Realized I was over-torquing flange bolts for years after a job in Tacoma

We were doing a big repair on a boiler at the Port of Tacoma last fall, and the lead fitter, Carl, asked me to hand him my torque wrench. He checked a few of my bolts and just shook his head. I'd been cranking them down way too tight, thinking it was safer. He showed me the spec sheet for the gasket we were using, and it called for 120 foot-pounds, not the 'good and tight' I was doing. Ever since then, I double-check the paperwork before I even pick up a tool. Anyone else have a simple habit they had to unlearn?

4 comments

4 Comments

wader711mo ago

Read a story about a guy who cracked a flange doing the same thing.

derek_lee1mo ago

Yeah, that reminds me of my neighbor who tried to torque his own water heater connections. He used a regular wrench instead of a torque wrench, way overdid it, and ended up with a slow leak that ruined a chunk of his basement drywall before he noticed.

emmaking1mo ago

Okay but the whole "ruined a chunk of his basement drywall" thing... is that really from over-torquing? Sounds like maybe the fitting was bad to begin with. I get the point about following specs, but sometimes I wonder if we make too big a deal about exact numbers. A lot of stuff just needs to be snug, not perfect.

felixm294d ago

Wait, @wader71 did you read the same article I did about that cracked flange? I swear I saw that same story on a forum a few weeks back. The guy was on a job in Portland and used a cheater bar on his wrench, cranked the flange bolts so tight the whole thing split down the middle. Said he could hear the cracking sound. I also read somewhere that the whole "tight is right" mindset comes from old school mechanics who worked with cast iron stuff that could take way more clamping pressure. But modern flanges and gaskets are different. They're built to squish just enough, not to be manhandled. Over doing it does more than just ruin drywall, it can fatigue the material over time and cause failures later on.