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Post by John on May 8, 2013 13:50:58 GMT -5
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Post by colly0410 on May 8, 2013 15:38:54 GMT -5
Thanks John, found it interesting.. |
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Post by John on May 9, 2013 6:57:24 GMT -5
Yes it's a pretty comprehensive report, I was actually searching for a paper George Robinson wrote many years back, George was the chief Ventilation Officer when I worked for Boulby, suspect he has now retired.. But the article is embedded within the report...Years back when I copied the report, my paper got suck in the printer and two paragraphs were screwed up, problem was, I don't think I saved a backup copy anywhere. Anyway, found what I was looking for and will probably post it soon.
He mentions in his paper, which is in the report of using "micro climate jackets" for miner and shuttlecar drivers...I recall at the start of one afternoon shift, George coming into the main entrance hall handing out these jackets to the south side heli drivers and shuttlecar drivers, ventilation was pretty good at this point with the two 1350HP fans balanced and providing plenty of air around the mine. I asked George, "you're not telling me the mine is warmer now than when I started in early 75 are you" "He laughed and said NO" It was a psychological thing for all the new starters....LOL
I don't think they ever actually worked.
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Post by colly0410 on May 9, 2013 10:45:19 GMT -5
Never heard of a micro climate jackets before, I wonder how they are supposed to work?  |
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Post by John on May 9, 2013 12:14:26 GMT -5
They look like those plastic safety jackets road crews wear, but they have several pockets in them with Velcro covers...Dry ice was put into heavy cardboard packets and placed into the pockets of the jacket.... I doubt H&S would allow it today on the grounds of accidentally getting burned by the dry ice should you contact it...
No, have no idea if they worked or not, I wore shorts and tee shirt, sure I got hot, but in very low humidity, I cooled off pretty fast..Was impossible to do any physical heavy labour for too long, the risk of heat stroke was just too great..
If you could use a machine to do the job, it was used.
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Post by colly0410 on May 9, 2013 15:03:20 GMT -5
I can remember how hot & humid it was in the headings down in the black shale seam, I'd find a hole in the ventilation bagging & stand there with coolish air blowing on my boat race.
I was in K6's (black shale) main gate heading when they broke through to the tail gate heading. My ears popped, then the air changed direction & it cooled down to relative comfort. It seemed to be blowing a gale until they built a temp bratice regulator in the tail gate..
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Post by John on May 9, 2013 15:22:46 GMT -5
Never worked in a hot colliery, very warm and humid in some faces but can't say hot. Boulby was very deep and the ambient rock temp at that depth is 108F, add to that machinery and men, plus the ventilation air gathering heat from compression in the first fiew months when I first started and you get pretty hot.
I recall a cutter myself and another electrician stopped back on at the end of a day shift to change the cable. These were big Joy cutters, not like the old AB15's and Sampsons we used in coal... These were rubber tyred with a 90HP cutter motor and about a 25HP pump motor, large horizontal FLP cable reel at the back.
You have to remove a large steel top flange to get into the reel compartment, then a round FLP lid to get to the slip rings to remove the trailing cable.
We had to put old sacks on the metalwork so we could sit with our legs inside the reel compartment, the sacks were to stop our legs getting burned on the hot steel!!!.
One nightshift I got called to a Secoma drill rig on the north side, no power, yeah right, bloody thing had tripped on hydraulic fluid tank thermal protection...Mining supervisor asked me to short the thermals out, the paint was peeling off the side of the oil tank!! Yeah right, as if I'm that stupid, it can stand and cool off.. I wasn't risking a fire.
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Post by Wheldale on May 9, 2013 16:27:01 GMT -5
I heard of the jackets in South Africa. I worked on a mine that was classed as cool. Temps were still 30+ degrees. The next mine on to us was Western Deep Levels. That mine was using the jackets back in 98. Western deeps were planning on going over 4500 meters deep. From what I was told it was very deep and hot, in some areas of the mine the rock temperature was 60 degrees to the touch.
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Post by John on May 9, 2013 16:54:55 GMT -5
One of our foremen did a contract in SA, he said he was taken down by this old electrician to show him the ropes, don't recall which gold mine it was...Anyway, he said his first port of call was this huge "butchers" walk in cooler, the old feller gave him this large waistcoat, loaded his pockets with ice, then they went to the stopes...
He said he soon acclimatized as to where he didn't need the waistcoat full of ice pockets..
We used to have a company from SA doing the longhole test bores, Boart Drilling Company. They worked two twelve hour shifts with two teams of four blokes, all Afrikaans.... One bloke must have been sixteen feet tall and weighed in at 500 pounds!!! LOL This feller towered over me!! He was the most arrogant man I've ever met. In the same team was this young bloke, exactly the opposite, he used to say "Talk English when there's a Brit around you ignorant so and so's.... They usually talked Afrikaans most of the time..
The foreman I just mentioned was on days, although he wasn't fluent in Afrikaans, he understood the drillers and knew some choice swearwords... At the end of the 12 hour shift, the drillers on one side would be giving their reports to the head driller via the tannoy system. The North drill bay was on the same circuit as the workshops, that's when our dayshift foreman used to wind them up......Boy did they lose it when he wound them up too.... ;D
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Post by Wheldale on May 10, 2013 4:58:07 GMT -5
I remember some of the Afrikaans were crazy!! Big fella's, (wives usually bigger!!) most had done national service, very racist too! They would often speak to me in Afrikaans. I would say I dont understand Afrikaans and they would reply "he's English Speaking". Nice people but crazy! lol
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