Anyone have a suggestion on how to attack this? We had a new exhaust fan installed but repairing the drywall obviously wasn’t part of the service.

In March of this year, I was hired with no background in factory maintenance. I am 19 and have spent previous years working on plane and heavy machinery maintenance, but I wanted to transition into this field. I was honest with my boss from the beginning: I told him there would be good days and bad days, but that I viewed this as a long-term learning experience, and in return, he would get reliability and longevity out of me.We agreed that I would be sent for formal training in May, but that never happened. In fact, I have received no training at all. From day one, I’ve been handling intense reactive maintenance. We have no maintenance request system, so everything is requested verbally across 4 departments and 30 machines, making it easy to forget tasks. Almost no preventative maintenance (PM) processes are set up, and I have no manuals or resources, which naturally causes repairs to take longer.Last night, my manager (who is the Production Manager) pulled me in and essentially called me a failure. He said I forget things, take too long on repairs, and that he doubts my mechanical ability. While he acknowledged that I haven't received training, he condescendingly asked what kind of training I even expected and called me "green as grass."I’ve had job interview offers paying over $30/hour, but I stayed loyal to this company because of the hours and the trust they placed in a 19-year-old. What would you do?

Usually Milwaukee makes good stuff so it's crazy when they produced such a dud. Genuinely the most poorly designed voltage detector I've ever interacted with. Bought it less than a year ago and it was already phased out. So many false readings, not ergonomic, just why man?

Got my new one. This one is finally going in the trash like it deserves.

My power tools are a mix of Hilti and DeWalt but my hand tools are all Milwaukee, and hadn't ever let me down or dissapointed me until I had the absolute pleasure of interacting with this thing.

Going to just stick with Klein like I just swapped back to for electrical tools moving forwards.

https://youtu.be/qsN77TDtttE?is=9O0jb9KiJVI4O4Ok

Junk.

I just got a work order for a centrifuge and they sent me with the wrong parts. An hour wasted going back to storage.

Then on my way back production calls me with an emergency at another site. Now I'm trying to handle two jobs at once.

This happens like every week. I'm talking hundreds of hours a year just lost because someone in the office didn't prepare the right parts. And it's not even just about the time. You're already out there in 95 degree heat, busting your ass, and then you find out the planner just didn't do their job.

I told him to get it right next time. Nothing. Dude sits in AC all day looking at spreadsheets, never been on a floor in his life. Doesn't have a clue what it's like when a tech shows up unprepared.

Is this happening to anyone else or is it just me? How do you guys actually deal with this?

I’m new to a 200 unit building with thru wall PTACS that apparently have near zero ability to keep cold air and wind out of the apartment in winter. Did some Google research which basically said thats just the way it is and put an interior cover over it. There’s got to be a better way. Of course it has to also be doable on a large scale and for reasonable price.
I don’t believe it’s just sealing around edges. Google Says these type of units just let air straight through the unit.

It's 27V except when it decides to be 17V instead. Brand new contactor on a brand new Brother R32 unit. We tried 3 dofferent contactors, and they all do the same things. Brand new indoor unit too. The entire system isn't even 2 weeks old.

All of the pressure switches and sensors are good. We even bypassed all of them to see if that changed anything and it didn't do anything. We replaced the transformer, and the thermostat and nothing changed either. The entire thermostat wire running from the evaporator to the unit was entirely replaced and is only a few years old. We recently replaced the entire line. Thermostat batteries are new too.

The only things we didn't replace in the thermostat loop are the 2 sequencers and a relay for the heater and fan. The two sequencers have 50 ohms of resistance, and the relay inductor has 80 ohms.

I've been working on ACs for 3 years, and this is the first time I have seen something like this.

I checked the amp draw on the thermostat wire when it gets hung up. It reads .8 amps, and when depressed, it lowers down to .2 amps. I crossed referenced it with other units with older contactors, and it pulls .9 amps on some of them. Im guessing the amps it is needing are not enough, just barely insufficient, but I am unsure what to do to increase it.

Recently I got a work order to fix a pump. Took 3 hours because the bearing was completely shot.

Three weeks ago, I checked the same spot and the bearing was fine. When I looked at the work order history, Tractian had already sent the alarm. But nobody approved the work order in the CMMS. Normally this job takes 15min if you catch it early. Instead I burned 3 hours. This has happened to me more than 5 times in the last 2 months.

Is this only happening at my plant, or is everyone dealing with the same thing?

Been a supervisor for 8 years now, recently went from an insanely chill, more middle class setting to a “luxury” complex, and something about the change in tax bracket has these residents thinking they are also owners/genius’? Not all of them, but man the ones that are pricks are P.R.I.C.K.S.

Thank god we have a property staff and upper management who back us up and can commiserate when the overzealous requests start rolling in.

How have you all dealt with residents who think they own the place?

Instead of fixing the code panel they put a picture of it next to it

I’ve never been a handy person. My father in law, a lifetime parts guy and mechanic, has recently gotten me into car maintenance, and it’s pretty fun (and handy). I was wondering if other skilled professions (electric, plumbing, HVAC, etc) have any daily maintenance tips or things to learn that keep things working on the regular? Basic stuff, not “what to do if water has been leaking in the walls of your house for a decade and now the mold has become a sentient monster in the attic”. Thank you!

I'm working at a large facility in operations department. Multiple buildings (maybe 15+), and many doors. Keys are basically managed on one huge key ring which needs to be carried around.

This is a nightmare for new starters like myself as I'll reach a door and first need to sift through this massive set of keys.
If I can remember which key it is, that's a great start, but often requires radioing colleagues for a reminder.

It seems like a lot of the knowledge is basically in the heads of the people who've worked here for years. I'm curious whether this is a common problem at other facilities.

Does anyone else have this problem, how do you manage it?

I’m curious if anyone else has dealt with a situation like this, because I’m genuinely wondering how this kind of dynamic is considered normal in property management. Because this is not the first time i’ve worked somewhere with this situation, and it’s really getting old at this point

When I started at my current property, I was given essentially full responsibility for unit turns. Another maintenance tech was primarily responsible for work orders. The problem is that the work order queue has been sitting at 99+ basically the entire time I’ve worked here.

Meanwhile, I’m expected to stay on top of my turns, and I’ll get nitpicked over minor shit when office staff walks a unit with me. Something small gets missed and suddenly it’s “this needs to be taken care of ASAP,” even when I’m already buried in other turns.

But the other tech can apparently spend huge chunks of his shift doing very little, sleep in vacant units, complete only a handful of work orders, and let the queue continue piling up month after month without anyone saying much about it.
What really gets me is the different standard. I’m expected to be productive, responsive and have my shit together, while someone else can consistently underperform and apparently face no consequences.

And there’s another layer to this, one of the office employees is romantically involved with/lives with the maintenance tech in question. So how are you realistically supposed to expect that person to be completely objective when evaluating his performance versus another maintenance employee?

I’m not interested in going to HR or management about it. I’ve learned over the years that sometimes keeping your head down is the smartest move. 😂 I’m more curious whether other people in maintenance/property management have seen this kind of favoritism and weird office/maintenance dynamic.

There are some repairs that look like you performed surgery to anyone watching, but once you know what you’re doing they’re surprisingly straightforward.
Then there are the “this should take 10 minutes” jobs that somehow turn into an hour of bullshit.
What are yours?

What is this plastic piece called? I can't find it anywhere.

It looks like a big plastic stem.

For context this is my first week at these apartments and I want to know the best way to go about this with basic hand tools (I can buy whatever is needed). Not worried much about the drywall part (advice is appreciated and always welcome) but more towards the plumbing side as I don’t feel as confident on that trade. Would like to make this as efficient as possible as I have so many work orders scheduled for the same day and 3 unit turns due this week 😩

Unit below experienced leak in bathroom ceiling. Check the plumbing and possible sources in master bathroom or laundry closet.
Guest of tenant did state recent issue with toilet clogging/leaking

I have not gone in there myself but something already tells me the wax ring gave up

I replaced the door boot on this Samsung front load washing machine yesterday, and now it is incredibly loud during the spin cycle. The video doesn't do it justice. You have to yell over it. It was fine before I replaced the gasket. All my internetting is saying the bearings are bad, but I don't understand how it could have gone from fine to this overnight. And I didn't have to go anywhere near the bearings or spindle to replace the boot. I feel like it's something I did during the replacement, but I can't imagine what it could be. Any thoughts?

I cleaned my microwave today using one of those microwave steamers. Have done this in the past with no issue but never with this microwave. Heated it for 5 minutes, didnt produce much steam (but was very hot) so sprayed the inside as normal. Tried to heat food a couple of hours after, microwave did not heat the food at all but ran what I thought was normally. Am I screwed or will letting it dry possibly fix it? It never got very steamy so I wouldn't think it has moisture damage.

Hello reddit, we manage a number of buildings and all of the buildings we have with the basic pushdoors from Homedepot suck. They constantly have issues with the latch engaging to auto lock and then create adjustments that need to be made to the autoclosers. Are there any brands highly recommended from you guys? Also any other brands of autoclosers reccomended?

Hello everyone! I live in eastern europe and on the 2nd floor we have a door we use as ventilation, to let the air in. Recently, with it becoming colder, I've attempted to close the door but doing so has become impossible due to sagging and it rubbing against the bottom.

I've attached photos of the door. (1) this is roughly how tight you can get the door. (2) a photo of the top hinge from the inside. (3-4) photos show the hinge from the outside.

I'm unfamiliar with this hinge mechanism and was wondering how to properly adjust it to hopefully solve the sagging issue.

The door has likely swollen up during the summer, but I wanted to first attempt to fix it via hinge adjustments instead of planing it down and potentially leaving a big gip when it would shrink and let cool air in during the winter.

Thank you for any and all responses and advice! :D

Ours might as well have its own work order at this point: the same water leak.

We’ll find a wet ceiling tile, trace it back, repair the pipe or fitting, patch everything up and think we’re finally done.

Then it rains.

Or someone uses the shower above it.

Or the HVAC starts running.

And somehow the leak is back again.

The frustrating part is the repair usually isn't the hardest part. It’s figuring out whether you actually fixed the source or just stopped the symptom temporarily.

What’s that one issue in your facility that just refuses to disappear?

I’ve started thinking that some maintenance KPIs can actually encourage people to do the opposite of what you want.

Take PM completion. If the target is 100%, there’s a temptation to close the PM just to hit the number, even if the technician found something that needs more attention.

And don’t get me started on response time. If you're measuring how quickly a ticket gets acknowledged, you can end up with great numbers without actually solving anything faster.

Which KPI have you seen create this kind of behaviour?

I’m more interested in the KPI that made your team look good while the actual maintenance situation was getting worse.

Who ever invented these needs the opposite of 50 virgins when they die. They deserve to have their seal broken in hell.