Spent a whole Saturday chasing a steam drum leak on a 2017 reheat boiler

We had this tiny weep coming from a seam on the steam drum of a 2017 reheat boiler out in Gary, Indiana. Foreman said it was probably just a loose fitting, so I figured Id have it fixed by lunch. Three hours later I had loosened everything, retorqued it, even swapped a gasket, and that weep was still there. Turns out the root cause was a hairline crack in the drum shell itself, invisible till I wiped it down with dye penetrant. Took me from 7 AM to nearly 4 PM just to find it, then another two for the repair. Has anyone else had a hidden crack take way longer than it should have to find?

2 comments

2 Comments

abby_chen1mo ago

Darn. That's like buying a lottery ticket for bad luck.

the_robin1mo agoMost Upvoted

Actually think about it - the lottery is way worse odds than most sketchy stuff you run into. Like your chances of winning Powerball are 1 in 292 million. You're more likely to get hit by lightning twice. At least with most risky decisions you're looking at maybe 1 in 10 or 1 in 100 odds of something bad happening. Buying a lottery ticket for bad luck would be buying one of those scam insurance policies that never pays out, not the lottery itself.