On Monday, May 8, 2017 at 10:00:44 PM UTC-4, rangerssuck wrote:
On Sunday, May 7, 2017 at 6:01:12 AM UTC-4, wrote:
On 05/06/2017 1:16 PM, rangerssuck wrote:
...

I surely am hoping that we are on the low side of this range - this
stuff is expensive.

I'm sure they could probably imagine. If I were you, I'd track down the three or four previous contractors/maintenance/service people who left there and get whatever else bad news they found out about the needed repairs.

The only guy who worked on this system in the last 20 years died last month. We did have pretty extensive talks in the past couple of years, though. But he took all his knowledge to wherever lies beyond.

Oh, I have a pretty good handle on the "needed repairs." The problem is deciding which to do now and which can wait a while. Obviously the leaks need to be fixed. As I think I said, the compressor shaft seals are dripping oil, so they're a no-brainer but they eat up a LOT of money in parts (Someone's making big bucks at York). The valve stems all need repacking, some of the flanges need tightening, the gauge tubing all needs to be replaced, 3 of the 6 gauges (suction, discharge, oil for each of two compressors) are inoperable, and most importantly, the relief valves (two of them) are probably the originals from 1980. They should be replaced every 5 years. They both show signs of leakage. I have taken one of them off and it's full of gunky sludgy oil & dirt from being 6" off a very dirty floor.

I got a couple of the kids who work there to clean up the floor (if you're adding 20 gallons of oil a year, the oil must be going somewhere - in this case, most of it was on the floor turning to oil mud), and it made a huge difference in everyone's attitude about the project. Instead of felling like it's a disaster area, it now looks like a reasonable facsimile of a mechanical room.

I really took on this project thinking I was only going to update the control and monitoring system (that's my specialty). Things kind of spiraled from there.

When you're up to your neck in alligators, it's hard to remember that you came to drain the swamp.