Well, uh... I went back.
After a few hours at the house my boss and I began texting. I was offering to come into the shop to do some cleaning on the trucks' interiors or help him paint cylinders. He informed me that there were two OOG calls (Out Of Gas) both in Kentucky that needed to be taken care of. So I agreed to come in, grab a truck and head to KY just to get those two customers taken care of.
UGH. So I dusted the snow off the car for the third time yesterday and headed in to work again. After dragging my feet at the shop, I finally hit the road. The local roads were (and still are) crap. Ice and snow covered. The interstates are in better shape, but still have a little slicky slushy stuff here and there. But Kentucky... damn it was a nice day over there.
I even had to break out sunglasses, yep. Sunglasses. I was diggin' Kentucky yesterday. But I was only there long enough to service the two customers in need of assistance then it was back into the belly of the big white beast.
The first stop was a Taco Bell that had a 300 lb tank which was bone dry. I filled them up and left them a back up cylinder and headed to stop number two.
The second stop was at a McD's inside of a Wally World. They also had a 300 lb tank that appeared to be bone dry, but it wasn't. It was half full of an ice ball.
CO2 takes on three different states of being; solid, liquid and gas.
Inside a container with pressure higher than 64 psi CO2 is a liquid, a very cold liquid. When that pressure drops below 64 psi the CO2 freezes into even colder dry ice.
Apparently there was a leak in the McD's system somewhere that caused the pressure to drop below 64 psi and freeze up their supply. As I was adding CO2 I noticed that the back pressure wasn't raising on my guns' gauge. I stopped flow and went in to see what was going on. The full/empty gauge was showing full, but the pressure was still below 64 psi.
At the truck once again I turned off the liquid supply and turned on the vapor balance, then turned on the gun to add pressure only to the tank. The vapor balance allows us to take the air pressure from the bulk tank on the truck and push it into the bulk tank at the customer, to increase their tank pressure to a normal level. It didn't take long before the pressure built to 200 psi in the McD's tank.
I then went in and checked things out to see if there was indeed a leak. Yep, sure was! Their maintenance guy was there with his trusty spray bottle of soapy water helping me locate the source of the leak. Lucky me it was on their side and therefore not my responsibility to fix. But I still ended up spending close to an hour helping them figure out why their tank had froze up. I'm glad I'm paid by the hour! haha
Finally ready for the trip home I stopped to grab a quick bite to eat and then hit the road. Things were still lovely in KY, but started to get tricky when I got about 45 miles from home. By the time I hit Charleston things were getting hairy with blowing snow, slick roads and general yuckiness.
But I was home and settled in by 7:30 pm and thankful that I did end up going in to accumulate hours and keep myself from having to work today. :o)
UGH. So I dusted the snow off the car for the third time yesterday and headed in to work again. After dragging my feet at the shop, I finally hit the road. The local roads were (and still are) crap. Ice and snow covered. The interstates are in better shape, but still have a little slicky slushy stuff here and there. But Kentucky... damn it was a nice day over there.
I even had to break out sunglasses, yep. Sunglasses. I was diggin' Kentucky yesterday. But I was only there long enough to service the two customers in need of assistance then it was back into the belly of the big white beast.
The first stop was a Taco Bell that had a 300 lb tank which was bone dry. I filled them up and left them a back up cylinder and headed to stop number two.
The second stop was at a McD's inside of a Wally World. They also had a 300 lb tank that appeared to be bone dry, but it wasn't. It was half full of an ice ball.
CO2 takes on three different states of being; solid, liquid and gas.
Inside a container with pressure higher than 64 psi CO2 is a liquid, a very cold liquid. When that pressure drops below 64 psi the CO2 freezes into even colder dry ice.
Apparently there was a leak in the McD's system somewhere that caused the pressure to drop below 64 psi and freeze up their supply. As I was adding CO2 I noticed that the back pressure wasn't raising on my guns' gauge. I stopped flow and went in to see what was going on. The full/empty gauge was showing full, but the pressure was still below 64 psi.
At the truck once again I turned off the liquid supply and turned on the vapor balance, then turned on the gun to add pressure only to the tank. The vapor balance allows us to take the air pressure from the bulk tank on the truck and push it into the bulk tank at the customer, to increase their tank pressure to a normal level. It didn't take long before the pressure built to 200 psi in the McD's tank.
I then went in and checked things out to see if there was indeed a leak. Yep, sure was! Their maintenance guy was there with his trusty spray bottle of soapy water helping me locate the source of the leak. Lucky me it was on their side and therefore not my responsibility to fix. But I still ended up spending close to an hour helping them figure out why their tank had froze up. I'm glad I'm paid by the hour! haha
Finally ready for the trip home I stopped to grab a quick bite to eat and then hit the road. Things were still lovely in KY, but started to get tricky when I got about 45 miles from home. By the time I hit Charleston things were getting hairy with blowing snow, slick roads and general yuckiness.
But I was home and settled in by 7:30 pm and thankful that I did end up going in to accumulate hours and keep myself from having to work today. :o)
Comments
I used to work for a local Coca-Cola distributor and we always had the CO2 tanks in the storage area - hearing the guys talking about transporting them, etc. made me think they could fall, have the top knocked off and take off like a bullet through the wall!