Ah yes, flooding. Water and 20A 120 don't like mixing too much. One weekend back in 2002, my pointy-haired boss decided that we are going to have the mini-fridge sit DIRECTLY NEXT TO the very early 90's rack mount 80+ LB. APC 2000VA direct-wire unit (wire from wiring panel/breakers through wall, out hole, directly connected to UPS)... on the FLOOR. Brilliant, I know. The main purpose was to get drinks and snacks while working on machines on the bench directly above them (or so his reasoning went). So, since he moved it, he figured, what the hell; unplug it and let the ice thaw from the freezer part and leave its door open to drain the water to the concrete floor. On top of this, he had stopped by the offices on Saturday (closed weekends) a day later and forgot to completely close the back door which is only 8-10 feet from said UPS and fridge. I'm betting all of you could figure out what happened when a heavy rain storm hit Saturday night and the building IS slightly below ground level at the back door area (door bottom up to 1 foot was made to keep water out from flooding due to known issue in area). Luckily, only thing that happened was a circuit breaker tripped. Dried out the UPS and it worked fine. We always dared him to check the UPS wiring or the unit for charge when servicing it to ensure the batteries were good (as paranoid as we were, we checked every 6 months). You guy's stories are more interesting though as per the capability of larger loss and a lot more water. Just thought I'd contribute my little bit. BTW: anyone else have a pointy haired boss who was equally dumb in deciding to run things such as UPS's on floor level? -John Boffemmyer IV At 04:26 AM 5/29/2004, you wrote: ---------------------------------------- Founder, Lead Writer, Tech Analyst and Web Designer Boff-Net Technologies http://boff-net.dhs.org/index.html ---------------------------------------

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"