The Toronto Branch would like to take this opportunity to apologize for the lack of newsletters in the past year. We know that there are many members who look forward to getting the newsletter and have been wondering when the next one would arrive. We were, at one point, sending out about six newsletters per year and with each newsletter there was some kind of educational hand out. However, during the past year your executive have not been idle. We fought a battle supporting the Power Engineers at the Toronto East General Hospital. We "in-house" created and placed a web site on the Internet. We held two plant tours, a golf tournament and two membership meetings.

Members of our executive are involved in National Office issues such as the annual audit and the design, creation and maintenance of the National Web Site. During this period it was very difficult to be producing a newsletter at the same time. We are hoping to have a better year ahead of us and provide at least four newsletters for our members. We also hope to continue with membership meetings and hope that the membership supports this initiative with their attendance. During one meeting we had guest speakers for an educational seminar. We had more people presenting the presentation than we had members who showed up.

The Toronto Branch will be holding it’s annual membership meeting in November. The date is Wednesday, November 18, 1998. There will be refreshments at 7:30pm with the meeting starting at 8:00pm. At this meeting the next year’s executive will be elected. We will also be discussing the Thermogenetic Coil Tube Boiler situation at Etobicoke General Hospital. (See the report contained in this newsletter) Please come out and join your fellow Power Engineers for the evening.

Statistics are in for the year 1997. There were 18 deaths related to boilers in North America in 1997. That is an increase of 10 from the year 1996. Of the 18 deaths, 13 were caused by operator error or poor maintenance (nine), improper installation (three) and one from faulty design or fabrication. Two deaths remain under investigation, two were from burner failure, one from limit controls. Low water condition continues to be the leading cause of the accidents, up 25% from 958 in 1996 to 1,198 in 1997.

Low water accidents were down in the power boiler (-38%) and heating boiler (-32%) categories. But water heating boiler accidents (647) increased by 480%! The number of operator error /poor maintenance accidents (352) is down 32% from 1996. There were substantial increases in faulty design and fabrication accidents (809, up 340%) for steam heating boilers, water heating (904, up 275%).

There were a total of 2,456 plant accidents in the United States and Canada, 369 more than 1996.

The Operating Engineers Act for Ontario is nearing its complete stage. At this point we have little details to share with you. We will publish any information that we obtain in future newsletters.

Here are a few questions that need to be asked of Director. Why did Mr. Robert Little register the boilers located at Toronto East General Hospital on December 2, 1997 at 500 Thermhour and classified it as being a First Class plant with Second Class Shift Engineers? Then on December 4, 1997 why did he register it as being a Second Class plant at 400 Thermhour with one boiler being sealed off? Then on May 19, 1998 he registered the plant as a Coil Tube boiler plant from April to October and a Third Class plant from November to March with a variance.????? The plant thermhour rating is 500 as coil tube boilers. Did our not-for-profit private sector T.S.S.A. succumb to some pressure? From what we understood the plant would be unable to operate through out the winter without all five boilers operating. The way we at the Institute of Power Engineers remember it, is that if you add up the water content of all the boilers the amount would be in excess of the 250 imp. gallon limit for coil tube boiler plants.

It seems as though hospitals are under increasing pressures to save money due to the Ontario Governments fiscal agenda. Hospitals have looked to their power plants for the savings. Many hospitals have replaced their boilers with coil tube boilers or with boilers of special design. Savings are reaped by lay offs of the hospital’s Power Engineering staff. Power Engineers accepting the ratings and facts at face value as these plants were installed in the hospitals. Today educated Power Engineers are questioning the claims made by the manufacturers of these boilers and questioning the ratings given these plants by the T.S.S.A. Etobicoke General Hospital is the next hospital that has had questions raised about the boiler installation. Thermogenetic boilers have been placed in the plant and are in the process of being commissioned. The Power Engineers in the plant started to doubt the design of the boilers and the amount of actual water contained in the boilers compared to the claimed amount on the spec sheets. Similar to the tests that the Engineers performed at Toronto East General Hospital, Etobicoke’s Engineers measured the amount of water contained in the coils of the boiler. The amount was well in excess of the 75 imp. gallon per boiler limit referenced in the Act and regulations. In fact the Engineers of the plant measured 100 imp. gallons contained in the coils of the boilers. The amount was nowhere near the amount of 41 imp. gallons that is contained on the manufacturers spec. sheet. The Institute of Power Engineers will be supporting the Power Engineers at this plant in their efforts to right a wrong.

The Toronto Branch is in the process of arranging a plant tour of the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. The plant is currently under retrofit with a 5000 ton chiller and a 5000 ton turbine, which as part of a plant that will operate much on the same principal as the Toronto District Heating Plant. The chilled water plant will chill a number of buildings in the downtown core of Toronto, one of which is the Air Canada Centre.

There are a number of members who have not renewed their membership with the Institute of Power Engineers. In today’s world of downsizing, plant retrofits, new boiler designs and mega-union amalgamations, is your voice being heard? The Institute of Power Engineers will stand with you and support you in your position as a Power Engineer. We will tell you if you have or don’t have a legitimate concern in operations of your plant. We will voice these concerns to the appropriate authorities within the T.S.S.A. and will not back down if we feel that we are correct. We will as much as our funds allow, take our position to the political or public arena.

Do you really know everything there is about your position? If a promotion were to make itself available, would you be ready? Would you like to learn more about people skills? Do you have first hand knowledge of the different types of plants, Power Engineering positions or technology? How many other plants do you get to go through other than the one you work in? Sure you know your plant, but what about that plant next door or across the city. Are you going to work at your plant until the day you retire? Maybe you would like to, but maybe the plant owner has a different plan. Are you as a Power Engineer Y2000 compliant (see next article) or are you going to start to sputter when we get into the new millenium? Try to get any one of these benefits for $60.00 per year. The Toronto Branch would like to have educational seminars held for members to keep abreast of current and evolving trends such as computers and building and plant automation. At this point our membership numbers and membership involvement are preventing this from happening. We survive on the membership funds. Just for this mailing alone, it will cost the Toronto Branch more than $150.00. We have created a web site for Power Engineers. This web site gives our organization worldwide exposure and allows us to communicate our views out to the public and to Power Engineers. The web site is created in house and does not cost us anything for its maintenance. Fees are charged for the license of the web site name and for space on a server. The Toronto Branch does not get all of the $60.00 of your membership. Only a portion or your dues come to the branch. Funds are kept at the National Office for National items and issues. It costs money to put on the type of items covered in this column. We need the membership numbers to continue and to increase the services provided to members. If you have not renewed your membership then please give some heavy thought to renew your membership. Talk to fellow Power Engineers and show them the merits of being a member. The more Power Engineers that belong to the Institute of Power Engineers, the louder our voice will be to the T.S.S.A. and the public.

Located at www.ipe.org the Toronto Branch Web site is looking very good. A new addition is a discussion area where Power Engineers can place questions or answers to many items. Did you have trouble registering for a Power Engineering exam? What hoops did you have to jump through? Can’t find the answer or the reference for that matter for a question in a syllabus? Would you like to voice a concern about a piece of equipment or would like to bring an issue out into the public’s eye? Why not use the discussion area of our web site? Simply fill out the form in the Discussion area of our web site and click on a button. Your discussion will be posted in a matter of seconds. To get to this area click on the link at the red flashing light on the opening page of our web site and follow the instructions. It’s yours so why not use it?

If you have any questions of the executive of your branch please feel free to e-mail us. The e-mail link is on the opening page of our web site. You can also phone any member of the executive.

As the year 2000 approaches many home P.C. users are wondering what this means to them. Most people have read or heard about the potential disasters that year 2000 threatens to invoke upon the world as the calendar and clocks change from December 31 1999 23:59:59 to the new Millennium. For those people that don’t have a clue what I am talking about or think that it won’t affect them, I would have to say that you are probably wrong. In some way this issue is going to reach out and touch you. It is going to effect every piece of software or hardware that has not been designed with a 4-digit date code. When that date, now only 14 months away, arrives and all the software and hardware switch to a 00 as its calendar year, the system will most likely think that we are now in the year 1900. These systems might shutdown, or it might cause general system crashes. It might print out inaccurate bills or reports because the year fell back 100 years from its previous date. I have read many articles and spent the last couple of nights reading releases on the internet about this issue, I must admit it opened my eyes, there is quite a bit of gloom and doom out there about what is going to happen in cyber space. We think that it will only effect the large companies, but what about the small companies that use accounting software custom written for them that was not designed for the year 2000 problem? What about security systems with date codes that have a 2-digit year date? What about fire alarm systems that track the date and time? How will these electronic chips handle the 00 when it arrives? A lot of questions and only the supplier of the respective equipment know the answers.

So how do know if you are Y2K ready? The first real step is to find out if the P.C. you are using is Y2K ready. This in a nutshell means can your BIOS (Basic Input/Output System) handle the switch to the Year 2000.

The BIOS is designed to initialize the PC so that it becomes aware of its hardware configuration, such as hard and floppy drives, video and keyboard parameters. It also sets up the system date and time by reading values from the real time clock chip, which is battery-powered (rechargeable) to keep a constant time reference for the PC.

Most PC BIOS programs have four digits allocated for recording the year (1997), but most only change the last two digits (97).

The majority of PCs made pre-Pentium machines and some older Pentiums tested have failed the basic rollover test. There are many software programs that can check to see if your machine’s BIOS is Y2K ready.

As for operating system,

MS-DOS: After the year 2000, users will have to use the full four-digit year information because the system does not understand "00."

Windows 95, 3.1, 3.11: The file manager shows a garbled date for year 2000 or later. This is a cosmetic problem for which Microsoft will provide a free patch that will be available on the web.

Also, the default date settings are for two-digit years. Users can reset the default dates for Win 3.x in the following way: Go into the control panel; select international, date format, and the century. For Windows 95 and NT 4: Go to start button, settings, control panel, regional settings, date tab. In the date tab under "short date style" select the eight-digit year option. Microsoft is investigating the possibility of providing an automatic change for the default date format so that users don't have to do this themselves.

This sums up our article on the Y2K issue. The above information provided has come to us from excerpts from different articles on the Web and we take no liability for any misinformation in the article. If you have concerns about the Y2K issue you should consult an IT professional or see your P.C. supplier.

If you have any letters or comments that you would like published in the newsletter please feel free to write to the Newsletter address: 134 Queen Street, Bradford, Ontario. L3Z 1L3

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