PSA: A cracked weld on a 3-inch steam line almost cost us a whole day

We were doing a shutdown job at the paper mill in Everett, and a routine pressure test showed a hairline crack in a seam we'd just finished. The foreman said 'that's a 300 psi line, it would have blown in an hour.' Has anyone else caught a bad weld that close to a major problem?

3 comments

3 Comments

casey_brown1mo ago

My buddy at the Georgia-Pacific plant said they found a bad weld on a condensate return line using a borescope camera. That thing was a millimeter from leaking.

thea1431mo ago

That Georgia-Pacific story gives me chills. A millimeter is way too close for comfort on a line like that. How often do they run those camera checks now?

bethwhite24d ago

It's the same with everything now, built to just barely pass inspection. My car's check engine light came on a week after the warranty ended. These tiny margins for error are how we get massive failures later on.