Re: Power Cycle

[Bob La Londe <none@none.com99>]

On 3/26/2021 9:26 AM, RTS wrote:
> 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
>
>
>  Â  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...


Ha.  Some types of fruit can out gas and set off ammonia detectors.
This can be really fun in a giant commercial cooling facility where
their refrigerant is ammonia.  They drop everything and evacuate the
plant without exception when the ammonia detection system goes off.  I
put loud sirens and flashing lights in every area for that.

What's fun is the plant manager will reprogram the system during times
when they are handling that type of fruit and change the detection
levels.  Over the years they monkeyed with a bunch of the settings, and
they asked me to fix it.  I spent one day going around and reprogramming
the controllers and checking the wiring, and declared it fixed.  The
plant manager complained that was all I did.  The thing is that was all
it needed.  To be programmed correctly.  I asked him, "Would you like me
to make some stuff up?  Its good for now.  Call me if you have a
different problem and I'll fix it."

They were a good customer over the years.  They even sometimes had me do
handy man type stuff, and paid my T&M rate for it.

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