Posted by Lieutenant Maximilien Mullins (Chief Engineer) in Engineering NE Frost

Posted by Crewman George Lee Sherridan (Engineer (Multitronics and Communications)) in Engineering NE Frost
{snip + edit to add orphan thread]

Lt Mullins heard the response from the captain and knew he needed to go take care of the issue. He then got up from his station on the bridge and walked onto the turbolift. After a few minutes of riding on the turbolift and walking down a corridor, he arrived at Main Engineering. He walked in and looked for NE Frost. He saw the Ensign and walked over to Mr Frost. He then said to the Ensign, “Ensign, I am Lt Mullins. I am here to assist you. Is there something else occurring other than the issue with the water pumps in the Garden?” He then waited for a response.

NE Frost looked over at the officer and shook his head with an exasperated look. “Sir as far as I’m concerned, we ought to stop the ship right here and start rebuilding the poor old girl from the beam on up. But no sir as far as I’m aware of all we got is that silly pump in the garden. “

Max responded with, “Has anyone gone down there to confirm what might be going on? I am going to take a look at the computer and see what is going on.” He then walked up to a station and started to see what the computer was reporting back about the pumps in the gardens. He also wanted to see the status of everything else on the ship. Max wanted to make sure everything was running in tip top shape. “Mr. Frost, we will get through this and get the old girl back in working tip top shape.” He said to the Ensign. Max could not believe everything on the ship was in bad condition because the ship was still flying and nothing seemed to be on fire and nothing major failing.

Frost chuckled and shook his head as he said Lieutenant sir if you can do that, I’ll name my fist two children after you! I’m sure that we have a leak on that pump so if oyu want I could go get that unless you’d rather get it yourself. We seem to have a lot of pump problems as of late!”

John entered engineering ‘My communicator did not work but what is going on and can I help?’ John aksed.

Max noticed John enter engineering when he ask about helping. Max then responded, “Can you run a computer diagnostic to determine the cause of the number of water processing valves failing? It seems there might be something going on to cause them to fail. Could be they are just old and it might be work replacing them ahead of time, instead of waiting for the to fail. Please let me know what the computer indicates i going on.” Max then said to Mr Frost, “Can you go ahead and go down to the botanical lab and replace the failed valve please?” He was curious if it was just due to them being old and needing to be replaced or if something more was going on. He then decided to run his own check at a higher level of systems. He then said to the computer, “Computer, can you please run a level 5 diagnostic on the entire water system, just not on the values on the ship please? I would like a status of everything. It might help track down if there is a large problem in place.” He then waited for the response from the computer.

Frost replied quickly, “Aye sir. He first stopped at a computer screen to make sure he would grab the right parts before he grabbed parts, and tools before heading out to fix the leak.

‘Yes sir.’ John replied he walked to a console and started the diagnostic.

As the Ensign was gathering his gear, Max waited for the computer to complete the diagnostic. He thought to himself, ‘There has to be something else going on to cause this many of the values to fail in this short period of time.’ He hoped the computer could give more details and he wondered how old the values were and if they were all replaced around the same time? He then said to the computer, “While you are running that diagnostic, can you please provide a list of the values and their replacement date, if there is one since they were installed on the ship?” He then waited for both the diagnostic along with the data on the valve install date of all the valves.

George arrived back from the Bridge. “Suurr, repawting bak faw duty, Suurr!” It looked like the entire engineering team was here, watching a running diagnostic. When he saw the diagnostic was running checking the valves again, he was puzzled. He’d changed two of the darn things himself, and they had been forced to take on extra spares at their last visit to DS-K5. There was something up with the coolant system. Maybe only a drain down and refill would solve it. “Suurr, are thay …err valves still causing problems?”

‘Yes.’ John remembered asking if the engineer could change the valves so he said. ‘Wait didn’t I told you to change the valves?’

“Yes, ayn’ ay done Suurr,” replied George. “It were awful fine when ay done left it!”

‘If you replaced them then why do they keep failing.’ John said as he started thinking about what could be wrong.

George was a an duotronics and a communications engineer really. He just did what he was told as far as these mechanical engineering jobs were concerned. So, he really had no idea except that the coolant might be contaminated with something.

“Mr LaMarr and George, I am having a diagnostic ran because these valves should not need to be replaced as often as they have been. Do either of you two know when these have been replaced and when they were last replaced? It seems with the data you two provided, it is way too often,” Max asked the two engineers. The life span on these valves seem to be much greater than the rate at which they are being replaced. Hence why the Lt wanted the diagnostic to be ran to see if something upstream is causing the issue with the valves needing to be replaced.

‘Well George just changed 2 of them because there was a problem with them.’ John replied.

Max responded to John, “I would expect them to be replaced when there is a problem. My question is, what sort of problem was it? Was a computer diagnostic ran when a number of them started to fail to see what might be causing is? Also, has there been any maintenance on any of these systems, like a full system flush and restart. It should not take all that long to run. It might help with the valves if we have any additional information on them.”

“If there were some laarge contaminant inside thay …uhh coolant system? Ayy shutdown, ayy drain down, ayn’ refill would fix it…” said George, though he had little idea what it could be or how it could have got there. He really hadn’t wanted to suggest this until he was pressed to do so, because of the work involved. He had heard that they would be arriving at a planet soon. Orbiting of planets usually meant one of two things, shore leave or additional maintenance. George was much more keen on option number one.

Max then responded to George, “This is a good idea. I had the same idea when I commented to George. The only question is, before doing this, has it been done previously after changing any of the failing valves or would this be the first time it has been ran in a while? It might be worth getting this on a schedule to do this once a month or something, the flushing that is, to help extend the life of the valves. Please let me know, either yourself George, or you, Mr LaMarr.”

Lt Mullins
Chief Engineer

‘It has not been done after we changed them as far as i know, and that schedule is a good idea.’ John replied.

Lieutenant Jr Grade John LaMarr Engineering