Re: Safety First.

>I was lucky as the coupling hit me after one bounce. Had I been about 3-4
>feet closer, I would have had a fracture.
>Please take care when you carry out pressure tests and take no risks
>absolutely.
>

Don't take this the wrong way--It's good you didn't get hurt more. But you might want to ask yourself why you were standing so close.

A guy I chat with now and then told me about a tank he was testing the day before. Seems someone wanted to use a large (16 ft) diameter tank for diesel storage. Some bonehead manager got the bright idea to put air in the tank and have my guy and an assistant crawl around on top and check for leaks. As you probably suspect, the structural behavior of the tank filled with air is very much different than filled with liquid. Fortunately the flat bottom buckled but didn't rupture at about 5 psi. You can figure for yourself how much force is exerted by 5 psi (hardly any pressure at all, right?) over a 16 ft circle. The two of them would probably still be missing if the bottom or the top had torn loose. So use your head--only an another idiot trusts a management idiot to think about things like this.

Christopher Wright P.E.    |"They couldn't hit an elephant at
chrisw@skypoint.com        | this distance"   (last words of Gen.
___________________________| John Sedgwick, Spotsylvania 1864)