Ah yes, flooding. Water and 20A 120 don't like mixing too much. One weekend
back in 2002, my pointy-haired boss decided that we are going to have the
mini-fridge sit DIRECTLY NEXT TO the very early 90's rack mount 80+ LB. APC
2000VA direct-wire unit (wire from wiring panel/breakers through wall, out
hole, directly connected to UPS)... on the FLOOR. Brilliant, I know. The
main purpose was to get drinks and snacks while working on machines on the
bench directly above them (or so his reasoning went). So, since he moved
it, he figured, what the hell; unplug it and let the ice thaw from the
freezer part and leave its door open to drain the water to the concrete
floor. On top of this, he had stopped by the offices on Saturday (closed
weekends) a day later and forgot to completely close the back door which is
only 8-10 feet from said UPS and fridge. I'm betting all of you could
figure out what happened when a heavy rain storm hit Saturday night and the
building IS slightly below ground level at the back door area (door bottom
up to 1 foot was made to keep water out from flooding due to known issue in
area). Luckily, only thing that happened was a circuit breaker tripped.
Dried out the UPS and it worked fine.
We always dared him to check the UPS wiring or the unit for charge when
servicing it to ensure the batteries were good (as paranoid as we were, we
checked every 6 months).
You guy's stories are more interesting though as per the capability of
larger loss and a lot more water. Just thought I'd contribute my little bit.
BTW: anyone else have a pointy haired boss who was equally dumb in deciding
to run things such as UPS's on floor level?
-John Boffemmyer IV
At 04:26 AM 5/29/2004, you wrote:
>On May 28, 12:57, McFadden, Mike wrote:
> > Flooded computer room
>
>We had a similar problem, thanks to our aircon, a year or so ago. Our
>big aircon is one that has dehumidifies the air, then cools it, and
>finally rehumidifies it if necessary so it's not too dry (which
>encourages static buildup). Well, a valve jammed, and the rehumidifier
>section filled up with water and overflowed. We ended up with an
>inch-deep pool of water over about half the floor -- not as serious as
>Mike's incident, but still a bit messy. And dirty. What alerted us to
>it initially was the smell of dampness :-(
>
>--
>Pete Peter Turnbull
> Network Manager
> University of York
----------------------------------------
Founder, Lead Writer, Tech Analyst
and Web Designer Boff-Net Technologies
http://boff-net.dhs.org/index.html
---------------------------------------
Received on Sat May 29 2004 - 08:12:09 BST