Winter Cooling Tower PMs

Spring Cleaning Done Early

Not all cleaning should be done in the spring. Wintertime is the perfect time. Your cooling systems will be shut down for several months and will need some tender love and care if you want to prevent breakdowns during their peak run times. Get ahead with a few key procedures.

Wintertime means less stress on your cooling towers. You are likely running fewer chillers, a lower speed on its VFD or possibly running on a chill plate. This lack of a load on your cooling tower(s) means either entire towers are offline or maybe only a few cells in the tower are currently active. This is the time to do a deep clean on your offline towers.

Electrical Tape Tricks

Now that you've learned the importance of having more colors of tape than you thought necessary, it's time to learn some a few like tricks.

The Hidden Benefits of Colored Electrical Tape You Didn't Know About

Colored Tape is Your Friend

We all have a need for electrical tape. You likely have a roll in your bag, pouch, box or with a majority of your tools back in the shop. But what color is it? Most will answer black unless, of course, they have been an electrician. Some people may have never seen the variety of colors, or may even question the usefulness of such colors.

The Danger of Oily Rags

Don't Throw Them in the Garbage!

You could burn down your shop or your yacht! Though I doubt anyone with a yacht has a need to read about rags. The key take away, that oil and chemical-soaked rags are surprisingly dangerous. The yacht in that story was burned down from simple linseed oil. Yes, the same kind you use on your weekend woodworking projects.

Why You Need to Carry a Reflector

A square reflector

Photoelectric Sensor or Photo Eyes

They are all over almost every machine you will work on in an industrial setting. You will find hundreds to thousands of them on most types of material handling equipment. Think of your shipping sorters and conveyors.

Stop Pencil Whipping PMs

Your lies screw up metrics

Close all work orders by the end of the shift! We've all heard this line. Managers always talk about metrics and how we need every PM completed no matter what. In theory, it makes sense. We need to complete these jobs to keep the equipment running as efficiently as possible. If the work is done, great no problem. When we complete work orders for the sake of completion, problems start to arise.

How to Justify Money on PMs

It's Costs More to Not Spend Money

Maintenance departments are often the first to have their budgets slashed or be denied approval for increased funding. This is often on account of the people in charge of finances up the chain of command being quite unaware of how much money is actually being saved by a properly maintained facility. The term no news is good news is very true when it comes to maintaining your facility.