# figure this out for fun



## 460 Delta (May 9, 2018)

Warm air out of the compressor room condensing water in the conduit?


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## Cow (Jan 16, 2008)

gpop said:


> Locked out, removed the breaker and its has free water running out when its turned upside down.



That's not water, it's mouse pee.


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## gpop (May 14, 2018)

460 Delta said:


> Warm air out of the compressor room condensing water in the conduit?



yep just happened to be right over a cable way and followed a single wire to the middle of the cabinet before dripping off.


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## 460 Delta (May 9, 2018)

Air compressors are the bane of my job. I fight with one at least once a week.


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## 460 Delta (May 9, 2018)

The fix... hmm, we need pictures for that.


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## gpop (May 14, 2018)

460 Delta said:


> The fix... hmm, we need pictures for that.


We generally vacuum the pipe then place a plastic bag in the pipe and fill with spray foam. Once you stop the air movement the problem usually doesn't come back.

If we believe the pipe may still contain water then we add a 1/8 poly line into the conduit before sealing it so it can drain for a few days then remove and seal it. 


Its amazing how much air can travel through a conduit. The first one i found was due to the whistling sound it was making.


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## frenchelectrican (Mar 15, 2007)

The other thing you will have to keep in your mind is the horizontal conduits you have to pay attention to the pitch of conduit if you want to keep the water out.

I always useally start high at the MMC or Breaker location and pitch down slightly away from it. that useally do the trick.

And watch the conductors when you land it in the panels you may have to make a drip loop inside of the panel as well to keep from water getting into the breaker.


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## JRaef (Mar 23, 2009)

I had a similar thing with a PLC panel; one I/O card kept frying over and over. Finally I was there on a rainy day and saw that there was a slow drip coming in from a conduit right above that module. Maybe one drop every 15 minutes was all, so I imagine that sometimes when the panel was warm enough, it evaporated before it dripped. But under the right conditions, it would drip right onto the card and fry it.


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## MDShunk (Jan 7, 2007)

My ultimate condensation story; In the mid 90's I was working at a facility that had all relay-logic lines from the 60's and 70's. On particular line had a control cabinet about 7 feet tall and about 40 feet long. Many doors, mind you. Full of thousands of relays and pneumatic relay timers. The cabinet was cooled with vortex coolers, from the compressed air system. Maybe a dozen of them. One humid day the refrigerated air dryers went out and they were put on bypass. About 4 hours later I got a call to that line for troubles. Open the cabinet doors and it looked like a Slushie or a Snow Cone all over everything in there. The vortex cabinet coolers had turned into snow machines and sprayed down thousands of relays with slush.


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## gpop (May 14, 2018)

460 Delta said:


> Air compressors are the bane of my job. I fight with one at least once a week.



Have you ever figured out how to make instrumentation quality air for different temperature zones?


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## 460 Delta (May 9, 2018)

Refrigeration is the only way I know to make dry compressed air. 
On a ready mix plant, dry air is very desirable but seldom attained. Depending on the batcher size and truck load size, a ready mix plant can use a surprisingly large amount of air. 
I’ve seen a 7yd plant that has to split batch a 10 yd load,work a 55 cfm 15 hp compressor to death. Aerators on two silos and the cement hopper going, air cylinders on a agg hopper that the computer can’t find a good drop rate on, air cylinders opening agg gates into the agg hopper, admix diaphragm pumps pumping and a dust collector pulsing the bags and 2” piston vibrators rattling the last 10% of the agg and cement out. 
The compressor gets hot and stays hot, not good to make dry air. 
Really the most successful way is plumb the A compressor into the B compressor tank and run the discharge line uphill to the air valves so water will run back to the B compressor tank to pool and be drained out. We don’t think of it as instrument air, we call it control air. 
I know this isn’t the answer you were looking for,but this is my day to day. 
The operator solution is multiple air bleeds to drain water out, but that also causes the compressor to cycle back on and put more water in the system. 
One plant I attend to that is really a air miser, uses a gallon of ATF in a system oiler in a weeks time! He has zero issues with water because I’m assuming the oil is displacing the water, but the iron work and the plant wall underneath the air valves look just like what you would imagine, a oily nasty mess with aggregate stuck in it. 
Sorry if I went off topic on you there.


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## MDShunk (Jan 7, 2007)

There's centrifugal dryers and desiccant dryers too. They're sometimes both used with a refrigerated air dryer where ultra clean dry air is required 
I've seen desiccant systems so large they were a skid system the size of a Connex box that sat on I beams on the rooftop to serve a couple hundred HP air compressor. This was after it had already been through a refrigerated air dryer.


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## gpop (May 14, 2018)

MDShunk said:


> There's centrifugal dryers and desiccant dryers too. They're sometimes both used with a refrigerated air dryer where ultra clean dry air is required
> I've seen desiccant systems so large they were a skid system the size of a Connex box that sat on I beams on the rooftop to serve a couple hundred HP air compressor. This was after it had already been through a refrigerated air dryer.


Ours desiccants are large but not that large. It works great in most of the plant then you run the air line into a freezing room and you can practically see the mist coming out of the air. 
We water separate and filter it again but you can still see moisture coming out of the idp valves. 

I honestly think that unless you run a refrigerated air dryer lower than the temperature you plan to use the air its a loosing battle.


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## cmdr_suds (Jul 29, 2016)

I once ran across a radio coax cable installation that ran underground from the radio hut to the tower, about 50'. The conduit was 1-1/2" rigid all the way with 1/2" heliax (LDF4-50A). about half of the run was exposed along a retaining wall but still below the original grade. The install was one big drip-leg. The customer said the radio communications did work the year before but then quite working during the winter. Of course the conduit was full of water and when I removed the coax, it looks liked someone had crushed it with a channel locks the length that was in the exposed conduit. I was surprise the frozen water didn't split the conduit.


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## Icemanja (Jun 6, 2018)

Those are always fun to find. Give thanks the moisture didnt dry up before you got there. Ghost


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