How Do You Handle HVAC Health and Safety?

This is a ridiculous question. Any qualified contractor would shut off the electrical disconnect on any piece of equipment > 220V prior to working on the equipment. Basic rule: don't work on live equipment.

In the US, in industrial settings, if the equipment is greater than 50 volts then it must be locked out: turned off, with the circuitbreaker handle physically locked so that no one other than the worker can turn it back on.

The health and safety precautions implemented on the job are typically in an HSE manual of many hundreds of pages.

Hello Ken

I do disagree with you on this one, not about the manuals they exist. However there just something to show the lawyers after the fatality. They may work fine in a stationary environment with lots of whistleblowers. Construction sites are different, in my almost 35 years in the industry safety hasn't improved.

The main difference in our shop after a fatal accident OSHA wants more paperwork. I now have to put my signature as a supervisor on a meaningless piece of paper that the crew has had there safety lecture. The official OSHA safety lectures include such valuable topics as a hot tubs help relax and and relieve stress.

You said:I must of missed the one on the hot tub.

You did, unless the canned forms have been changed since 1995. I had a safety representative on a federal government site hand me a form to sign. Being somewhat old-fashioned even then, I believed in reading things before I signed them. When I asked where the hot tub was, he grabbed the form tossed in the trash can, and pulled another form out of a folder.

At the time our employee was killed, we had a perfect safety record. Unless there is a form in the stack dealing with resurrection, time and money would be better spent dealing with known hazards.

Construction sites and plants are different animals. In construction, design flaws ,or known issues that are not corrected in remodels become long-term hazards.

The man that worked for our shop that died, had an exceptional work ethic, ultimately it killed him. No risk analysis is needed to demonstrate that a man dedicated to his work is at greater risk of injury than one just collecting a check.

A man doing something that he wasn't required to do on a holiday weekend would seem to me to be demonstrating an exceptional work ethic. His safety violation may well have been that he wasn't prepared to do the job and he was working with tools at hand.

It would seem both men made mistakes, and paid with their lives. So again safety training is good. However those of us that are perfect should consider that typical humans are not. Correcting known hazards when opportunities arise would seem to make perfect sense. It would also eliminate lost capital expenditure in training. It seems some people are going to go get themselves killed no matter how much you tell them not to.

Personally I lost my perfect status sometime ago, I thought, I'd made a mistake and it turned out I really hadn't.

18 inch high rubber boots.

That's 1 inch for electrical insulation, and the other 17 to keep from getting grounded by BS coming over the top.

"The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers" it's been about two years since a good friend was killed at work, the net result the shop now has a file of pre-printed safety lectures that are signed once a month, this satisfies the bureaucracy and does nothing to improve safety.

A statement like turning off the power, is ridiculous in itself. I commonly work with twice the voltage that's was mentioned in a previous post. Hot and what you know I'm still alive.

What killed the man cutting the wire ? ignorance. His ignorance, or inattention, or somebody else's ignorance. A simple real-world fact lockout, tag out disconnects are not always available. Electrical disconnects are not always within visual range.

Four separate occasions immediately come to mind when I was shocked by an open disconnect. Of that one was my own stupidity a disconnect mechanically failed and left one blade engaged.

The other three were simple. About as simple as the electricians that cause the problem. Swapping line and load and leaving the fuse hot, putting two fuses in a pull out disconnects and running a live wire behind the pullout because they had the wrong disconnect.

Using a disconnect as a poll box and hooking up the wrong wires to the machine at the wrong place, high-voltage to low-voltage connections.

Undoubtedly these tradesmen were not homicidal maniacs, they were untrained in some circumstances, and made stupid mistakes in others, or just did not get around to getting the right part.

Bad yes. However many times the work has been inspected by a "qualified city inspector" that were not doing their jobs, or were unqualified to do their jobs. Inspectors can't check every wire in every circuit .

However the wiring in the disconnects is one of the things on their check list . I've found one building in particular that about 50% of disconnects were hooked up backwards.

Many times cities are more interested in collecting permit fees , than ensuring a remodel job site meets existing state safety standards. While it's true Many times they don't have the authority, many times it is a case of the inspectors just shutting his eyes, or being too lazy to locate dangerous patch jobs done over the years.

Arguably the HVAC industry is one of the more dangerous in the constructions and maintenance industries. Equipment is on roofs, located in the ceilings and attics of office buildings with limited accessibility, and sometimes frayed peripheral electrical from years of service in these working conditions.

The man who was killed at our shop made a mistake, he lost track of his surroundings and backed into a skylight. The legal ramifications and finger-pointing net result was. Both our shop, and a general contractor were fined, for something they had no control over. The real culprit in this case was bureaucracy.

The universal building code does not require retrofitting of existing skylights that do not meet the current shatter resistant standards. Cal OSHA infers the skylights were the responsibility of the general contractor.

Construction is competitive bid, things that are not in contract like replacing skylights are impossible to cover and get a job.

The net result is that the regulatory agencies are collecting fines, and doing nothing to prevent similar accidents and the bureaucracy is satisfied with additional papers. The only way additional paper work could have helped save my friends life, is if they'd been piled on the floor where he landed.

In general the construction industry is far more dangerous than law enforcement. Many of the occupations are low-tech, and high production. These employees are pushed to get the job done and sometimes lose track of their surroundings that can be a fatal mistake.

The more technical the trades are the more real safety training is needed. Lethal voltage kills much faster than any bullet, really the best safety device a man has is his own brain, a lapse in concentration, can be fatal. police work is 90% boredom 10% terror, however construction is 99% routine, lapses in concentration are inevitable, and sometimes fatal.

The killer's name in construction truly is Murphy.

"If that guy has any way of making a mistake, he will." Murphy is the engineer that doesn't do his calculations write, the contractor that makes changes from an engineer drawing, the tradesmen doesn't know how to wire a disconnect ,However he's just guilty of manslaughter. The homicidal maniacs quite often are the regulatory agencies with full knowledge of dangers ,that do to correct the situation.

Cal OSHA was well aware, and had previous fatalities from similar accidents to the one that killed my friend. He's dead, Cal OSHA has collected $25,000 from the shop, and I'm on remodel roofs every day with old skylights, nothing is changed.

PS sorry lost part of the post, but it was too important to let go.

Forgive me for being blunt. I make my living fixing things that other people can't. I know there is risk involved when I take a wire from a burned-out potential relay and strike it like a match to get a compressor running to keep the few thousand dollars worth of ice cream for melting while I get the part.

Risk an unknown danger are two different things however. Risk can be reduced. Knowledge can advise you of danger. Whether that's training in your field, or information passed on to you by the appropriate agency. It's not quite as simple as saying he should've opened the disconnect.

Romero is dead, and the killer is still at large. We all knew better than to fall through a skylight. Skylights are just one of the hazards that we work with in the HVAC industry every day. So commonplace that they literally have become an unknown danger. If somebody reading this discusses this with their crew, you can change it from and ignored danger, to a reducible risk. And that's more than the official agencies have done.

To much time is spent on training to get the job done and little to none on how to keep one safe while doing it. I try to instill in to the men that I have working for me safety. When work on electrical equipment I even have them check the equipment after lock out and tag out procedure is completed to insure themselves that it is not live. I find it a waste of time to train someone if they are not going to work safely in that they due to some injury will not be around to do the job.

In the above case why would any one doing electrical repairs have wire cutters with out insulated handle. If that was all he had then he should of checked the wires for voltage before cutting the test instrument for doing so are relatively inexpensive.

All come down the the safety habits that we train these men with.

It's really thougth to deal in the field itself due it nature of designs and stuff. It a shame this thing happened like that and it's kind of spooky definetly. And then in top of everything someone are always not happy no matter how good you're trying to get the thing back on line --ASAP-- but then again when such scenario are in place it is when anyone can be done --ASAP--for good, done. Is not easy stuff dealing between machines, humans, safety issues at the same time. This is that why I do get spook out when I hear that--ASAP-- word it sound pretty dangerous to me. Who know's probably due some disconect trouble or the rushing out few mixs things in place just waiting to happened. It does crazy out there not fun stuff. I also seing too much of buildings renovations ( Specially Inside ) that they keep on adding so much stuff around existent equipment that when any of those units fail unless your'r an acrobat or circus malavarist then you are in trouble automatically. How you expect to reach up the bad components withou get hurt overthere crawling up? Not easy cookie definetly...

Any way better not rush into nothing and easy does it. Someone have to do it, yeah sure. Allrigth buddy take good care always.

Wait for The Best !

MC

On Labor Day weekend in 2001........ It is a terrible thing when someone loses their life over something as senseless as this story indicates. Though I wish I could say that my field was one that employes personnel that use common sense, but as we all know there is and always will be that guy(sorry or girl) that for what ever reason, fails to fallow basic safety precisions. Be it a laps in judgment, insufficient knowledge of environment, or just plain old stupid. I'm not in any way passing judgement as to what this person was thinking or going through at that time of his incident, but I think its safe to say that proper safety precision was not taken. We can all look at a problem after the fact and say; O, WELL IF THAT WERE ME IN THAT SITUATION IT COULDN'T HAVE HAPPENED TO ME BECAUSE...-fill in the blank-. But the truth is it can happen to anyone, and that should really be the lesson here. The most important safety precision is to never let your guard down, and get right with the lord. Because when he calls your number its see ya next time....

The problem with all H & S, no matter how comprehensive it is relies on the human element to implement it. Even the most switched on worker, forgive the pun, can be turned off sometimes by some small domestic, illness in the family or other thought, it only takes a fraction of a second. When your dead people will say things like, 'I only saw him yesterday?'.