Computer flooring/flooding/water in computer rooms

OK, three stories (all true as far as I can remember them). 1) Arrived at work early on Monday morning (first in). As I walked along the corridor to the computer room I thought I could hear water running. Open door to computer room (you had to walk through the computer room to my office). Sounds of water get much louder. Water is pouring from the ceiling tiles onto the top of the VAX-11/780, then down the doors and onto the false floor. Naturally the VAX is still running. Problem - no "big red button" so the only way to power it off is via the circuit breakers on the back. Find a broom with a wooden handle and power it all off. The problem had occurred three floors up on Friday night and with the building locked up over the weekend the broken pipe had done a fair bit of damage. 2) At the next job I had we had built a new computer room for our MicroVAXen. We had two in a cluster (one in the world box, on in a H9642 rack). One evening I get a phone call from work, "you'd better come in as we have a water leak in the computer room and we don't know what to do". OK, setting new records for the trip from home to work I arrive to be greeted by the building supervisor. Up to the computer room - now we'd always referred to it as the fish bowl as three of the four walls were glass which allowed me to see the 12" or so of water. Now this room didn't have a false floor, just ducts to carry power and data. We did have a big red button though. Problem was that the doors opened inwards and it wasn't easy to open them. Also that water (which was from the airconditioner input) was COLD! Also lots of fun watching the cooling fans from the lower RA81 generate spray. Still after drying things out everything still worked. 3) Problem 2 was caused by a plastic filter in the chilled water input to the airconditioning unit failing. It was replaced. The following Friday I got a phone call computer room is full of water". Yep, the replacement metal filter had fallen off the pipe and by the time I got to work the water was even deeper. At least I had gum boots this time (for UK readers, that'd be Wellingtons). We had a couple of large drains installed in the floor after this to avoid waste water from the computer room contaminating the mouse rooms below. The first flood meant that the contents of one of the two mouse rooms being lost and at something like $10 each the financial cost was quite high. Huw Davies | e-mail: Huw.Davies(a)kerberos.davies.net.au Melbourne | "If soccer was meant to be played in the Australia | air, the sky would be painted green"