Re: Power Cycle

[ABLE1 <somewhere@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

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 = = = =  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 - - - -  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