Having a bad day?

Mark J Strawcutter

Walking back from lunch one day, passing a student rental house that was getting a rehab - new siding, mechanicals, interior, etc. Noticed a large black circle on the nice new white siding around the 200amp entrance cable between the meter and the weatherhead.

Turns out the cable guy drilled thru from the inside on the second floor and managed to perfectly nail the cable!

That would tend to ruin your day...

Mark

DaveGateway

Not in pipe??

I must assume the service was that flexible, nail up stuff. He didn't drill thru a 2" pipe did he? That's what's needed for 200A. Even rigid aluminum should have alerted him. Don't know too many rocket scientist cable installers.

jim lockard

Hard way to learn but you do not forget.J.Lockard

lchmb

shocking....just totally shocking...:)

Dale

Humor

When ever I'm teaching a class that's gets too boring (seems to happen alot) I get everyone to tell drilling stories. Makes everyone laugh since we all have them. The favorite where I work was the helpers of a really precision guy who was avoiding a large security system paired cable, he marked the hole and the guys rotohammered a 1 1/4 through and it came out perfect, then they found a scrap piece of cable in the dumpster, put the bit back in the hole and wound the scrap arround the tip, pulling it back when the lead man came back to check. The bit came out with the paired cable scrap wrapped arround the tip. The joke was really kind of risky given the heart attack potential of most of the senior crew foreman.

Mark J Strawcutter

pipe

Mostly multi-story houses around here. Only time pipe is used on residential is with 1-story where you need a mast.

Mark

S Ebels

Yes, I'm having a really bad day.........

Just returned from looking at a house we did this past winter. Infloor, (gypcrete) has been running since last November. I went to the house to see if the siding was on and we could finish the vent termination on the Vitodens. While walking up to the back door my eye caught the sight of moisture on the concrete sill. Looking through the window revealed about a 1/2" of water over the entire main level. ALL IMPORTED AUSTRAILIAN HARDWOOD!!!!!!! I called the builder who told me his flooring guys hadn't been there since last week Thursday. In fact no-one had been there since last Thursday........ obviously.

What a mess. All of the flooring is buckled beyond description. The gyp is totally saturated. Even the walls show signs of moisture creeping up into them. AAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!

Constantin

Sorry to hear that...

...what a mess and what a shame to turn so much fine hardwood into fireplace food. Do they have any idea what allowed that much water to accumulate? It almost sounds like a potable water pipe let go... or an errant nail in the PEX tubing?

Lastly, what about the Vitodens? Dare I ask, was the basement under water?

Tony_8

My day pales

... in comparison to these and others I've had. Yesterday, while installing 2 Ice-O-Matic 2106's on a 7000 lb. bin, my helper dropped a crimp-on into the ice. :O Luckily, bagging had gotten done about an hour earlier, so we only had to dump 150 lbs or so.

Yes, it's heating related, we REMOVE heat from the water I got it both ways

Patchogue Phil_24

Ground rod \"spring\"

Twenty-sumptin years ago when I worked part-time (summers, weekends) for a sparky we were doing a service upgrade. Sparky's son-in-law gets to drive in the ground rod. Homeowner says "the water main is on the other side of the house". Five minutes later - "ssssssssssSSSSSSS". Ground rod pierced the migrated water main dead center. One half-inch over in either direction there'd be no problem. I'm not sure how much extra was charged for the "free" spring well.

S Ebels

Details (SE)

Lack of attentiveness to what they were doing mainly.

We returned to the home today (Friday) after calling the builder and apprising him of the situation. One of his guys had been in the home last week Thursday, the 10th, and had been working on the floor. He had overshot the end of a 2x4 sleeper and neatly dead centered one of the tubes. He finished for the day never knowing or considering that he should maybe check his work and no-one had been at the place until I went yesterday. Needless to say there was a substantial amount of water. Huge sections of the hardwood were stained, buckled, twisted, warped and otherwise ruined. (Enough to make someone who appreciates beautiful wood :me: cry. The wood is all different colors from blond to red to yellow to black and gray)

The builder had his crew there removing all of the hardwood today. He had not told the homeowner yet as of this morning and asked if I had contacted him about it. I told him I thought that should be his responsibilty. The homeowner and his wife, who live a couple hours south of here were coming up this weekend to check on progress of their retirement home. Needless to say it could be really ugly. I noticed on a calender in the house that the owner had circled July 15th for a finish date. I don't think it's going to happen.

The construction is slab on existing slab, don't ask why, it's too painful to relate. ...Maybe dumb is a better word. Suffice to say that the homeowner received some very bad advice from the builder at the start of what was to be a re-model project. The boiler is on the main level of this two story log home. We insulated the existing slab with Low-E slab shield, laid 6x6 mesh on the insulation, nailed the sleepers on the existing slab, tied our tube to the mesh and poured 1 1/2" of gyp on it. It didn't turn out to badly for how uneven the old surface was. (think 2" variation in floor height here) This was all done last year and the system was up and running by October. All was well until this incident. BTW the Vitodens maintained the temp all through this winter at 60-65* while using only 3-500 gallon tanks of propane. I think that's awesome considering the construction pf the home was/is not complete. The full log design was not chinked and there were gaps in the corners that a squirrel could crawl through. (some did!) The Vito, fotunately hangs about 4 feet off the floor on the first level.

Mark Eatherton1

Ma Bell...

now known as Qwest, was drilling a hole for one of their telephone poles and drilled through a shallow sewer main, set their pole and poured it in concrete.

About a year later, the sewers for ALL of the buildings that were attached to the feeder backed up at the same time. Poop soup. What a mess. They had to come out and drill a new hole for their pole what wasn't in the middle of the sewer. My sub contractor had to dig it up and fix it. He got paid REAL well...

Look before you drill, always.

ME

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Arthur

A Bad Day?

We are doing a heating installation on a big 3 story home, half way though the job we were asked to do the Gas installation as well. We piped up to for a Domestic water cylinder as well as a boiler,A gas log fireplace, A kitchen hob and a BBQ. The plumber piped up for the water connection to the Cylinder and had 3 wingbacks all in a row with my gas wingback. Mine was marked Gas and his water. Then along came the joinery cupboard guy who put a cupboard the cylinder was going to sit in against the wall, And you guessed it they didn't remark the connections. I came along one day and stood look at the cupboard and said hey were my gas connection gone.
yes the plumber had connected up my gas to his water and admitted he had turned on the water for a short test.
The only thing connected at this stage was the log fire. a few days later I had to extend the gas pipe out to the posposed BBQ as It was going under the concrete I tried to do a test up at the meter and found the gas meter full of water. We ended up disconnecting the log fire (it has 3 sets of fire hence 3 valves)which was being done by another firm, and used a compressor to blow all the lines. We finally go it what we thought was free of water, Then the a couple of weeks later the log fire guys turned up and found water had got into the log fire gas valves.
It has ended up costing the plumber (or his insurance co) $1500.00+.
We think the water got into the log fire at the time the plumber first turned on the water.

Weezbo

sir my \"?\" is now what?

please tell us what you see to be the fix..........last memorialday Not this most recent one some kids showed up and took a couple wrenches to an angle stop...Hundreds of gallons of water cascading down the stairs...:( fixed it ....the same kids tumbled a porta potty down the embankment and lodged it in the Tree tops! imagine that poor shmucks day..."well boss it aint pretty....." the next weekend they tried to break in to my buddys tool trailor gave up got really poed.at the4 new box of big tremco tubes and hammered them with My buddys hammer..Go figure..must hate tremco.:)

Constantin

Whenever I read stories like this...

...I hope that we'll finish any floor-related nailing before the advent of winter! That way we can pressurize the system and check for leaks every day.

However, this does raise a question. When it comes to make-up water, are there reliable systems that allow you to alarm the thing to the point where anything beyond "reasonable" make-up water will shut the system down or make it phone home?

Water sensors are nice and work well, yet they cannot be installed everywhere.

Constantin

Reminds me of a guy in Boston...

I heard about. Allegedly, the sludge digestors on Deer Island have to be inspected from time to time for damage - from the inside. These 12 digesters are quite visible to anyone flying into Boston, they look like big eggs standing up. That's 2.2M customers worth of poop soup gurgeling, bubbling, etc. away. Must be quite the witch's brew.

Anyway, diving into that mess cannot be fun, regardless of how many times you tape the seams of your dry pressure suit. Allegedly, he makes $50,000 a day... no questions asked.

S Ebels

I don't know of

I don't know of a device made specifically for this application/problem. I think something could be field engineered using a flow switch in the feed water line connected to a time delay relay in series with whatever type of alarm one would choose. The problem would be that the flow switch would have to be adjustable sensitivity wise. The scenario I just encountered was a very slow leak that was not caught for a long time.

One could set up the flow switch to energize the time delay relay after a given amount of time. The relay could then activate an alarm or even be wired to a normally open solenoid which would then shut off water flow. This of course would have to be used in a system which also had a low water cut off to prevent the boiler from firing if water levels became low enough to be dangerous.

John MacGregor_3

Cable guy

30some years ago we got an emergency call that a condo we were involved in had sprung a leak while being sheetrocked.
Sure enough the drywaller had nailed the supply line to the water closet.
We cut and replaced the punctured line and went on to the next job. Next day, same call, same job, same water line, same carpenter, new nail in the same nail hole and the same pipe. Some people are just a little slow.
My advice, turn the water off when you or your crew are not on the job, whether it's plumbing or hydronics. If it's a boiler system, ALWAYS use a LWCO whether it's required or not!!