please write some names for me. Resulting in several cups like the picture below: (I'm going to have to learn how to photograph these better)

Just before Christmas, I was honored to be asked to sing "Star Bright" by Lorin F Wheelwright in a quartet with some choir members in Salt Lake.  After ward, Jackie, the accompanist, found a darling Willow Tree figure called Bright Star. She said she couldn't resist and purchased 5 to give to each of us and keep one for herself. 

She inspired me. I had some glasses my sister had started, but had decided she didn't like them. Mom said she was going to throw them away, did I want them? They were the most beautiful wings, but no angel. I scratched away part of the paint and inserted an angel.

I gave these away to the other three singers and the accompanist. I wish I could have kept one for myself, but I guess the pictures will have to do.
4/5/11 (update)
I have kept this as a draft since January and only recently discovered that I hadn't published it.
Now it is April and I've had two more months of adventures to catch up on, including finishing the two quilts, attending two baptisms, one in Utah,  one in Colorado. Afterward, I stayed with my mom for 3 weeks and helped her out.
Now I'm home and exhausted from two intense months of quilting and one working for mom. There is no rest though, the minute I got home, I got three phone calls and had three alterations to attend to right away. One skirt hem for a lady whose mom passed away, and two prom dress alterations which include extending the back to make it fit the sweet girl, shortening the hem and making two sets of sleeves for the dresses to make them a bit more modest.
I'm feeling a bit of a depression, I'm not sure why. I got sick for a week at Mom's and just finished the antibiotics. I worked hard for her, in spite of my illness.  I exhausted myself making those quilts, and dropped the exercise and diet routine flat on its face during all that stress.

My choir music is not helping a bit as we are singing some Walt Whitman junk. I wonder why he ever wrote and published his "work". And that leads me to wonder why someone else was "inspired" by his stupid words enough to put the stuff to "music". Believe me, it is horrid to the ears and the "poems" are NOT inspiring either.
That is my opinion, this is my blog, I can say what I want here. Walt Whitman stuff STINKS.

Worse yet, we not only will sing this in the upcoming concert,  but again in Washington DC in the Kennedy Center. And I rue the day I purchased tickets to go with the group to sing there on Memorial Day. What a waste of money, time and effort. Plus my head keeps singing the stuff.

I am usually uplifted by the music we sing and it makes my day/week. But this has been pure torture. Speaking of that, it is Tuesday now, and I have to head to choir, dragging my feet all the way, but out of guilt I am heading.

All the while, two prom dresses call to me to finish SOON so they can get them steamed and ready for the BIG DAY. Tomorrow I will be exhausted from the 5-hour round trip and getting home by midnight, so it won't be much of a productive day.

bleahhhhhh  that's my story. I hope life is treating everyone better out there.

Every Day is Wednesday

Every day is Wednesday.

That is what my boss told me. When you work twelve-hour days, seven days a week for several weeks, every day seems like Wednesday.
One day I asked him how his day was going. He replied it was OK for a Monday. Of course, it wasn’t Monday. At least I didn’t think so. But it is easy to get confused on those matters. I inquired what he meant by that. He said, bad days were Mondays. Things had gone wrong that day, so it was a Monday, but things were looking up, the problems solved so it was better.

Today is my last day. I guess that makes today Friday. I found my self singing the same song all day long, from Les Miserables. One More Day. . . 2-4-6-0-1

This company is so nice. The people are typical construction workers. They are happiest when they are kept busy. By that I mean they are not afraid to work and get dirty. But these men are clean cut. Most have families. I hardly hear a swear word, and when it does happen, they quickly remember their manners and apologize. Most drink coffee, chew or smoke, or a combination. Occasionally I see a Mountain Dew or Dr. Pepper. Most work hard all day. The bosses have hired enough temporary workers that they know how many they will need, and there is no time for slackers. There are, of course, slackers. Today on the scaffolding crew, one kept popping out of the hole like popcorn. I had to write his name down many more times than the rest. At the end of the day, one of our workers mentioned how "Popcorn" was hated by all down below. He was supposed to be handing the scaffolding up through the first hole, instead, he went up the ladder to just below the surface and texted the rest of the afternoon. But most are really hard workers.

Because of the short time I work with them, I don’t get to know them very well. But some return from previous years. Like friends you haven’t seen for a year, it is fun to have their names pop right back into your head as soon as you see them. I hadn’t thought of Carlos for a year, yet the minute he was on the job, I knew his name.

Today I am in the Suburban again. I got to spend the weekend in there, but was back inside the dirty, drafty building the next two days. Today the project is winding down, and I am watching the outside entrances to the Condenser. The Scaffold men are taking the scaffold down.
I am in awe of the scaffold men. They are here to make things safe for the rest of the workers. But who makes it safe for them?

Sailor took me up to the 13th floor to show me the boiler. But a “level” for the power plant is more like two levels in any other building. A set of stairs that gets you to the next level in a house is only half the way up in the power plant. One has to travel two sets of stairs to make it to the next floor. We came to a door surrounded by a fence. When I looked inside, there was a large room that spans the entirety of the 13 floors down and several more upwards. I felt my stomach drop as my eyes traveled downward.

I backed away holding the railing with one hand and my stomach with the other. But then my husband directed my attention to the top part. Suspended from beams above the ceiling is a curtain of heavy tubes that hang down, then turn toward the wall. Under that is a large shelf, called a bull nose that juts out. It starts at the top of the room on one wall then juts out at a 45 degree angle away from the wall like a slide for about 15 or 20 feet (I will check with facts, but in that huge room, my concept of measurements is completely messed up). My husband says it is closer to 50 feet. Then it turns at a right angle and heads back to the wall. If there is a way to get to the top of this bull nose and slide down, you would have a 12 story, or is it more like 24 story fall before you hit bottom. At around the second floor level two walls of this huge room slope inward and meet at the bottom like an elongated funnel.

I know now where Star Wars got their inspiration for that room where Luke is sword fighting Darth Vader. You know, the one where you cannot see the bottom? Well, that is what I thought of when I saw this room. You can take pictures, but you never quite get the true feeling until you see it in person. Sort of like a Cathedral in Europe. I probably could have taken several panoramic pictures and pasted them together, but unless I made it 3-D, I don't think you would still get the idea.

The startling sight for me was the scaffold in the middle of this bull nose. First of all, how did they ever get to that place to build the scaffold? I am sure they have their ways, but I don’t think I would ever have the courage to watch. I was freaking out watching my men jump around on a two-story place. I might have just keeled over with fright or faintness had I been the entrance attendant for this place. I feel dizzy just describing it. I thought my painter men were part monkey they way they climb and swing from place to place. They are amazingly agile and light. Last year I watched the scaffold men build a tent room to house the workers while they did their work and they climbed around, slapping their safety harnesses from place to place. I thought they were amazing, but this year, when I saw that huge room and the height of that scaffold, I realized why it was so easy for them to hop around on a tiny tent scaffold. I could never do that, and I am glad my children don't have that vocation either. I would never get any sleep.

I just have to say two things: number one: I am so glad I am a stay-at-home mom/seamstress. Number two: if it were up to me to earn the living, I probably wouldn’t join the painting or scaffolding crew.

So today is Friday for me. My sixteen day journey of Mondays, and Wednesdays has now come to an end. It has been a fun adventure, but if I had to maintain any more twelve hour days, without one day off, I think it would be hard, and I might have to turn to more legally addictive stimulants like Mountain Dew. Looking forward to sleeping in tomorrow, and looking forward to two pretty nice pay checks.

I took pictures, well, I had Sailor take pictures. He will email them to me tomorrow from work, so I can post them.

have a nice night
~a

Exciting times

I think I will track my exercise in a new post each month. I didn't do any exercise today, the reason is explained in the last post.
Yesterday, July 30, we realized our D1 had rescheduled her move from July 31/August1 to July30/31. We had scheduled to come up on the 1st and help move, then spend the night and attend a wedding on the 2nd. Instead, we quickly packed an overnight bag and headed north. The kids and the cousins had worked all day and had the U-haul all packed and moved over to the new house, ready to unpack. We helped load the last of things in the Explorer, then D1 and I stayed to clean a bit. There was really not too much work left. When we got to the house, we realized SIL1, Sailor and a darling niece had most of it unpacked. We helped with the rest, admired the wonderful house and yard. I got a call from S3 to tell me his daughter was born at 9 pm. What an amazing day. I count my blessings with all this sweet stuff happening. By the time the U-haul was unloaded, it was about 11 pm, and we decided to drive home. We got home by about 2:30 and in bed by 3. Got up this morning at around 9. Both of us are wiped out.
Sailor had the day off, so he is working on the fence. He has finished enough that the neighbor dog can no longer see us. He has stopped barking so much. It is a relief.
I had better get back to work now. I have so many sewing projects to finish. About a dozen or so receiving blankets, a torn skirt, a zipper, and a coat to reline. Oh and there is more, that is all that I can think about now.

~a

Exhaustion

Yesterday was my last day at the Power Plant. I signed out on the confined space form, turned in my orange confined space tag and my gate pass. I am done!

This is the last of a 4-year contract, so I don't know if I will work another outage. The big bosses asked me to call them in November and remind them of the sticky gooey mess this is, and how much they HATE it. They didn't coat all the sections of pipe in the four years they worked here, but don't think it will fail. It could, and that will be discovered with tests through out the year.

Basically they have to pull all their help off every other project, hire all sorts of extras, and buy TONS of other safety gear and other stuff in order to staff this job. The Vice President, Operations Manager, Safety Boy, and all their foremen drop every other project and come down for a month in order to do this outage in April. They rent rooms at a motel or haul their travel trailers and rent a space in the trailer park. They told me that there are many other projects they could have, because it is good weather in April, that they have to turn down or delay because of this contract. The contract is now done. Besides they hated working with the engineering firm who headed this. They were hired by our plant to head this whole mess up in the first place, but they really didn't know any more about what we were doing than anyone else. Everyone has lost respect for this engineering firm.

But this job was great for our family. The first year, S3 paid for his mission clothes (about $1000), and put away a sizable CD that matured when he got home, which he used to help him get back into school.

The next two years, it paid the way for Sailor and me to travel to Austria and sing in a choir for Mozart's 250th Birthday, and pick up S3 in Taiwan from his mission. This year, no major trips are planned. I will put the money away into a savings account.

I slept in this morning until 9. Ah, the luxury. But I have found when I sleep in, I have all sorts of weird dreams, too confusing to even recall all the details. This morning I got up with Sailor and packed some goodies into his lunch box, but somehow found myself back in bed 3 hours later, not even remembering heading back. I am NOT a morning person, but somehow I managed to do it for 2 weeks. It doesn't sound like a big deal unless you are doing the 12-hour days.

Mind you I am not whining or complaining, just describing.

I know other people go through MUCH worse, like my sweet D2 who works full-time, 12-hour nights at the Children's hospital. Her job carries their only insurance, so she says she has no choice. Besides the ungodly hours, she sees death and all sorts of sickness and has to leave her sleeping husband and son while she goes to work. She is pregnant and due in May. I cannot imagine enduring what she does. She is a hero in my eyes. D1 gets up every day with her husband at 3 am fixes breakfast and lunch, says a family prayer and sends him off to work. Then she works full time as an assistant manager at a hair salon. She is amazing. D3 works as well. She worked her way through school, and then got a job at a doctor's clinic while her husband worked and finished school. DIL 2 and DIL 1 also worked while finishing school and after they graduated to support their husbands through school. All five girls are amazing to me, and I love and admire them for doing this. Thank you sweet daughters. I met two girls on this job who are single and support their children. They are both Mom & Dad in their families. All these people are amazing to me.

I am a spoiled Brat. I have always had the privilege of staying at home.

But here is what we did during the outage: Basically Sailor arises at 5:30 (how does he do that every day of his life?) turns on the television and the heat and proceeds to make breakfast and pack the lunch we prepared the night before. I dragged out at 6 with his gentle persuasion, that being the heater, television and a jug of Mt. Dew propped up by the pillow beside me. He is so patient. Then I would pack the veggies, dip, cheese sticks, and some sort of treat. Mostly the treat was a snack bag of cashews and M&M's or a granola bar. I would put in my contac lenses, mascara, curl hair (even though it was squashed by a hard hat), blush and some sort of lip gloss. Then the clothes (at first it included long johns, but after a week it got warm enough to eliminate them), socks and the much hated work boots. Drag out to the car and ride with Sailor the 13 miles to the Plant.

Work was varied enough not to get bored, and everyone who visited the two tents said I had many more responsibilities than the other hole-watch did. I guess that is why my Boss loved me. Then finally at 7 pm (Sailor was kind enough to just wait in his office, even though he was usually done by 6) Sailor would come pick me up and we would go home. Mostly we made supper and tomorrow's lunch, eat, shower and go to bed.

Usually we dragged to bed by 10:30, no matter how hard we tried to make it earlier. Last year we each had a task after work. We would chop up a huge salad, make delicious Martha Stewart meat balls or bread. We used this for our dinner and our lunch. This year, a woman approached me just before the outage started and begged me to make her and her daughter each an outfit for a wedding coming up in May.

Back in January when the Project Manager calls, he reserves us for a month, so we never know how long this will last. It usually doesn't last that long, but you never know.
So almost every night this year I sewed for an hour while Sailor did all the kitchen work. On Friday's we got off early, and I would do the wash and sew. We still didn't get to bed until 10:30.

It was a blur of Ground Hog days (referring to the movie). I never knew what day it was, they all blended together. Sunday's never felt like Sundays. Last Sunday, Sailor was off, but that Angel got up with me, helped me pack my lunch, made breakfast, like always, then drove me to work.

I KNOW! I am a spoiled brat. He had his cell phone, so he texted me about Sacrament meeting. He told me who spoke, about the beautiful song the choir sang and the amazing talks. He attended a baptism at the Spanish Branch where 82 people showed up, and they ate a pot luck afterwards. It was the baptism of the Branch Presidency 1st counselor's son. Then he picked me up at the end of the day.

The first year, I had to go through a different gate for contractors called Badge Alley. This was such a hassle. It was a quarter of a mile from the tent, so you had to wait for a van to pick you up and haul all your stuff back and forth. I NEVER left anything in the tent because the Night workers and Hole Watch had no respect. Everything was eaten, used, thrown away and lost in the morning. The B Tent attendant left her tote there the whole two weeks this time and no one touched it. Not possible in my tent. I hauled a duffel bag, a lunch box, my hard hat and safety glasses and a Hart's jug every single day. She even threw away my bouquet of flowers I brought this year.

The second year, Sailor worked it out with the main gate so I could go with him through the front gate. This was better for us both because of my hassle, but also so Sailor wouldn't be late going through his gate. Names are taken at 7:01 and you get called into the HeadOfThePlant's office, or something equally as ridiculous. So to spare me of having to go through Badge Alley, my sweetheart took me to work on his day off.

If you click on the title, you can look at all the pictures on my Picasa Album, if you are interested.

have a wonderful day.
~a
PS Just got a call from B tent Hole Watch. The wind is blowing, the door of the tent has blown off. The dust is horrific, she is wearing a dust mask and is freezing. The two extra girls, Safety Girl and Office Girl are watching Hole A and Hole C. Hole C is outside, doesn't have a tent, so I hope they provided a truck for her to sit in. Nobody gets a break to use the bathroom, because the idiot Safety Boy went home today. He should have stayed as long as they needed him. He is so full of himself. I liked the Safety Guy they had the last two years. He treated us as if we were important to him. Anyway I am glad I am gone, but I feel sorry for the ones who came and faithfully gave me a break every day, now are freezing and eating dust and nobody is giving them bathroom breaks or bringing them hot chocolate.
But they are earning another day's wages. . .This one is well earned, I guess. Actually I should say the company is getting their labor for cheap today.

Yo Mama wears Army Boots!

I had to get a picture of my station. The orange tags show the names of the people who are in the hole right now. The clip board is where I write their names and the time they went in and came out. I brought some flowers. I actually had it better by the end of the day, with a little table cloth on that bucket that says: "NIGHT HOLE WATCH DO NOT TOUCH" She always left the place a mess with wrappers and all sorts of junk, I am not too sure why she was so sensative about someone touching her stuff. I had to sanitize the clip board and pen every day to use it. yech

This next picture is a view of the inside of the tent to the outside. You can see part of the Power Plant. The large containers hold the two parts of epoxy. They are called the "milk cows". This year we had to have a heater on in the tent to keep them warm, so I dubbed them the "sacred cows".


I was asked about the fumes. The only fumes I smell are the ones that come with when a bucket of unused epoxy reacts. It actually smokes. I had a spot thermometer that I could point at a smoking bucket and it was registered 335 degrees.
This bucket was so hot it melted the bucket and the burning epoxy turned black and flowed outside the bucket! This puts out fumes as it smokes. The buckets have to be taken outside and left on the ground as they smoke, and until they cure. The smoke is really nasty, and because of one undetected one in the tent, I got a headache last week. The big bosses made me stay in their trailer for over an hour to make sure I was better. Now I notice the least whiff of the stuff and make sure all the hot buckets are outside. Last week someone in Tent B put one in the dumpster, and they had a spectacular dumpster fire. I didn't get a picture, because I am not allowed to be out of sight of the holes.

Oh by the way, they call the other tent, Tent B, but they call us A Hole. Then they all laugh.
There are some raunchy things said, but most of the stuff is cleaned up for my sake. My boss loves me because my presence makes them mostly behave themselves. His wife told me that last year after the outage was over. Our cars happened to be parked beside each other at a restaurant the last day of the outage. She had driven to be with him for the clean up, since he had been out of town for 3 1/2 weeks. He saw me and introduced us. She jumped out of her car and ran over to meet me. She said she was so happy to finally meet the lady her husband had so much praise for. "He has been talking about you ever since the first year you worked for him. Among other things, you totally clean up the raunchy language, just by your presence."

Speaking of jokes, several have been told that were funny.

Three friends die and get to Heaven about the same time. They are issued their halos with the warning that any impure thoughts would cause the halo to fall off. Right then a beautiful girl walks past and two men's halos fall off. The other one still stood there. But when the first two bent over to pick their halos up, the third guy's halo falls off.

It is funnier if you tell it using your friend's names.

Here is the second one:
Three guys die and are at the Pearly Gates awaiting to be admitted into Heaven. St. Peter comes to the gate. He tells the first guy that in 1999 he cheated on his taxes. For that sin, he would have to spend eternity with this girl. She walks in and is one of the ugliest people he had ever seen. The first guy protests and asks about his two friends, they cheated on their taxes too didn't they? Just then an even uglier lady walks in. St. Peter explains to the second guy. You cheated on your taxes every year. For that you have to spend eternity with her.

Next a beautiful woman walks in. The first two look incredulous. "We KNOW he is not innocent, what is this?"
St Peter explains: "She cheated on her taxes."

So it is bedtime, I am exhausted. Probably only two or three more days and I am done. YEA

more later
~a

My husband explains the Power Plant

We have two complete power plants at our station. As you have learned in elementary school, power is generated by boiling water and directing the steam over something like a fan, and that turns a generator producing electricity. It is a little more complicated that that. The turbine is actually a bunch of sections of fan like blade, but it is more like a jet engine than anything else that you might be familiar with.

The steam goes through the turbine and has to go somewhere. The turbine is enclosed in a big steel box that would quickly fill up with steam if it remained as steam. We work pretty hard to make the boiler water really, really pure, so we don't want to just shoot it into the ditch, or blow it off into the atmosphere, so we cool it down and make the steam back into water and pump it back into the boiler.

But there is a lot of energy that has to be absorbed, even from the spent steam before it turns back into water. You have probably noticed how badly you can be burned from just a little bit of steam leaking out of a microwaved potato. Your skin is providing cooling for the steam from the potato and condensing it back into water. We have a LOT of little pipes that run through the steel box - tens of thousands - that the steam can condense on. What keeps them from getting as hot as the steam? We have huge pipes connected to some of the worlds biggest swamp coolers, and we circulate the water from the swamp cooler (cooling tower) to the big hot steel box with tens of thousands of cool tubes (condenser). The steam comes off the turbine and comes in contact with the outside of the small pipes. Water from the cooling tower is on the inside of the pipes (condenser tubes) and keeps them cool enough to condense the steam.

The pipes that carry the water from the cooling tower to the condenser are the circulating water lines. They look like they are made of concrete, but there is a steel liner in the concrete and around the liner is something like a rebar mat. Each section of pipe has a steel end that hooks to the liner. Each of the steel ends of all the sections should have been welded together with little straps to make sure that they are connected electrically. We put a little bit of current into buried steel structures. This is called cathodic protection. During construction these rings should have been connected, but they weren't and consequently they got rusty and weak.

Annie has been working with a company that has been reinforcing these pipes. They are about 9 feet in diameter, and are buried about 20 feet underground. The workers have been pasting sections of cloth soaked with epoxy into the pipes, forming hoops. It is kind of like paper-maché on steroids. The carbon fiber is extremely strong, and when saturated with epoxy and glued into multiple layers, it is unbelievably strong and tough. We hope that it keeps the pipes from collapsing.

The rebar-like mat that corroded provided most of the structural strength that the pipe had. The rings, on the interior of the pipe will help prevent the pipe from failing. Even though this is a pretty expensive repair, it is very cheap if you consider the alternative. To dig up a 9 foot in diameter pipe buried 20 feet deep in the ground - two of them (one to bring the water and one to return it to the cooling tower) - and about 2000 feet long would have been a gargantuan job. Pipe like this will cost hundreds of dollars per foot, and even to lay new lines and then just tie in during an outage would be like installing the Panama canal. So this is a better plan.

The Outage

I am working temporarily at a Power Plant during their outage. An outage lasts one month and it is where they close down one of the two units, and strip it down to nuts and bolts and fix everything they possibly can. Of course it has to be inspected before hand and plans have to be made, bids put out to bring in the proper companies to do the repair work, etc. I work for a painting company as their Confined Space Attendant, or Hole Watch for short. Basically I watch the entry to a pair of underwater pipes.

These pipes are the circulating water pipes, and provide cooling to the Plant. One is the return pipe and the other is the supply pipe. The pipes measure 9' by 2000', and measure about 20' from the ground to the bottom of the pipe.

Because of a dras oversight made during construction the pipe is now rusting. To put new pipes in would be prohibitive, therefore they are lining them with epoxy soaked carbon fiber.

The painting company I work for is applying this carbon fiber to the insides of these pipes. It has been a 4-year long contract with an engineering company. That company hired a painting company out of Salt Lake. This company usually does bridges and dams, but they accepted this contract. I have been with them as a hole watch for 3 years now. My son was with them the first year. Each year they alternated between Unit 1 and Unit 2 to finish this project. They applied this carbon fiber to the worst sections first.

The first part of the job consists of LOTS of dust as two workers go down with blasters and basically sand blast all the bad part off. It takes two days and the tent gets dusted as some of this dust filters back up the hole.

This shows one of the men going down into the hole all you see his his bald head, and his blast helmet. This hole is a tight squeeze.

The carbon fiber has to be cut to correct lengths and is marked according to which section they have to be applied to. This shows my boss bringing in the carbon fiber in boxes.


This shows the pipe. The closest section is one that hasn't been fixed. The next one has been blasted and primed, ready to add the carbon fiber, but a sheet of plastic is laid down to cross this section and head further down where they are applying fiber.
This section was accidentally primed before they were ready to add the fiber, therefore they had to keep priming it until they were ready to apply fiber

This shows the scaffolding which is called the stage. The man underneath is called the swimmer. He basically has to apply the fiber under the stage.


This next picture shows the men on the stage applying the fiber and the inspector sent from the engineering firm making sure they apply it correctly.

This is a picture of me on the stage with the hard-working men. I went down one day to visit and take pictures. The one on my left is Stubby. He dubbed me "Lady-Love" the first year I was there, and always used it to call on the radio to call for more fiber or Cab-o-sil.

This shows a view from below going up the ladder.



I will be posting periodically on different aspects of this job. I have found a whole different world of people and of course I find them fascinating. I will also post some pictures as well.