WorldWide Drilling Resource

33 WorldWide Drilling Resource ® OCTOBER 2015 Green Bay Farm Part 3 by Bill Corey Pentair Water Training Institute December 3, the motor died and I got a call from the electrician asking if I could come up and show them how to set the drive up properly. My boss said to take Nancy with me, so we drove up to Green Bay to meet the electrician and follow him back to the farm. When we got there, he called the installers to come pull the pump and replace the motor. They showed up and did their job. When everything was ready, we turned on the drive and got Fault 8-Earth Fault, the European way of saying Ground Fault. I strongly suggested to the electrician that we find the fault, but he said he knew what to do. When I asked what, he said he just disables the Ground Fault and the fault goes away. I wasn’t feeling very comfortable with this even though he told me the engineer was the one who told him he could do it. So I offered to call the engineer. Now remember, we were in an electrical room - NO signal. I put on my coat and went to my car to call. Needless to say, I got the engineer’s voice mail and left him a message which even if he did answer, I was going back into the electrical room where I wouldn’t have a signal. By the time I got back, the electrician already disabled the Ground Fault and had the drive up and run- ning. We set the sleep and everything was working great. So Nancy and I settle in for the three-hour ride home. December 26, we got a holiday that started Christmas Eve and went through January 1. So when I got the call on December 26, saying the motor and drive both burned up, they needed me to get there right away, I called Scott. You remember Scott, he’s the guy who sells the drives to my company. The two of us head up nort (a little Wisconsin humor here). We got to the farm and the electrician called the installers who changed out the motor. Scott and I changed out the drive. Once again, we got Fault 8 when we started the drive and once again the electrician said he knew what to do, which of course I disagreed with and asked Scott what he thought of the idea. He seemed to agree with the information the electrician was supposedly told by the engineer. This of course meant the Ground Fault was once again disabled. We finished our set-up and left for home. January 10, I once again got a frantic call from the electrician saying I was needed up there right away, the motor and drive burned up again. I told him I couldn’t because I was in California, but I called Scott and let him take care of it. This time, when they started the drive and got Fault 8, Scott thought maybe I was right and they better find that ground because this was the last drive he was giving them! Do you all remember about the wicking problem? The splice was in the area under the wrap and the water was still wicking. Needless to say, the splice was not good enough and the drive was syncing a ground, but because the fault was just being ig- nored - turned off - there was nothing it could do except blow up, which it did. Okay, now the end of the story. In February, I got an e-mail from the salesman who was totally upset and blaming me be- cause the customer wanted $6500 for the work they had to do on our drive. Of course, the salesman was saying it was my fault because they had warranted all the drives and motors which gave the customer a leg. Needless to say, I sent him a copy of the letter I wrote him back in September. I heard nothing back for about a month, then only heard they worked it out. Don’t know, don’t care; it didn’t come out of my pocket. The lesson here is very obvious. When a drive tells you something is wrong, find the problem and fix it. You paid how much money for the drive and then don’t want to listen to it? REALLY?? Hope you are enjoying my stories. They are remembered to the best of my ability. Bill Bill Corey may be contacted via e-mail to michele@worldwidedrillingresource.com