Transcript
Hello, everyone. I'm Justin Denson with Blackline Safety. And today, I want to outline best practices for setting up a pumped portable gas monitor with tubing and a probe so you get the most accurate readings of a confined space to maintain safety at the work site. So before we get going, I do want to emphasize why it's so important, that you go through these preparation steps.
Not going through these preparation steps could lead to inaccurate readings, which really becomes a life and death situation for people inside of a confined space. So let's take a few minutes just to go over these critical steps, and just make sure that everything's good. So first thing you want to do is test your sensors.
That is the most important thing in preparing a pumped portable gas monitor for confined space entry is making sure that those sensors are good, and we do that by performing a bump test. Now you can do a bump test manually using a bottle and a regulator and going through the steps of your gas monitor to perform that, or you can get an automated bumping and calibration system, and that will take all the guesswork out of it for you.
If you do not get a pass on the bump test, then you want to perform a calibration. If you get a pass on the calibration, great. We can move forward. If you get a fail on that calibration, you have to replace those sensors before we can move forward. It's absolutely critical that any sensors that fail a calibration, that they be replaced immediately.
So once we've made sure that our sensors are working good, now we can move on to an overall inspection of our portable pumped gas monitor with probe and tubing. So check your pump itself on the unit.
A lot of them will have its own particulate filter, that you can replace if it's dirty. If it is dirty, replace it. Then check your fittings, make sure that those are free of, any kind of debris or anything, and that the threads are good or that your snap lock function is working well. Then you wanna look at your tubing and make sure that that tubing is clear. Make sure that it's clean.
Same with your probe or if you have a filter on the end of the tubing, that also needs to be clean. Okay. Clean is key. Clean is key to accurate gas readings and maintaining a safe confined space working environment. Okay. If you find any dirty tubing, get it replaced. Any dirty filters, get rid of them, get new ones immediately.
The other thing while we're on the topic of tubing is make sure that you are choosing the correct material, for the gases that you are trying to, detect. So, nonreactive gases like CO, H2S, LEL, O2, those are perfectly fine to use Tygon or PVC tubing with. When you are testing for reactive gases such as, chlorine, ammonia, certain VOCs, it's best to use, Teflon tubing for those. Okay. So Tygon tubing for nonreactive gases and Teflon tubing for your reactive gases.
Finally, if your gas detector does have a pump test feature, make sure you run it with the equipment all hooked up to it, your tubing and your probes and your filters and all that. Make sure all that's hooked up before you start the pump test. That way that pump test can check the integrity of the entire sampling line. Okay. If the pump test fails, just start troubleshooting systematically to identify and address any concerns. Once you verified that the condition of the sensors, the pump, the probe, the tubing, once you verified that all that is good, it's clean, the sensors are working, now you're ready to begin remote sampling.
I hope you found this helpful, and I will see you all again very soon with another essential for safety maintenance. Thanks all.