By Eamonn Ryan
Every industry has its pecking order.
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In HVAC&R we like to think we’re the sophisticated cousins of the building services family. We deal with psychrometrics, superheat, subcooling, variable refrigerant flow and controls clever enough to make your average laptop nervous. We commission systems, optimise efficiency and discuss dew points over coffee.
Then there are the plumbers. Bless them.
Somewhere beneath the refrigeration apprentice who has just spent three hours looking for the Schrader core he dropped into the condenser tray sits the plumbing apprentice, whose working day often begins with someone pointing towards a suspicious puddle and saying, “It’s over there.”
If our junior technicians occasionally have to recover refrigerant from awkward places, their plumbing counterparts are routinely expected to recover things that are considerably less glamorous.
I was reminded of this while changing after gym recently.
Four showers had been blocked for months and a plumbing team finally arrived at the gym’s busiest time to wage war on whatever lurked beneath the tiled floor. Their supervisor stood like a battlefield general, repeatedly counting.
“One… two… three… four.”
The apprentices nodded solemnly.
“Right. Get your tools in the holes.”
There was a brief silence as everyone within earshot realised exactly how that sounded.
The supervisor, blissfully unaware, repeated the instruction at considerably higher volume.
“TOOLS! IN THE HOLES!”
At this point the changing room dissolved into barely suppressed laughter.
The apprentices disappeared beneath shower partitions armed with rods, hoses and enough plumbing paraphernalia to frighten a municipal sewer. Every few minutes another instruction echoed around the room.
“No, not that hole!”
“The other one!”
“Push harder!”
“You’ve got the wrong one!”
The supervisor continued counting. The apprentices continued looking bewildered. Somewhere beneath the floor, the blocked pipes remained unimpressed.
Unfortunately, the plumbing drama had attracted an audience.
About a dozen gym members, all in varying stages of undress and all apparently self-appointed experts in drainage engineering, gathered around like spectators at a golf tournament. Those in the sauna and steam bath peered out.
“You won’t get through there,” announced one.
“You need a bigger rod,” advised another.
“I’ve had that problem before,” volunteered a third, to general sniggering.
One gentleman, wrapped in nothing at all wandered over to inspect proceedings.
“I’m about to…” one declared with great urgency, “…soil my shorts!” except not that politely.
Someone helpfully reminded him that the toilets were working perfectly. “It’s the showers that are blocked.”
“Doesn’t matter,” he replied. “The suspense is killing me.”
Meanwhile, every suggestion from the peanut gallery contradicted the previous one.
“Use hot water.”
“No, compressed air.”
“You need chemicals.”
“You need a bigger snake.”
“You should have called my cousin.”
The plumbers, who had started the morning looking confident, now wore the thousand-metre stare of people questioning every career choice they had ever made.
Eventually there was a glorious gurgling noise from beneath the floor.
Water began to disappear. The spectators erupted into spontaneous applause.
The supervisor smiled with the quiet satisfaction of a man who had finally defeated an enemy that had occupied four shower drains for months.
The apprentices packed away their equipment with the weary dignity of battle-scarred veterans.
As they left, one wag from the audience shouted, “Same time next week?”
There was no reply.
Sometimes, after witnessing what our plumbing colleagues have to endure, even those of us in HVAC&R have to admit that perhaps psychrometrics isn’t such a bad way to earn a living after all.
