Romance of long-distance engineering trips (and our rat survived)


    "- Come on, why, it’s impossible? It’s convenient, the cable is stranded, soft. You won’t wrap it in a single-core cable ..."

    The customer, a large company, announces a tender for UPS and air conditioning for the infrastructure of its data centers throughout the country. Objects a little less than 30 pieces, and including cities where there is no railway. Basically. In August, the competition starts, in November, the execution of all documentation is just ending. Accordingly, our engineers come already at a time when “outside” from -30 to -40 outside air. And under the terms of the contract, you need to wash the outdoor unit of the air conditioner.

    Who doesn’t know, I inform you - this is done with vodka. Desirable - fire, it freezes worse. The procedure is this: you buy a box or two in the nearest store, a galvanized bucket. At this moment, passers-by are already beginning to react extremely painfully, watching the discharge of vodka into a bucket. By the way, vodka in many remote cities is still an alternative currency stronger than the ruble. Then, genuine sadness and all the world pains appear on the faces of those around when the air conditioning unit begins to rinse.

    We always send at least one engineer with such experience to such trips, because there are many pitfalls. Starting from the fact that they can beat them for blasphemy, and ending with the fact that the box of vodka is then “at home” we need to somehow conduct accounting. And there will be questions. Another danger - when spraying on the external unit of the air conditioner, you can breathe very quickly with alcohol vapor. As experienced jokes - in the instrumental kit, you must have a compartment for cucumbers to remove the effects of this type of inhalation. The next problem - everything needs to be done quickly, because at -35 and lower, taking into account the temperature of the condenser about 60 degrees in plus - the smell of vodka is rapidly spreading over the area in the direction of the wind. Or omnidirectionally, if there is no wind.

    Come in, I will share other stories.

    We have business trips every week. Frequent but short. For 10 years, we have already visited the department throughout the country. And also in Kazakhstan, Ukraine, studying in the Netherlands, China, Germany.

    Far from the usual routes of civilization, there are a number of places that can only be reached by the winter road - a road that rolls through snow and ice, along lakes and hills. A winter road in Siberia, for example, is generally the only way to get to a number of settlements. As soon as the winter road melts, the city is literally cut off from civilization to the next cold weather. In spring or autumn, in principle, it is impossible to get to engineering facilities, except perhaps a helicopter in extreme cases. Distances are quite large - you need 700 kilometers through the mountains, for example.

    On winter trips, the equipment is taken quite strange for the "first-timers". Three spare wheels, guns, axes, spare parts. If the car breaks down in the taiga, at first you can not meet anyone at all for a couple of days. And then a teddy bear will come to the pleasant smell of gasoline and Matyuka, who is so tasty here. The last time the driver generally brandished the brand new “Saiga” with the words “shoot from the locals” - he says, the places are deserted, they indulge. The nature there is very beautiful - but after an hour it is already boring to look out the window, about the same thing approximately.


    My colleague catches a dinner for the visiting system administrator

    You need to drive quite regularly, because everything that cannot be done remotely (installation and installation) is better to do by yourself than to explain to the locals. As a rule, they are good at minor repairs, but do not have the necessary qualifications, so we go to remote repairs only in extreme cases. So, since a qualified engineer is a rare person, sending more than one makes no sense. As a result, on such trips, the driver becomes the most dear person. And from some point on, the connection does not take, so before the trip you need to stock up on jokes and service manuals. The last time we moved from Neryungri to Teply Klyuch (this is 500 kilometers to Yakutsk and another 500 towards Magadan), a river without bridges - you need to wait for the winter road. The driver decided that he would slip in when there was no official winter road. The driver was fined 300 thousand for transporting people.

    Colds, in addition to the features of washing the outdoor units of the coding officers, bring a lot of surprises. For example, in Khabarovsk we were told the following story: on the spot, we decided to paint and insulate the expansion tank of the hydraulic system. As expected, they planned 2 hours on downtime. But they did not take into account the transition period. At 11 am in May it was 10 degrees. After 2 hours it was already 30 degrees. The thermal expansion of the fluid began. A capacity of two and a half tons simply tore at the seams. Brewed, started to run - whistles. As a result, we learned all this backstory when we mounted a new expansion tank.

    A lot of jambs are opened on the ground at the exits for new installations.As a rule, you come, look at the project - there is one thing, but in fact - somewhat different. It’s literally not far away at all, in Moscow, already the Serbian customer’s subcontractor was handing over an engineer. We approach the outlet, check - there is no voltage. The customer opens - there is a wire, everything is neatly mounted. Pulls - it falls out. There is a tail for 30 centimeters, and this tail does not go anywhere else. Apparently, Tesla's secret was not given to the contractor. Or here at another facility, subcontractors connected our fluid pressure sensor. It has two liquid inlets and an electrical inlet to take readings. The contractor engineer did not understand. One fluid line is connected correctly, the second to the electrical input (a hydraulic tube is inserted), and then the phase to the second fluid inlet.

    Somehow it was necessary to connect a small UPS.The cable should be about 16 square millimeters. And there goes the cable line 3x2.5 mm. Then there is a circuit breaker. From there, in the direction of the consumer, it grows to 3x10 mm. We:
    - And this ... do you like everything here?
    - Do according to the drawing. So it is approved.

    Last year I went to Khanty-Mansiysk. Asked to see the equipment, something too quickly failed compressors. We go to the site, around the uncle with ties, obviously not the last bosses. They walk, they look. The dialogue turned out to be something like this:
    - You look? Here the compressor is often lit. We are changing them. Everything else works, sort of. And so since 2007. Mystic.
    I look closely and gently inform:
    “Gentlemen, have you been alerted that the inscriptions are upside down?”
    They:
    - How so? Can not be!
    Look at each other
    - you look Vasya ... In fact!

    All external air conditioning units are upside down. The compressor suffers under an off-design load.

    Khabarovsk - there someone implemented a circuit for switching on 15 kW circulation pumps directly from a circuit breaker without starting elements. They burned 4 pumps for a month. "I turn it on, it immediately knocks it out, I turn it on again."

    Or here comes the UPS commissioning, and the installation was done by a local contractor. I checked. I look - the cable lines are not made according to the standard: the ground wire should be yellow-green, but it is different. Phase conductor in place of zero. He opened battery cabinets - there were a total of 124 batteries for 4 lines of batteries. An ordinary normal person would divide by 4 - it would turn out 31 per cabinet. But no. In one 24, then 28, then 36 - then the rest. I’m trying to understand the logic so far. At the same facility there was a small point with a UPS on another floor. The installer says: "The extra jumpers remained." And the vendor does not put anything superfluous in the kit, this is important. We decided to remake. As a result, it turned out that if we supplied power during its assembly, we would be left without a UPS.


    Fairly frequent sight at the facility

    I'll tell you more about ordinary road adventures.The south also has its own specifics. We made the infrastructure for the customer in Dagestan. We go back - at the crossroads there are uncles in camouflage with army machine guns. In the news later - only our engineer left the facility, there, right at a distance of 15 meters, a shootout began.

    In another hot city, a heavy transformer was left on the road until morning, in the morning it was necessary to remove it and remount it. In the morning we arrive - there isn’t him. But the road is new, the asphalt is laid where it lay. And it was impossible to carry away without special equipment. They started to ask. It turned out the following: the official was supposed to drive along this road according to the plan. Therefore, at about one in the morning the workers came and dug a hole under the transformer, “leveled” it on the road and laid asphalt on top.

    A story worthy of a cultural capital occurred in St. Petersburg.The customer was located on the territory of the power plant built in 1901. We were instructed for 2 days (TWO DAYS) just to get to work. The lady was very fond of the power station and therefore she first told us the history of the facility, then the district, then the whole of St. Petersburg. Reached right up to Peter. After the admission, we exhaled and went, but that was not all - it was possible to walk only in the inner zone. But to the street where the danger zone is - another 3 hours of safety measures interspersed with history.

    There in St. Petersburg, we needed to get a 5x95 cable of about 6 meters at the facility . And they dragged a hundred-meter-long tonnage reel. They say: “It may come in handy. It’s not useful - well, we’ll take the scraps. ”

    Once repaired DGUthat just haven’t stood up for years. The customer signed the delivery, and the service agreed for more than two years. No one thought to maintain the installation. When they got up, we found rotating elements erased to meat.

    We saw the data center for cooling implemented back to front. Cold air entered the server exits. The “reverse” mounting of the racks was supposed, but one team did the cooling and the other put the iron. We comment:
    - You will be bad here.
    - You do not understand, the manufacturer himself designed.
    After 3 months, of course, it came around.

    In Serpukhov I come to the site.In half of the future object there is no roof, inside the puddle. We approach the installation site of the server room - they are preparing to fill the floors, cement is lying. I say: “Under such conditions, the iron will not work for a long time,” and to me: “Mount, we have a schedule. We need to start the UPS on time. You have a contract, do it! ” As a result, they did as they demanded, and then several times unscheduled ride.

    A colleague talks about the shortest start-up:
    - Don’t touch, it’ll burn now!
    - Launch, we have a schedule!

    Or it often happens like this: “Hand over the object, just do not turn it on”: for example, on a large number of objects with gas fire extinguishing, the initiating devices are not connected to gas. Because suddenly there will be a release. At least one data center burned down for this reason I know.

    But let's talk about the good.In general, there are prudent representatives of customers who know exactly why a raised floor is needed. They have vodka in the server rooms down there, it cools down. One of the ventilation manufacturers saw a small server room with a properly equipped hot pin. They decided not only to warm the environment, but also to use heat correctly for their own benefit. They put a small brewing unit, rejoiced at their home.

    Once the customer’s engineers had to urgently solve the problem that the manager set at 8 am on January 2. “I don’t see whether it is warm to work at the facilities or not. Put weather stations and monitor them in Moscow. ” After 4 hours, we saw a magical picture - young cheerful guys hung thermometers near security cameras. Turn on the video stream - the temperature is visible.

    We have a horizontal bar in our office. The fact is that we need not only to run away from the bear, but sometimes to carry a lot of things. Therefore, we play "ladder" constantly. Of the cases of dragging, the most memorable was the DGU on the roof of one of the distant data centers, where it was necessary to carry 3 cars of 200 liters each in buckets. Initially, they wanted to make a hydraulic platform there, and then they simply cut off the second part of the financing and decided that it’s better to kick it. We once participated in this circus, and the service team there regularly has fun. Free fitness.

    Once the customer (big rank) personally went to see the switch to UPS / DGU. Opens, there is a relay.
    - Ahhh, arc!
    And jumps away. Him:
    - Calm, normal working situation.

    The big boss thought and interrupted the tour. I asked further in the papers.

    In Voronezh, I repair panels and UPS. I say: turn off the fire sensors, the dust may rise, the sensor will work. They have not disabled anything. I take a blower, blowing in the fan. A huge table of dust rises straight up - and there is a sensor. A fire is triggered throughout the facility — I’m running to the guard to say something about dust. “I don’t know anything, complete evacuation.” The chief engineer came running to swear obscenities: "But I told you." But in the end, the customer praised everyone. He says that while you set up a circus here, the Colonel of the Ministry of Emergencies went to the trading section with us. I saw, says that everything works like a clock - consider that they will not come in this half-year.

    Once our foreign colleagues drilled a wall according to our project into a room for fuel tanks.But I must say that the diagram had a characteristic “cloud” of a leader with an increase in scale so that it was clear which hole was needed. So these comrades exactly along the contour of the cloud and sawed in full size.

    And finally, about the rat. With colleagues, she exploded on a line of batteries from surging feelings and tension, and ours, beauty:



    Ours survived.

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