advice to an apprentice?

[Rob]

hi, i know this isnt the greatest places to post but i was just wondering if you engineers can help me out.

been doing gas and heating work for about 3 years,21 now, doing mainly installation.
ive sinced moved onto maintanence/servicing and eventually breakdowns. what id like to know is where you all got your knowledge of repairs from?

ive done a couple of MF courses but theyre not that great, all the boilers are too new

would you recomend working with someone, or just experience and ringing technical lines?

 

[Agile]

You will probably have to learn by being with a very good diagnostic engineer if you can find one.

I am sure that I am lucky. My grandfather was a steam power station engineer and wound his own transformers. My father could fix things and built his own bicycle and later a valve single channel 405 line TV.

I also come from an electronics background and diagnosing faults is second nature to me.

I once had to fix a brand new dentists chair in the Seychelles which would only move in one direction. One of the hydraulic valves was reversed and never checked at the manufacturer.

Tony

 

[Alfredo]

Presumably you have been doing your gas work apprenticed to someone..or have you got CCN1 Core Gas Safety and Appliances in you own right?

There are really three routes 1)Get with someone experienced who is patient enough to pass on that experience to you.
2) Speak to Gritish Bass...whaterever the ups and downs of working for a big company, they will train you properly..and you don't have to stay with them for ever
3) Just bat on yourself and learn through your mistakes..which you will do anyway to a greater or lesser extent whichever route you go. Don't be afraid to ring manufacturer technical or Corgi helplines if you hit a problem. They are usually helpful.

None of these is an "easy" route, but they are all ways of gaining experience/competence, and building confidence along the way.

Agile..my Grandad was a ships boiler engineer in the White Star line.He ended up as chief engineer on the liner MV Britannic..which had bloody great diesel engines.

Good luck

Alfredo

 

[croydoncorgi]

And join ARGI (always assuming you've done ACS).

 

[Agile]

"""Agile..my Grandad was a ships boiler engineer in the White Star line.He ended up as chief engineer on the liner MV Britannic..which had b****y great diesel engines."""

I had a lovely cruise on the SS Karanga from Bombay ( Mumbai ) to Mahe and those steam turbines were so quiet you could not even hear them on deck or even in the cabin. Pity they were so inefficient.

The view at 6 am steaming quietly between the 92 islands was probably one of the most exciting scenes I have ever seen.

Tony

 

[Paul Barker]

Tony I wind my own transformers and design build and demonstrate valve amps, but I'm floundering in the dark against you.

I am geting there slowly though.

OP I got an imense amount out of Baxi courses there were different types of delegates there.

The two blokes sent by their firm who 8 all the sandwiches, and liked the sound of their many jokes and stories, there was the one man who thought he was god's gift to broken down boilers and interrupted the tutor midsentence at evey turn with his own experience (which demonstrated what a tiny aptitude he had admirably), thee was one other guy like me who soaked up every word from the tutor and stayed as long as possible afterwards while the tutors put more and more faults on the boilers for us to find. The other guys were out the door long gone by then.

You get out of it according to the effort you put in. If they don't put you the right fualts on do what I did, get their attention by stripping their poxy boiler down to the most infinitesimal part lay it out on the table, that's get them over to you, then ask the tiniest detail about every part, then gain the valuable experience of puting their poxy boiler back together (obviously pocket the extra screws left over while they aren't looking, especially if it's a Vokera you can never have enough spare Vokera screws).