Arrival of the Master
4th of September 2017 Yesterday night after a relaxing and fascinating weekend we could finally greet out fourth TeoG-Member, Heiko, here in Techiman. His working title roughly translates to “electrical-mechanical-engineering-craftsmaster”. In other words he had a three year apprenticeship and then continued learning to be able to also teach new apprentices. With him we can finally start our main tasks: The Generators.Right after our usual breakfast we hit it of with waiting in the maintenance department for our electrician! Kidding. We went to leave a message and started our tour around the hospital to inspect the generators and give Heiko a general overview of the place. In the Inventory you could say are two old and two young lads. The former being over 60 years in service and the next generation having less than 100 hours of run time. Afterwards sat down in the team to plan, discussed our plan with the electricians and mechanics in the hospital and moved onto actual practical work.
Our first task was to judge the state of the older generators. Naturally they have been through a lot and had just as many repairs. Currently out of order the question was: “Can we give them another shot?”. Heiko, or we with his directives, started measuring the thing most obvious and deadly fault to more hidden ones. For the first one the result is most likely kicking the bucket. The electrical components are in good shape but the engine itself is worn out and from our collective judgment needs repairs beyond spare parts, that by themselves would be a nightmare to obtain.
Number two in more obvious disarray, not having been used in over 5 years. It looks like good shape but after a bit searching we found a broken water pump shaft and a massive grinding noise out of the coil when we move it. The administration will have the final say over the two
Which leaves us for the next days with two energetic young individuals “only” having a load issue and sudden terminations of service. Some interesting days are surely ahead so
Stay Posted!
Text: arne.bruns