So a few years back......
We were having trouble with the preheat burner ignition system. It was always a pain...In more ways than one.
The preheat burner is a contraption that preheats the windbox on an enormously enormous incinerator. This thing puts out about 40 billion BTUs ( not really but....Burning 6000 SCFH of natural gas....It's a lot you do the math)
With such a burner you need a big pilot and a big spark to light that pilot. To spark both those spark plugs you need a LOT of juice, and that rigged to give a continual pulse.
Well it is very noisy down there and I am standing by the voltmeter while....Let's call him Dwayne, since that is his name, takes off the leads. He screams, "is it o....?"
I scream, "it is o...."
He poses the question again, and as he can't hear me, I give him the shake my head and knife accross the throat sign. That should have been read as, "it'll cut your throat", or something to that effect. Obviously he thought it meant "off" which it most assuredly was not.
As I saw him reach for the wires I screamed and shook my head....But it was too late...
As the force of three tazers and 14 cattle prods coursed through Dwayne's nervous system.....He screamed.....A lot of things that I cannot repeat here. Off or on were none of those words.
Chalk another up to improper lockout tagout procedure.
I swear to this day he twitches every time he walks by that preheater.
As an update, our new refit included a vastly updated ignition system. When I saw the old relays lying in a heap nearly two years ago now, I had to shed a little tear. We have some new guys that would have greatly benefitted, from the intense training it could have provided, in communication, and voltage resistance of the human body.
"Drink this Gatorade kid, that preheater isn't lighting and you'll need to keep your electrolytes balanced for your training. Might want to take out them earplugs too."
"But...The noise?"
"Trust me kid, decades, I been doing this decades."
