My first couple of weeks in Calgary.

Ok, so let's talk about my first couple of weeks.

     I was very fortunate to be able to stay at Jenny's ex-brother-in-laws when I got to Calgary. Nigel has lived in Calgary for quite a long time and I am sharing his house with his son Christopher. They are both pretty busy guys and I have been doing some extra work for Nigel on his house while I am here. The location is fabulous and it is not a bad commute to get to work in the morning, although the drive home can be a bit more of an adventure.

      This is a picture of the Calgary skyline I took from a rooftop north of downtown. This is actually just about a dozen blocks away from where I'm living. I get to see a lot of the city from the rooftops because that is where I am usually working. The weather has been quite nice and almost too hot. Often it will be hot all day, and then the clouds and thunderstorms move in for the evening. They tell me this is not normal weather, but it is all I have seen since I have been here.

    To the right is a picture of my first hail storm. It was already starting to settle down by this point, but it was coming down so hard that I couldn't talk to Jenny on my phone from the noise of the hail hitting my truck. One thing I will say about older vehicles - I have been in 3 hail storms since I have been here and my '86 Ford 3/4 ton is no worse the wear while newer vehicles are getting covered with dents. They just don't build them like they used to!

     Anyway, moving on to work. I have done a variety of things since I have been here, but I was a little worried in my first week. I got to the office on Monday and had a quick meeting with Keith the owner discussing the five year plan that his employees go through on their way to being Journeymen. It was a quick meeting because we were interrupted by one of the dispatchers who was in need of another hand. Thus I was handed my first assignment - cleaning condenser coils. So after 9 months of school and endless hours of homework to learn all they could throw at me I was sent to blow the dirt out of numerous coils so that people would have proper air conditioning.

      As you can see from the picture we would drive to the site in a pickup towing a large compressor. We then roped the air hose up to the roof in the general vicinity of the condenser and/or rooftop units and blew out the dust and dirt with a large volume of compressed air. To be completely fair, this is actually a very important part of maintaining A/C units because as the coils become dirty they loose their efficiency and eventually cause the unit to shut-off. However, it is not the most exciting of jobs.

     I realized that I had to pay my dues as a new employee, so I happily went about doing my job but I quietly hoped that I wouldn't be doing this all summer. My prayers were answered on my first Friday when I was sent out with a 2nd year apprentice to answer some service calls and actually got to do some troubleshooting.

     Our first stop was at a City of Calgary 911 relay station (with a really big antenna) where they had a problem with the A/C not working in the equipment room. These are pretty important A/C units as they keep the electronic communication equipment from overheating and messing up the 911 response system. After finding that the A/C was working properly on site we determined that they problem was in the automation system. After calling a supervisor and getting him to flip the correct switch on the control board the A/C came on just like it was supposed to and everything was fine.

     We then drove out to High River and repaired a short in the low voltage side of a rooftop unit at a banking centre. It took a while to chase down the problem but we finally found where the wiring for a limit switch had rubbed against the sharp edge of a transformer and shorted out, blowing the fuse on the control board. We repaired the wire and strapped it out of the way so it wouldn't happen again and went on our way.

      My next week was spent doing a maintenance contract a neat place in Calgary called Heritage Park. Their motto is "How the west was once." It is kind of a theme park with old buildings and employees in costume so it is a kind of living museum that operates during the summer. To maintain their image we were not allowed to drive our van down into the old part of the park so we had to carry all of our stuff in by foot.

    
     There are a fair number of natural gas furnaces and A/C units to service so it took us a good seven days to get everything done. In the old part of the park we had to change filters and blower drive belts as well as effect some repairs for some units that weren't working at all.

     

     We also conducted some maintenance on three large engineered air units on the newer part of the park. These rooftop units were large enough that we had to go inside them to change the filters and belts

     They run on multiple stages so as the demand for cooling increases the compressors are started in steps one at a time until it is running at full speed with all four compressors.

     The wiring is very neat an tidy so it is easier to follow the sequence of operation and make sure that everything is working the way it is supposed to. They also used Variable Frequency Drives (VFD) to control the speed of the supply and return air fans. Really cool stuff (forgive the pun).









   
 Anyway, that's probably more than you wanted to hear right now, but it hopefully gives you an idea of what my first couple of weeks were like. I leave you with one more picture. I took this on the roof of a warehouse and I like to call it "On The Beach in Calgary".

      I hope that everything is well in your lives and I will get some more pics and info to you soon.
Miss you all,
Rob

Welcome back

Well, how `bout that. Its been a while since I`ve been here. A lot has happened since my last entry, but rather than bore you with everything that`s happened all at once, I will try to break it up a little.

Lets start with the rest of my training. I had a very busy year and did a lot of work on my courses to get myself as well educated as I could. Over all it was a great year. I learned more than I will ever be able to relate to you here, and I finished the year at the top of my class. I also got some great experience working with both Glacier Industries in Parksville, and a week at the Harmac Pulp mill in Cedar. I will try to elaborate on that in a later entry.

After graduation I spent a couple of months working odd jobs and trying to line up an apprenticeship with a local company so that I could put all that great expanse of knowledge that had filled my head to good use. Unfortunately, the job market in Parksville Qualicum was a little too lean and I really needed to get to work so I broadened my search parameters to out of town and out of province.

The first morning I sent resumes to out of province possibilities, I got a call from a firm in Calgary. Yes, Calgary, Alberta. The company name is A K Brown and they had previously hired graduates from the same program as me, and were very pleased with the training that we had received at VIU. I spoke with Keith, the owner of the firm, for about a half hour and was very pleased with what he had to say. He seemed to like what I had to say as well because he offered me a job over the phone. After some conversations at home and calling him back the next day to get some more details about the position, I decided to go for it.