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Water everywhere


petitepedal

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At least it was only on the 2nd floor!

When I was an undergrad chemistry student doing research on the 4th floor of UMBC's Chemistry Building, It had a synthesis requiring a reflux condenser (a distillation where the condensed liquid goes back into the pot it was boiled in) which required cooling, running water to run through it.

During the night, the water pressure must have increased and knocked a hose off.  Buy the time it was discovered, several labs and the several classrooms had been flooded!

I was amazed how little trouble I got in - a bunch of volunteers with mops cleaned it up.

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1 minute ago, Razors Edge said:

Yeah - if it was a sprinkler, I doubt Petite would have time to type here!

Our sprinklers are also full of some old/foul water.  That's a NASTY accident if those break.

Oh yeah  That water stinks 

A guy I was working with got soaked once  He had to leave and go shower and change his clothes 

 

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Good luck, Petite.

I'd kind of forgotten about this - some kind of pipe ruptured in the ceiling of the building where I worked in Philadelphia (16th floor) in the late 90s.  Our building was on the very same block as the hotel which hosted the 1976 American Legion convention that gave "Legionnaire's Disease" its name and that was on our minds at the time.  No one ever got sick though, as far as I know. 

That was some nasty brown water; I was trying to help my coworker get stuff out of the way and it got on my jeans (which were pretty new) - those stains faded a little over time, but never really came out.

In any case, if it's sprinkler water or any sort of stagnant or recirculated water, there are plenty of reasons to stay as far away from it as you can!

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11 minutes ago, TrentonMakes said:

That was some nasty brown water;

About 10 yrs ago, the organization I was with was having their floor redone completely.  Space was rented in a brand new building (overlooking the brand new Nats stadium!) which seemed like a nice place to wait out the office renovations.  Anyway, a few months in, I came into that office and a quarter of the floor was roped off.  Apparently, a sewage line from a bathroom one floor up had broken/leaked onto that part of the office.  I think it happened when folks weren't sitting there, but that area was a huge biohazard area afterwards (forever in my mind).  :D

Thinking back on it, I don't know if it was related to the newness of the building or the earthquake we had when we first moved in there????  Crazy.  Hoping Petite's pipe is either the AC drain line or a clean water pipe leak.

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1 hour ago, petitepedal said:

:runcirclsmiley:Head of maintenance is out..sick kid..jr. maintenance guy hit a pipe..sprinkler? Or AC line..2nd floor of 7 story building...I got calls out to sprinkler people and HVAC....

Water is everywhere...

We had a guy rupture a natural gas line once w/ a high-lo in our plant, now that's :runcirclsmiley: At first I thought it was an air line because it was loud, but the odor was a clue ;) 

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My daughter teaches high school chemistry. During the Christmas break administrators told the school maintenance people to turn on the water in the chemistry and biology labs as the temps were going to be in the single digit °F. Evidently at least one of the maintenance people turned both the hot and cold water faucets on full blast in the sinks. Many of the drain pipes couldn't handle the output and this went on for nearly a week on the second floor of the school. Things are so bad that they called in engineers to make sure the the building is still safe.

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59 minutes ago, JerrySTL said:

My daughter teaches high school chemistry. During the Christmas break administrators told the school maintenance people to turn on the water in the chemistry and biology labs as the temps were going to be in the single digit °F. Evidently at least one of the maintenance people turned both the hot and cold water faucets on full blast in the sinks. Many of the drain pipes couldn't handle the output and this went on for nearly a week on the second floor of the school. Things are so bad that they called in engineers to make sure the the building is still safe.

Common sense isn’t very common. The retreat center I worked at had monthly board meetings. It was the end of December so the board president thought he would save some money by having the meeting in the health lodge rather than heating the dining hall (It’s heated anyway). After the meeting was over he shut off the furnace in the health lodge. I was on vacation and I get a phone call on Christmas Eve that they have no water anywhere. I groaned, when they said that because we were planning to spend Christmas with the in-laws. The director asked if there was anything they could do so I wouldn’t have to cancel Christmas. I told them to walk the circle that the waterlines run an see if you can find where a leak has bubbled up through the snow. They called me back ten minutes later and said they found the leak. Somebody shut off the heat in the health lodge and all the pipes inside the walls broke. I told them how to shut off the water to the health lodge and I told them I would fix it when I got back. Yep, smart people with no common sense.

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Tonight when it goes below 0 maybe I will open the cupboard doors under my kitchen sink to ensure that the pipes there don't freeze.  Yes, the sink is against an outside wall.  Some mornings when I get a coffee cup from the cupboard next to the sink (one of the upper one's) I have to pre warm it with hot water from the tap so it doesn't chill my coffee when poured.  There's no air circulation in there with the doors closed so even though the wall is insulated the cold creeps in on the fingers of the night.

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