Re: Power Cycle

[RTS <gafa@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 3/26/2021 8:46 AM, ABLE1 wrote:
> On 3/25/2021 11:33 PM, Jim Davis wrote:
>
>>
>> Hey COOOL ! I've thought about doing something like that for my office
>> equipment but just never got around to it. But now that I know what I
>> can use to do it - - - - - I just may = = =
>> NAH ! I'll just continue to think about it and never do it.
>> But anyway - - - - as an aside. I don't know if you have ever
>> experienced this or not or if you did have a problem  - - - - you
>> didn't realize what the cause was.
>>
>> Years ago I had a customer with a barn and half a dozen or so horses,
>> a few goats a mule and a couple of donkeys. Lots of rabbits, ducks,
>> chickens and all kinds of animals. This guy was a prominent and very
>> successful dentist. But = = = =Â  the animals belonged to his wife. She
>> was some kind of weird about having animals around her. Along with a
>> lot of cats who climbed up on everything, she actually had a huge pig
>> living in the house with it's own room, a couch and a TV. Damn thing
>> wasn't house broken either and she'd run around cleaning up pig shit
>> and piss all day.
>>
>> One day I'm working in the house all by my self (except for the pig)
>> and I hear the lady of the house talking down stairs. So, I come down
>> stairs looking to greet my customer and there's no one in the house.
>> So I think maybe the kids came home and left right away. I go back up
>> stairs and in a little while I hear her talking down stairs again, I
>> come down and nothing. So I go back upstairs and wait by the balcony.
>> Then I spotted the F&^ing grey African parrots in a cage over in the
>> corner of the living room having a conversation. Man - - - -Â  they
>> sounded just like her talking.
>>
>>
>> Anyway, they had me put a fire alarm in the barn with heat and smoke
>> detectors. By the way, the barn was heated too. About a year went by
>> and a smoke detector went bad. I changed it. Couple of weeks later,
>> another one goes bad. Couple of weeks the third one goes bad. So I
>> naturally thought I'd got a bad lot of smokes. So, about a year goes
>> by and another smoke detector goes bad. Month later another, few weeks
>> later the third one.
>> So to make it a short story. I sent the smoke detectors back to ESL
>> and I ultimately found out that the combination of the ammonia and
>> other elements in the animal piss created a crystalized deposit on the
>> printed circuit boards shorting out the components.
>>
>> I replaced the smoke detectors with heat detectors and had no more
>> problems.
>>
>> So if you start having problems with some of the electronics in the barn,
>> Take heed.
>>
>
> Hi Jim,
> Happy Friday!!....................... Maybe??  To early to tell.
>
> As for my timer project.  I checked the cameras this morning and
> all is good.  YEA!!!  One day of success!!
>
> As for your barn experience.......... WOW!! Thanks for the story.
>
> Never would have guessed the reasoning for the smokes going south!!
> Not that many animals at this particular barn.  Just horses and a
> few cats.  And those unknown/unseen critters.
>
> However, thank for the input.  I will consider that if I should
> have similar issues.  The question would be what to do or how
> to modify the install to fix it??
>
> I have done a few barns with fire protection (this current one being
> on the list).  I was always concerned more about false alarms with smoke
> detectors in that environment that I only installed heat detectors.
> I have always installed the fire wire in conduit to minimize any
> false alarms due to rodents that like to chew on wires.
>
> All was good until one day when a worker was carrying a 6x6 beam
> on his shoulder between the horse stalls for some project. Someone
> at the other end of the barn called out to him and he turned his
> head and body towards the person calling him. In doing so the
> beam turned as well and the one end came in perfect contact with
> a heat detector and smashed it, tripping off the fire alarm
> and dispatched the fire department!!  Can't think of everything!!
> But, I should have placed a cage protector on those heats, maybe!
>
> While on the barn thing, when this horse barn and indoor riding
> arena was being built, the owner decided to have an apartment
> built on the 2nd floor for a worker to live.  The code required that the
> apartment have sprinklers installed.  Which meant that since
> there is no city water a very large tank, pump, controls be installed
> to feed the said sprinklers.  When it came time for final inspection,
> the "local code official" determined that the tank was too small and
> that it needed to be up sized to the next bigger.  So, since the
> pump room was built around the the tank, the walls had to be torn
> down to get the small tank out and a bigger tank put in and the
> walls rebuilt.  YES a HUGE PITA!!  Not me doing the work but I
> had to do some rewiring because the pump had to be increased and
> a different pump controller. I can't even imagine the $'s involved.
>
> Sooooo about two years later the employee that was living in the
> apartment quit and moved elsewhere.  So the apartment is empty
> and winter is around the corner.  A decision was made to turn
> off the heat to the apartment since nobody was living there.
> Well as you can imagine in got cold, very cold and the pipes
> froze and split.  But, nothing happened....... until the
> outside temps warmed up...........and the ice melted,
> and the water flowed, and the fire alarm went off and the
> fire trucks showed up.  And as Murphy always does it
> was late at night when I got the call to get there and
> shut down the alarm system that was going nuts!!!
>
> When I arrived the Fire Dept. guys were tearing out the
> drywall ceiling & insulation and throwing everything
> out the 2nd floor window.  Apartment totaled!!!
>
> End of story is that all was rebuilt and now there is
> antifreeze in the pipes.....................
>
> Hope you enjoyed my true barn stories.
> You can't make this stuff up!!   :-)
>
> Les


   Nothing as dramatic as you guys (tales).
But  I did manage to find out the hard way that PVC bag insulation
used in large open space building to insulate the roof space, will
gas a molecule that can trigger some smoke detectors when it reaches
a certain heat.... (like in the middle of summer)..  Took several
weeks to figure that one out...
Once switched over to heat detectors, problem went away...
--

*Rocky T. Squirrel, esq.*