Grounding vs Bonding issue.

[e57]

I'm not really sure why were not using the european standard here instead of the american NEC. Do you know?
Thank you

Do you mean for "re-sale value" of American installations over there???? I have mentioned this before, and often there was a blending of Euro equipment, N. American outlets, and a blending of wiring practices. As Tom Baker mentions they do not blend well.... :roll:

I am not sure what this is about?

Because there was an enormous amount of equipment purchased over-seas at discount rates. Back to some of the other Iraq questions we have received here and other forums:

• 50hz equipment on 60hz
• Re-calcing wire and breaker sizes for European voltages to 208/120
• Euro color codes
• The seeming void of EGC's on cables - like the one with the steel strain relief like you have.
• Pakistani Electricians.... :roll:
• Not to mention the endless KBR and other contractor rants hiring from every other country but our own at the beginning.

I agree with you, and I am a E6 in the Army. I don't like all the contractors over there either, because my job has turned into contract oversight rather than actually doing the work.

IMO in the absolute LEAST.... It should be! However they (the contractors) should not be there in the first place for so many reason I can not begin to list. The primary one being force readiness - because it extends well into the service and support battalions as well - not just new Hummer add-ons.... If you don't get practice slamming an air-field or field hospital together in a day - the day you need to 'slam an air-field or field hospital together in a day' - it doesn't go well.... And you won't be able to ask anyone else to do it!

 

[mxstar211]

Do you mean for "re-sale value" of American installations over there???? I have mentioned this before, and often there was a blending of Euro equipment, N. American outlets, and a blending of wiring practices. As Tom Baker mentions they do not blend well.... :roll:


Because there was an enormous amount of equipment purchased over-seas at discount rates. Back to some of the other Iraq questions we have received here and other forums:

• 50hz equipment on 60hz
• Re-calcing wire and breaker sizes for European voltages to 208/120
• Euro color codes
• The seeming void of EGC's on cables - like the one with the steel strain relief like you have.
• Pakistani Electricians.... :roll:
• Not to mention the endless KBR and other contractor rants hiring from every other country but our own at the beginning.

I still don't understand what you and Mr. Baker are trying to point out to me. I was trying to help Sparkey874 with advice I had used in theatre. I know firsthand all the problems over there.

IMO in the absolute LEAST.... It should be! However they (the contractors) should not be there in the first place for so many reason I can not begin to list. The primary one being force readiness - because it extends well into the service and support battalions as well - not just new Hummer add-ons.... If you don't get practice slamming an air-field or field hospital together in a day - the day you need to 'slam an air-field or field hospital together in a day' - it doesn't go well.... And you won't be able to ask anyone else to do it!

The reason contractors are there is because of the sheer number of jobs and lack of qualified military personnel to do the jobs. My company will occasionally get to do a power plant install or something of the like. But mainly we have to babysit the contractor.

I am just trying to offer my advice of what I had ran into overthere recently.

 

[e57]

The reason contractors are there is because of the sheer number of jobs and lack of qualified military personnel to do the jobs. My company will occasionally get to do a power plant install or something of the like. But mainly we have to babysit the contractor.

I am just trying to offer my advice of what I had ran into overthere recently.

Before I went in - while I was in, and for years after I got out they had been lopping of whole MOS's and shrinking the S&S battalions. Steady dwindling of training and material. i.e. I went to school with E-5's ~ E-7's who got kicked out of other MOS's, killing all chance of promotion for me - which is one reason to leave...

I have stated this before in some of the many "Burger King" type of conversations previous to this one... IMO many of the 'shear number of jobs' you speak of are manufactured needs. Creature comforts so-to-speak. I have seen abot two dozen or so treads on Iraq electrical work that have involved AFFES installations. I did the tail end of DS, and all of Somalia with no site of a burger king.... The PX was a trailer that went camp to camp each week, and if you wanted different food you traded with Canada or Italy? (Italy had a great bar! They shipped booze. We built it trade from scuttled Seabee lumber... Powered it from the airfield gen farm. Good times!)

My point though, is that we used to do it all... All of it. I never saw an outside contractor - except in garrison.

 

[mxstar211]

I understand what you are saying, but there are just too many bases and not enough military personel to do the jobs without contractors.

I haven't messed with any of the comfort spots. My experience is limited to living quarters, bathrooms/showers, offices, motorpools, DFAC's, stuff like that.

I am in the 249 EN BN, and we are the ones in the Army who special in power generation. Now we specailize in power generation, but we do all areas of electrical work. However, do to the numbers of personel, we mostly oversee contracts and do SOW's for new work.

There are only about 300 people in the Army with this MOS, and I think the Navy is about the same. Trust me, we wish we could do it all, but with small numbers, it is impossible. We also have to do diseaster relief power operations and other missions that pop in the states and worldwide. We do a lot of traveling.

I see what you are saying, and when you see the work the contractors get paid to do and how bad it is, it is quite upsetting.

 

[e57]

I understand what you are saying, but there are just too many bases and not enough military personel to do the jobs without contractors.

If you quanify each in dollars in a budget - each contractor employee is 2-3 military personel... Pull out 1 bad apple - replace with 2 bananas, and pork chop.

I haven't messed with any of the comfort spots. My experience is limited to living quarters, bathrooms/showers, offices, motorpools, DFAC's, stuff like that.

Same here, the Italian bar was an example of what could be done with the waste, modivation and spare time. For the most part for me it was operational stuff - RO machines, generators, refrideration, air field lighting and field clinics for the Corpsmen. I went back and forth from a Med unit to a Wing unit, between being TAD to MAGTF 39-SSU loading and unloading ships - and still did security for convoys every day... Not an 8 hour job.

This was all before the USMC got hand-me-down MEPS field gear from the Army (as I was leaving) - seriously it was #8 on over-head or buried "field wiring" as distibution. Field kits came in a few sizes - one was a dozen fused disconnects, sectional ground rods and 10k' rolls of #8, line grips, a gross of split bolts and tape - a few hundred lighting pig-tails, bulbs, recpticals, etc. - it was it was all put together by hand and supervised by NCO's & SNCO's who knew what to do with it all and were proud to do it. Air-field lighting would show up in a shipping container of parts and transformers that four guys could put together in a day while 50 grunts slammed mat down behind a grader - park a lens at the end and land a C-5 on it the next morning... It's the skills and know-how that are vanishing. And truthfully the only 'out-side contract' in Somalia was paying a bunch of Somali's $5 a day to burn feces in a 55 gal drum so we did not have to do it ourselves.... If you got in trouble you got to be the guy to guard them.

I see what you are saying, and when you see the work the contractors get paid to do and how bad it is, it is quite upsetting.

Yes it is, somewhere around here, there is a picture of someone measuring 120 on bathroom plumbing... Stories in the news of 14KV on plumbing that ingited some poor soul in a shower... But the answer to that was more contractors??? :roll: And fewer people like us.

 

[mxstar211]

I know what you are saying, but there is a limited supply of bananas and pork chops. Its a volunteer Army, and we can't get enough people through the school house.

 

[e57]

I site the lack in foresite of base closure, and force reductions in the 80's and 90's. You'd still have most of them if they weren't told to shuffle on years ago in masses. Example here in the SF Bay, The Presidio, Treasure Island, Alemeda, Concord NWS - all closed before 2000.... Thats the short list, there were a dozen or so more just locally.

Anyway I guess we'll stop here before it broadens to the wider political aspects past and current. But the privatization of support positions just chaffes me, and the fact that some of them were/are making 6 digits really burns.

Semper Fi

Mark Heller

 

[sparkey874]

Ok, first off, again thank you for all you help. I totally agree that there are too many civilans overhere doing a strictly military job, but that is not relivent to this post. We are currently completing a turn over with the next SeaBee detachment. We should be back in the state's in a few week's. Thank God! This has been a very educational tour here and I'm proud to have done it. Thank's for you suppost! God Bless America