Computer flooring/flooding/water in computer rooms

From: Huw Davies <huw.davies_at_kerberos.davies.net.au>
Date: Thu Jun 3 08:29:58 2004

> On May 28, 12:57, McFadden, Mike wrote:
>> Flooded computer room

OK, three stories (all true as far as I can remember them).

1) Arrived at work early on Monday morning (first in). As I walked
along the corridor
to the computer room I thought I could hear water running. Open door to
computer room
(you had to walk through the computer room to my office). Sounds of
water get much louder.
Water is pouring from the ceiling tiles onto the top of the VAX-11/780,
then down the doors
and onto the false floor. Naturally the VAX is still running. Problem -
no "big red button"
so the only way to power it off is via the circuit breakers on the
back. Find a broom
with a wooden handle and power it all off. The problem had occurred
three floors up on
Friday night and with the building locked up over the weekend the
broken pipe had done
a fair bit of damage.

2) At the next job I had we had built a new computer room for our
MicroVAXen. We had two in a
cluster (one in the world box, on in a H9642 rack). One evening I get a
phone call from work,
"you'd better come in as we have a water leak in the computer room and
we don't know what to do".
OK, setting new records for the trip from home to work I arrive to be
greeted by the building
supervisor. Up to the computer room - now we'd always referred to it as
the fish bowl as three
of the four walls were glass which allowed me to see the 12" or so of
water. Now this room didn't
have a false floor, just ducts to carry power and data. We did have a
big red button though. Problem was that the doors opened inwards and it
wasn't easy to open them. Also that water (which was from the
airconditioner input) was COLD! Also lots of fun watching the cooling
fans from the
lower RA81 generate spray. Still after drying things out everything
still worked.

3) Problem 2 was caused by a plastic filter in the chilled water input
to the airconditioning
unit failing. It was replaced. The following Friday I got a phone call
from work - "err, the
computer room is full of water". Yep, the replacement metal filter had
fallen off the pipe and
by the time I got to work the water was even deeper. At least I had gum
boots this time (for
UK readers, that'd be Wellingtons). We had a couple of large drains
installed in the floor after
this to avoid waste water from the computer room contaminating the
mouse rooms below. The
first flood meant that the contents of one of the two mouse rooms being
lost and at something
like $10 each the financial cost was quite high.

Huw Davies | e-mail: Huw.Davies_at_kerberos.davies.net.au
Melbourne | "If soccer was meant to be played in the
Australia | air, the sky would be painted green"
Received on Thu Jun 03 2004 - 08:29:58 BST