When one thinks of hog farms, we don't expect to hear that they can experience more than their fair share of electrical hazards. At Big Sky Farms in Saskatchewan however, facilities managers can tell you that the high levels of humidity and ammonia found on site can lead to premature corrosion of electrical systems and create all sorts of potential hazards.

In fact, most fires that have occurred have been a result of an electrical problem, reports Facilities Manager Andre Kruger. In order to be more proactive in their maintenance efforts, Big Sky Farms decided to use handheld thermography technology from Fluke to perform on-site inspections at its 44 farms and 16 feed mills throughout the province.

Kruger admits that as an Electrical Journeyman, he may only have a "little knowledge about hogs", but he has lots of experience in seeing what they can do to electrical systems. "The one thing I do know is that the environment is very corrosive. There is a lot of humidity and ammonia in these facilities. As soon as corrosion starts happening, you find electrical systems start arcing – and that's caused some fires in the past."

He adds that once corrosion sets in, you also get loose connections. "When you couple that with moisture on the wires on receptacles and relays, it can lead to all kinds of problems."

For a long time, dealing with electrical problems was pretty much a reactionary process. Infrared and/or laser thermometers provided some indications of issues with breakers and motors, but as Kruger says, "That was the closest I could get to seeing problems ahead of time."

As far as electrical systems were concerned, "Basically we had to wait for something to happen and fix it. You couldn't know ahead of time if receptacles or cord ends were corroded. But when something wasn't working, we would find loose connection and burnt wires once we took things apart."

The follow up was equally challenging, since inspectors would have to keep a manual record of the readings, enter the times that a component or system had been replaced and go back to head office to input all the data. In the case of bearings for example, they set up a replacement schedule – an approach that often meant performing maintenance when they didn't need to, says Kruger. "After a repair, we decided to change the bearings every six months, even if nothing was wrong. Given that we have 44 farms and 16 feed mills - and if I spent a week out of the year at each location - that translates into a lot of time and labor."

Kruger believed that there had to be a better way to avert problems through preventative maintenance. The answer was found in Ti thermal imaging units from Fluke. "When I first came across the device in 2006, I could see right away how it could save me time and trouble. I knew we could use it to do everything – from checking out the bearings at the feed mils to electrical circuits and relays. Some of the products we saw were just way too expensive."

But the Ti25 turned out to be affordable – and had just the right features he needed to run a preventative maintenance program he adds. "When I saw that we could afford it, I waited for the first opportunity to buy one."

Since making that purchase a year ago, Kruger says he has never looked back. "I was really impressed by what the Ti25 could do, and by its quality," he says. "And it had everything I needed all in one instrument. I can look at bearings, I can do scanning, and I can do thermal imaging on motors. The speed and the clarity of the images are unbelievable."

He and his team members use the Ti25 to inspect all circuit breakers 600 volts or lower as well as transformers where Kruger says corrosion often causes connections to break off. "So far the Ti25 has actually detected and highlighted five or six problems on the transformers alone that could have been major issues.

He estimates that with this ability to detect problems early, downtime has been cut in half. "We've more than doubled the value of the investment within a year. We had one site for example where all 30 circuit breakers had loose connections and were overeating. We were able to see that with the Ti25 and fix the problem right away before a disaster happened."

Inspection times have also been reduced. "With the Ti25, we can do a mechanical room inspection in 45 minutes, and an entire feed mill in two hours. Before, it took a day to run the inspection equipment, and then we had to keep coming back every 20 minutes to shoot it again. A full inspection therefore would require at least two maintenance personnel to do the imaging and the reporting. The nice thing about the Ti is that one person can record all measurements by hand and keep all the readings for downloading. Everything is labeled and documented so it's easy to look at old data and compare notes so we can determine when something needs to be changed."

Another advantage for Big Sky Farms was that insurance industry was getting ready to stipulate that thermal imaging be used for electrical circuits and motor inspections. "We figured if we could get a jump on that, it would be all that much better," Kruger says.

"Before we were just putting out fires and responding to emergency breakdowns and fixing them as they came along. We never had a chance to go through and actually see what was happening. Now we can."

The fact that thermal imaging saves time and costs has proven very useful from a planning perspective, he adds. "This is the first time in five or six years I actually have the spare time to set up a preventative maintenance program."

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