Service of snowmobiles in the wilderness and villages

The maintenance of terrain vehicles like snowmobiles has been developed for arctic wilderness use by paying attention to occupational health, safety and quality and efficiency of work. A small tent carried on a snowmobile sledge supplied with heating and lighting equipment was planned, built and tested. It was sized based on an ergonomic survey for the servicing of snowmobiles. The planned thermal and occupational aims were reached at temperatures down to -35 degrees C. Two movable, shielded fluorescent lamps with total of 140 W electric power was enough to produce 150 lx illumination and the local illumination for the repair point was 700 lx. The 8 kW warm air fan had enough power to hold the temperature inside at the desired level with an outside temperature of -35 degrees C. The fan was also used as a local heater by conducting warm air to the hands and tools. The temperature of the fingers was close to the comfort level, when repair work was carried in the tent. When the repair work was carried out outside, the finger temperature was near the risk of cold injury. The handles of the tools were made from heat insulating materials, which raised the contact skin temperature with about 3 degrees C.