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Three hours to unclog a suction line, should have been thirty minutes

Got called out to a site where the pump kept losing prime. Took me forever to figure out there was a plastic bag wrapped around the suction screen under 4 feet of muddy water. Has anyone else had a stupid simple fix take way longer than it should because you couldn't see the problem?
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3 Comments
young.thomas
Fifteen years back I spent two hours chasing an airlock in a chilled water loop and it ended up being a ball valve that was 5% closed from the last guy who did maintenance. My foreman just walked over, cracked it open a quarter turn, and the flow jumped right back up like magic. Felt like a total idiot standing there with my pressure gauge while he fixed it in ten seconds flat.
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anthony763
anthony76310d ago
Hang on, isn't the fix the whole point though? If the problem is hidden that well, maybe someone else would've never found the valve at all, and you'd still be scratching your head.
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young.thomas
Do you ever feel like half the battle is just finding where the problem is actually hiding? I've noticed that in a lot of things, not just plumbing. You can stare at a stuck drawer for twenty minutes before realizing a kid's sock is wedged under it. The fix is nothing, but the looking is everything.
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