I have a scene in my head Electrical engineer on a project, things are going as planned. A worker comes to him the conduit buried is crushed, somebody with heavy equipment ran it over to save time. He now has to go to the project manager.
Just a minor scene in the story, I have been looking for a while now and can't find the right terms or story.
Anybody know this one?
Thanks, limab
I think it's in his "Lena" after they are together and she has taken on the job in the office w/ him on the project. But, I could also be mistaken. (shrugs)
"You're thinkin'..." the foreman said.
"That some asshole ran heavy equipment over my ductbank, Jeff." It didn't take much walking to locate the heavy tracks across my route. "Shit!" I said. "Here's a week's delay, right here."
The foreman shook his head. We carefully paced to the next manhole, and I said, "three hundred feet. Do you have something you can push up the pipe to measure? If you find the obstruction three hundred feet from this end, we're going to have some fun..."
His chuckle came through clenched teeth. "Yeah! Fun! Because some asshole took a shortcut to save an hour ... Lemme get some fishtapes hooked together. I'll call you on the radio when we're done."
Christina by oyster50.
Thanks, guys. somebody pays attention.
And yes, that's ripped out of a sad episode in real life.
oyster
And yes, that's ripped out of a sad episode in real life.
There is always at least one idiot who either wasn't paying attention or thought it didn't apply to them.
I'd have thought it would take something considerably bigger than normal construction equipment to crush a utility grade conduit in one pass.
I'd have thought it would take something considerably bigger than normal construction equipment to crush a utility grade conduit in one pass.
"Looks like somebody ran the heavy crane across the main ductbank from the utility substation between our first and second manholes. It's collapsed. Wanna come look?"
Conduit for buried cable is usually just plastic of some form, strong enough to keep it from collapsing while the trench is backfilled, but not strong enough to take a heavy load like a large crane.
When I was in college I work-studied in the A/V dept., and one of the things we did was pull coax for the [small] campus-wide TV network we were installing. The conduit was ~3" in diameter, and the wall thickness was about 1/16th of an inch. Depending on what kind of angle the crane crossed the ductbank at, I could see it crushing the conduit.
When I was in college I work-studied in the A/V dept., and one of the things we did was pull coax for the [small] campus-wide TV network we were installing. The conduit was ~3" in diameter, and the wall thickness was about 1/16th of an inch. Depending on what kind of angle the crane crossed the ductbank at, I could see it crushing the conduit.
That isn't utility grade stuff. When I talk about utility grade conduit, I'm talking about conduit for 4kV and up electric cable.
That isn't utility grade stuff. When I talk about utility grade conduit, I'm talking about conduit for 4kV and up electric cable.
Since I need to know everything, would would a utility grade conduit look like for a four inch 4kv line?
[Riki-Tiki-Tavi is my spirit animal. You know - "Run and find out!"]
Since I need to know everything, would would a utility grade conduit look like for a four inch 4kv line?
It could, but it could also be bigger. What would a conduit look like for a 135mV transmission line?
[Riki-Tiki-Tavi is my spirit animal. You know - "Run and find out!"]
Presumably you'd love to work for a company called "Walk & Seymour" ??
The thin stuff Lonely Dad was talking about was probably P&C duct. Very light weight and rarely used on industrial sites for power if at all (unless someone's seriously cutting corners). On industrial sites the normal conduit is either schedule 40 or schedule 80 PVC. In sizes 3 inch and above the wall thickness for sched 40 is about 3/16 and sched 80 about 1/4. Industrial duct banks are also almost always encased in steel reinforced concrete colored red. Above 600 volt usually calls for more concrete and more re-bar. Per most codes and job specs it will almost always be buried at least 18-24" to the top of the concrete and often more. About the only thing with much chance of breaking a covered duct bank would be a large, non-roadable, assemble-on-site crane in the range of maybe 400 ton or larger capacity. I once saw an old abandoned duct bank stop a Cat belly scraper cold. It cracked the concrete but didn't collapse the conduit.
For the sake of accuracy, I am a full-time chemist and a part-time chemical engineer. I am not by any stretch of the imagination an electrical guy. While I was onsite in Tennessee, I saw a really big crane carry one of the high-pressure stainless steel reaction vessels I was on the design team for cross an area it wasn't supposed to cross, and it looked to me like something buried had been crushed, compressed, or displaced. The word "conduit" was used frequently in the resulting screaming fits/meltdowns (so was the word "idiot", but...) I didn't investigate further, so I can't say for absolute certain what was damaged, since it didn't affect my part of the project. This is why I found the description plausible, at the very least.
similar scene in his "And Baby Makes Four"
The closest I can recollect in that story is
we surveyed and platted the land and started laying the foundations for the roads. And I had a face-off with the people putting in the sewers.
Of course they wanted to wait until I had actually put in the roads before tearing them up to lay their sewer pipes. That way, they told me, they would know where to lay them, and their equipment, which was not made for dirt roads, wouldn't get stuck in the mud. I rejected that explanation and ordered them in over a corduroy road. They hated that.
in Ch.9.
Gentlemen, thank you. Christina it is. That was an itch between the shoulder blades and nothing to scratch it with.
Been there, seen it happen, learned some new ways to curse from extremely upset project engineer. Chemical plant outside of Murfreesboro, TN. Heavy crane is a pretty massive piece of equipment, needed to move some extremely heavy reaction tanks. The conduit didn't stand a chance.
It was founded by Gina Marie Wylie as a vehicle for her own stories, some of which subsequently made it to here. Some of her older stories here (or on AssTr) never made it there in the first place, probably because the site carries more SF than sex. She was happy to post stories by other authors there although she reserved the right to ask for improvements or reject things outright, something Ernest Bywater fell foul of. She also pulled several of her stories there to try and sell them online, a strategy which did not work out.
Most of the authors and stories there also appeared here and/or on other sites, the biggest exception for me being Bruce Bretthauer. He called himself Prince von Vlox here, his Kalliste stories made it to there in a different form but his Three Valleys stuff (strong on sex) only appeared here and pretty much everything else (strong on SF) only there.
Afaik the site could be said to be withering on the vine nowadays.
I used to work as security at a steel mill. They had a HEAVY front loader that was supposed to bring some slag to the scales and weigh it out. Since the scales was only a 60 ton capacity, they were to weigh the front axle, then turn around to get the rear axle. One guy got in a hurry and just drove over the scales. When all the wheels hit at the same time, the cast iron beams underneath shattered. Shut the mill down for a week.
