Spent 4 hours chasing a tube leak that turned out to be a gasket I'd already replaced

I was working on a reheat furnace header at a steel mill near Gary, Indiana last Tuesday and kept finding a drip after hydrotesting. Turned out I accidentally pinched the new gasket when I torqued the flange. Has anyone else wasted a whole shift on something that simple?

3 comments

3 Comments

kevin_schmidt971mo ago

@the_ruby knows that soup trick well (the soapy soup trick not the edible soup trick) but I’d add that if you’re really trying to punish yourself, just skip the soap and play "find the gasket ghost" for four hours like the rest of us.

the_ruby1mo ago

On the hydrotest part, I gotta say that's a pretty standard way to find small leaks, but it doesn't always pin down a pinched gasket that's barely holding. I've had that exact thing happen on a 8 inch steam line near Chicago. One trick I picked up is to run a soapy water spray on the flange face before you bolt it up, lets you see if the gasket is sitting flat before you torque it down. Saves a ton of headache.

aaron89628d ago

You done that too? Pinched a gasket on a 6 inch steam flange last spring. Drove me nuts.