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The big argument on my last job site was about pre-heating for P91 welds | Boilermakers - Rigidtalk

The big argument on my last job site was about pre-heating for P91 welds

Last week on the power plant job in Toledo, we had a big fight about the pre-heat for a P91 header weld. The old school foreman, a guy with 30 years, said 400 degrees was fine, just like the old book says. But the young guy from the union hall, fresh off a code update class, pulled out his phone and showed the new spec sheet calling for 450 minimum. They argued for an hour while the whole crew stood around. The foreman said the extra heat would warp the piece, the young guy said the lower temp risks cracking down the line. We ended up splitting the difference at 425 to keep the job moving, but it felt wrong. Has anyone else had to deal with this kind of old way vs new spec standoff lately?

3 comments

3 Comments

wyatt9326mo ago

Man, that exact same fight happened on a refinery turnaround last month (old timers vs. the new code books). We wasted a whole shift arguing about interpass temps.

mark_anderson6mo ago

Yeah, the "old timers vs. the new code books" thing is a classic. A buddy of mine had a job shut down for two days over weld pre-heat specs. The foreman was going by the way he'd done it for 30 years, and the kid with the new API code printout was just waving it in his face. They finally had to call the welding engineer out to the site, just like @wyatt932 said, and it turned out the old guy was way off. All that time and money lost because nobody wanted to check the book first.

paulk425mo ago

Oh wow, you just described a situation that plays out about once a year on every big job I've been on. I had a very similar mess a few years back. It was about a preheat blanket setup on some heavy wall pipe. The senior guy said we didn't need to cover a certain section because he'd "always done it that way." The new QC guy pulled out the code and showed him the minimum coverage area in black and white. @wyatt932 knows exactly what I'm talking about, that whole stubborn pride thing just shuts down any common sense. We ended up redoing about six hours of welding the next day because of it.