elf and safety gone mad

[Martin Botting 2Participant @martinbotting2]

As its a grey day and doing some armchair engineering I was going through the vast fount of information and came upon some on the face of it laughable accidents surrounding Co2 bottles going whoosh or pop, and this started me thinking. If I may relate a story on a similar line and some thoughts about our own well being.

I much admire peoples skill and the pictures I have seen posted here and the conditions and a layout of folks workshops and I am always impressed with very tidy and well organised working spaces and bow my head in shame when I enter my workshop and the accumulation of C&@p that seems to gather there.

In my youth a story spread very quickly that a chap had "borrowed" a cylinder of "air" to get a tugs engine started, it was a 4 Cly Glenifer 4 stroke engine. Now the problem was the air tanks that were used to store the starting air were empty, the donkey engine to run the compressor was knackered so the usual way of replenishing the bottles was at the end of the days running close the fuel to a dedicated cylinder and then open a valve on the head so that piston becomes a compressor. The tug in question ( tosher or launch tug) never carried an engineer or driver so it was down to the mate or the boy to tend the engines and it being a late finish on a friday the dash for last orders was a bigger draw than the nipping up of the air valves so come monday the tanks had about 50PSI in them. She was moored up on the river lea and not too far a walk from St Andrews hospital so off toddles the mate and "borrows" a cylinder from the cage outside the stores… with much sweating he gets it back and they jury rig a line utilising the valve and hose from the Calor gas that fuels the stove.. all in place open valve engine starts to spin.. decompresors closed and fuel on by the use of the staring lever which you used to pull back to spin her over then all the way forward to close the gap in the inlet valve and the cams for the injectors engage and she should start… now the problem was the bottle he had nicked was O2… result BANG.. he had part of his head replaced by a cylinder head casting and the skipper was castrated by the other bits…moral of this tale.. READ THE LABLE… this is not an apocryphal tale I saw it myself as I had to tow the said tug to a repair yard.

I know much is made of ELF AND SAFETY gone mad but as a H&S union rep for many years I have seen and had to investigate accidents and even fatalities for what ever reason have come down to minor things all coming together very quickly to become catastrophic. A common thread has been lack of training and funds to keep things in order.

I guess I would want my employer strung up if he made colleagues do things that we do as hobbyists and I know I am the same MIA CULPA sorry for the H&S police rant but we should all bare this in mind… Now how do I take the chuck guard off this bloody mill.. its always in the way! Happy and a safe new year.

regards

Martin

[Martin Botting 2Participant @martinbotting2]

[martin perman 1Participant @martinperman1]

As an engineering Technician apprentice we were taught how to use Oxy/Acetelene cylinders correctly and part of this was to watch British Gas supplied safety films, one I will always remember was a small ramp with the Oxygen cylinder laid with the valve at the bottom, the valve was knocked off with a sledge hammer and the cylinder left the ramp like a missile and carried quite a distance, another cylinder was over pressured until the cylinder body split open and almost became a flat sheet.

Martin P

[pgk pgkParticipant @pgkpgk17461]

..being aware of stupidly dangerous things like oiling an oxygen cylinder's threads – seems innocuous but caused he loss of at least one BOC workers arm when a customer did it.

The closest i ever came was using a CO2 for cutting frozen sections. The cylinder was inverted for the liquid phase and the new one I fitted had a fault.. cracked the valve open and it went full-bore instantly filling the room with CO2 fog and sent the cylinder bouncing off the walls. I couldn't see a thing and just sat on my stool with feet off the ground and fingers crossed 'til the banging stopped.

[Neil WyattModerator @neilwyatt]

I once pulled a CO2 extinguisher out from under a pile of junk in the garage, it went off and I exited quickly – then ran in and quickly extracted a confused cat!

It wasn't live for more than a few seconds but it created a huge fog!

Neil

[Russell EberhardtParticipant @russelleberhardt48058]

I witnessed a similar demonstration on a disused airfield as part of my safety training. I've always treated gas cylinders with great respect since.

Another incident that sticks in the mind: A student in the Chemistry Department had left a preparation in solvent in an evaporating dish in a cupboard beneath a bench. There was a hot air gun on the bench used to melt wax to seal glass apparatus. This got knocked onto the floor and a spark caused the cupboard to explode and start a fire. Lots of inflammable chemicals around, so a good blaze ensued. The fire brigade arrived and nearly had it under control when an oxygen cylinder blew its gauges! The whole of one floor of the building had to be completely gutted and rebuilt after that.

Russell.

[martin perman 1Participant @martinperman1]

twenty five years ago I was a volunteer for the Imperial War Museum at Duxford and I was part of a seven man team who restored "Mary Alice" the museums B17G Flying Fortress, our Crew Chief was an employee of the museum and a seriously qualified Aircraft engineer asked me to remove the CO2 fire extinguisher cylinders from under the Pilot/Copilots seating area, he had checked them, I crawled into the space, not very big, via the front hatch and proceeded to remove them and the pipework until I released the pipework of one when with a loud pop I was sitting in freezing fog with my right hand on fire, I was holding the cylinder by the neck with my thumb and fore finger wrapped around it and now was frozen to the neck, I couldnt see a thing at all and aimed the cylinder to where I thought the hatch was and lobbed it out closely followed by me to watch the cylinder spin on the floor for a minute until it emptied.

Most of the crew fell about laughing as all they could see was steam leaking from every orifice it could around the fuselage and me screaming. The crew cheif sent me of to get my hand looked at and he decided he would check them again before I took anymore out.

Martin P

[Colin HeseltineParticipant @colinheseltine48622]

Just about to start brazing up a split in metal shield above the manifold on my Cortina Mk5. At the time I had an economiser setup whereby a pilot light is lit, you pick up the welding torch off spring loaded hook which then lets the oxy-actylene mixture through and the torch fires up from the pilot light. Also in this setup I had a gas fluxer. The acetylene bubbled through this (very highly flammable fluid) and there was no need to add flux to rods. It was a great setup.

I had lit the pilot light, bent down and opened the valve on fluxer. Straightened up to pick up the torch when the set screw holding the control knob in the fluxer sheared. The knob flew out under 6psi pressure and then promptly 4-6 pints of highly flammable fluid exited the small hole, vapourised and then hit the pilot light.

Cue massive explosion, I caught fire from waist up, hair, beard the lot. Garage roof lifted at least 1ft in air. up and over door bent out at hinges, all paper in garage caught fire, all plastic coated products instantly shrink wrapped. All paintwork looked as though a blow torch had been held over it.

I did a runner outside, rolled down lawn to put out fires, jacket etc. then back into garage to deal with consequences. Grabbed extinguisher and hit some of the fires, lots of thinners in garage and cellulose paint but luckily none of it ignited. My old man came into garage, gave him extinguisher and I jumped in bath. After a few moments I remembered I did not have blow back valves at time so shot back into garage, moved ten ton press and then moved bottles outside and opened valves.

Then hijacked a car coming down road to get me to hospital.

I can still picture the yellow flames all round me to this day.

Don't use gas fluxer anymore and have a few more extinguishers around.

Thing is I hadn't done anything wrong, I was just unlucky or lucky as no lasting damage done to me house or car. Even the dog sat alongside me at the time survived.

Colin

[Neil WyattModerator @neilwyatt]

That's a good tale!

Many, many years ago I lived in a little cottage. I used to collect a rucksac of branches and smaller logs from the nearby forestry, and one day I left a mate making a fire. He tried to start it with a bit of paraffin, but it went out. The warm hearth filled up with a thick white fog of paraffin vapour – then he chucked a match in. He didn't lose any beard,. but he did find himself on the other side of the room and shifted a lot of soot!

Same guy punched a plasterboard wall and made a hole. He was so surprised he tried again, only harder. This time he found a joist and broke his wrist.

Neil

[MikeParticipant @mike89748]

Going back to CO2, back in 1962 I was working in a small town in what was then Rhodesia, and as a journalist I went to the local industrial estate because rumour had it that the local Coca-Cola bottling plant had blown up over night. The plant imported concentrate, diluted it, and gave it the "fizz" via a huge CO2 cylinder which was mounted horizontally, on brackets, on the floor. During the night one end of the cylinder had cracked and blown off, and the remains had taken off like a rocket, wrenching itself clear of the brackets, crashing through two courses of brickwork, traversing a roadway, and coming to rest half way through a similar wall on the other side. I wish I could now find my pictures – it was quite spectacular!

[Ady1Participant @ady1]

It's the silly stuff that makes the profession lose credibility

Some silly wee lassie from my local council forced a local garage chap I know to buy new tools for his workshop

To say that this guy knew what he was doing would be understatement of the year, most garages wouldn't touch the cars he worked on

But his tools were more than 3 or 5 years old ( or whatever random number these government morons pick) so he had to buy new gear and chuck his "old" tooling

He wouldn't ever employ an apprentice either, too much red tape and interference(I asked him why he wasn't passing on his huge levels of experience)

The car he did for me was fabulous, which was lucky for me when I was in the Republic of Ireland, after about a week of touring round the country I realised that I had the only one around, if it broke down it was a case of abandon it or tow it back at my own expense

[Ian S CParticipant @iansc]

I can remember the tales that were told of an incident at RNZAF Woodbourne, someone was bringing out starter bottles(compressed air) for the Vampires, one cylinder slipped out of the sling, and as it dropped the valve got knocked off, the cylinder took off across the aerodrome, narrowly missing a Bristol Freighter on the runway.

Ian S C

[martin perman 1Participant @martinperman1]

Back at Duxford, a fellow volunteer and I were given the task of checking and inflating any tyres on the aircraft exhibits, we took the compressed air trolley around every aircraft topping up where necessary until we got the the BAC Lightning, we connected the bottles to one of the main undercarriage wheels and to our surprise the pressure of the bottles increased, back to our crew chief to report and his response was oop's should have told you to leave them they are much higher pressure than everything else.

Martin P

[OuBallieParticipant @ouballie]

Ady1,

How did she get away with imposing such utter nonsense?

I would have told her and the Council to get knotted in proper Anglo-Saxon!

"See you in court" would have been my comment as she went of in a huff to 'report' me.

As stated, it's the officious oafs/baboons/jobsworth who have given H&S a bad name.

Geoff – Time for a lekker cold meats sarnie, the coffee

[Ady1Participant @ady1]

OUBallie Councils are the new UK Clergy holding Britain back

Send a muppet on a course or two, give 'em a few handouts and they magically become "experts" backed by the unlimited financial and legal powers of the council clergy

The biggest problem is when you tell the council to stuff off other departments will magically appear at your business premises. The highways dept will suddenly appear and give you grief over parked vehicles, environmental health would suddenly be hanging about waiting for a waste bin to search through etc

Things are slowly improving now though, as our society becomes poorer there's less money for the council morons to play at god. One of the biggest problems for businesses was that there were fewer and fewer of them so they got more and more visits from the clergy

[John Stevenson 1Participant @johnstevenson1]

Best way to deal with these jobs worth and this is said very, very seriously is to ask them to show you the regulations.

If they don't have the H&S bible with them as most don't then give them an appointment time to come back and show you.

This way you are keeping to the letter of the law in making and giving them a written appointment but I can assure you they will NOT be back unless your are in serious breach of H&S regs.

I have had that many run in with them over the years and none has even stood the test of time that there must be a not on thier notice board as they leave me completely alone now.

We have more to fear from these Ijits than we ever did have from unions.

[jason udallParticipant @jasonudall57142]

I am with ady1 on this…
Too many h and s “inspectors” are two week course veterans.
( and risk assessment is often done by non specialists…with a consequence of “any “risk being too much)..unfortunately the result is often staggeringly over the top.
The result?… well we all have a laugh at these “jobsworths” and the very real contribution of the hse is undermined and ridiculed.

[OuBallieParticipant @ouballie]

Agree with you JS.

Had this type of jobsworth when our council introduced wheely bins and I asked the young 20 something girl if my elderly Mother could leave the normal bin bag out.

Her response floored me "Oh no, H&S prevents the bin men from lifting and throwing them into the cart!"

ff anyone starts quoting EU law, I would demand to be shown the original, not the one our councils interpret in a way that they can add stuff to to justify their budgets or existence.

Has anyone ever done so I?

No doubt the result could be as JS predicted – intimidation.

I get my Bolchy attitude towards authority from my dear departed Mother.

Geoff – I'm docile in comparison

[Neil WyattModerator @neilwyatt]

> Her response floored me "Oh no, H&S prevents the bin men from lifting and throwing them into the cart!"

For two weeks after Christmas our bin-men are a suddenly able to lift bin bags, up to three per house.

I've known a couple of bin-men, the worst thing about wheelie bins is they no longer got to sort through the rubbish. One found me my Mamod Roadster, he ended up having a foot crushed by a bin lorry (not by an overweight bin bag), but is sanguine about it as he can now afford to concentrate on his hobby of model boats.

> ff anyone starts quoting EU law, I would demand to be shown the original,

The EU makes a directive, it's our governments that turn them into laws, usually with more zeal than the rest of Europe.

Neil

Edited By Neil Wyatt on 06/01/2015 16:17:56

[pgk pgkParticipant @pgkpgk17461]

I'm always amused by the need for compliance by every A&E unit havng to have it's green first aid box and accident book.

In the early days of all this I had a visit at my surgery from H&S and my answer to their question of 'where is your first aid kit' – "your standing in it" wasn't greeted very well.

They also complained that I had a 'toilet duck' in the loo that clients might use. "what if a kiddie drinks it?" They demanded. And once more my answer of "If it's that young or stupid one asumed it's parent will accompany it. And you don't see to mind the fact they've just walked past a cupboard full of pharmacy to get there"

Grrr

[Roger Williams 2Participant @rogerwilliams2]

We had the Bradbury service rep come to check our 4 poster vehicle ramp for the insurance recently, and he was telling us how he went to do a service on another ramp somewhere else, forgot his ladder , so went to borrow one and had a telling off from the manager because he wasnt properly trained to use it !. So he ended up standing on an oil drum, to do the job !!.

Heard about a bloke went to see his kids at the school sports day, went to take some pictures of them, and was told in no uncertain terms, to put the camera away or have it confiscated !. Later went to get a cup of tea from a machine in the school, only to be told that tea had been banned because it wasnt nutrtional enough. He retorted, " since when has tea ever been nutritional ". ( or words to that effect !! ).

A couple of years back, a bloke gave his camera to one of his kids in a shopping precinct , outside a shop, and told him to take a picture of himself and an old friend who he hadnt seen in years, and had just met in the shop. A security bloke stopped the photo session instantly, causing so much distress, that they all left the precinctin in a terrible state. The chap didnt get a picture of his friend, who died a short while later from cancer. Not H&S I know, but similar. Worlds gone mad !.

[martin perman 1Participant @martinperman1]

Roger,

You havent been able to use a ladder on building sites or anywhere to gain height for ages unless there is no other way to climb, today its mobile scaffolding, podium steps and the like, all need courses and all need a tag system that has to be signed daily by a qualified person to say its been checked and is fit for use. If you have to use a ladder then it has to use the tag system and has to be tied off at the top to something that is fixed, the catch 22 is that you cant climb it to tie it off

I'm a "trained" mobile scaffold erector and my licence only lasts a few years and then we do it again, you cant get onto a construction site without shed loads of courses under your belt and you have to do them if you want to work, fortunately my job pays for it all. You now have to pay for common sense.

Martin P

[ChrisHParticipant @chrish]

 

I went on a course to be 'acquainted' with the construction regs – can't remember the full title (CDM Regs?) – when they came out in the early 90's. Half way through the course the tutor said to us "well, I've been in the safety business for 25 years and I don't know about you but it's my impression that the most important bit of all this is to get the paperwork right. If in doing so an accident is prevented, then that is a bonus". We all agreed!

Also told by a jobsworth 'safety expert' that it was essential to do a Risk Assessment. If there was then an accident then that was alright (really, convince the person the accident has happened to) because something had obviously occurred that hadn't been thought of when the Risk Assessment was done. So now the risk assesment could be re-done with this added knowledge and everything would be wonderful. Yeah – Right. PYA rules!

We, rightly or wrongly, are in the EU where everything is supposed to be harmonised. So you would think all the same H & S rules would apply.  Level playing field and all that.  You would be wrong.  I have seen enough in France and Holland to known that re H & S they abide by a whole lot of less strenuous rules and have a more relaxed way of doing things that would have factory inspectors and the like here have heart attacks, yet life goes on and there would appear to be no accident issues there. But they do use common sense, and are allowed to think for themselves, both of which is largely absent here it would appear!

Chris

Edited By ChrisH on 06/01/2015 19:44:26

[V8EngParticipant @v8eng]

As our Westminster politicos are talking of devolving more power to local councils (our representatives!), I expect we can look forward to much more interference in most aspects our lives.

Edited By V8Eng on 06/01/2015 20:00:52

[John Stevenson 1Participant @johnstevenson1]

Last two posts have mentioned common sense but I was told, by a guy on my side, that because common sense cannot be defined you cannot use the term.

The case in question was a range of ink mixing machines we used to make. Basically a food mixer on steroids, large motor VDF drive paddle goes into a tub of ink and lathers it up. These had to gain CE to be sold in this country so we contacted the Derby Small Business Bureau for help as we were a member.

Guy comes round to help us, nice guy, very knowledgeable and in no way a jobs worth.

Asked how they worked, showed him and they had a spring cover went on the top of the tub to stop ink splashing.

He asked what stops you lifting the cover and putting your fingers in whilst running. My answer was common sense as the slightest dab of this stuff on your fingers and the missus would be walking round with green drawers for 3 months.

Was told we couldn't use common sense in the handbook as could not be defined.

Then knocked off and went into the house for a cup of coffee, ironically earlier that morning been down to Argos and bought a new kettle as the old one had packed in. So brand new Argos special complete with highly visable CE sticker sat there.

So filled it with cold water, called him to look at this and lifter the lid and stuck my hand in saying "Ouch". Then proceeded to poor said cold water all over by other hand in the sink, saying "ouch" again. then pointed to the CE sticker.

He looked at me, I looked at him, he said "Point taken, so if we change common sense in the handbook proof to "Do not stick fingers in the tub " I think we tick all the boxes and you can have your CE certificate.

[Author]

Posts