It just dawned on me that some of the stuff I send out in email would make great content for this site. So I’ll start posting stuff here either instead of or in addition to email. On this piece, “tonight” was actually February 22, 2003.
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Well, tonight was umm?. Interesting…yeah, that’s the word.
We came home from shopping at 6:30 and went downstairs to watch 24. Ran into the computer room to grab the TiVo remote and heard the scream of multiple UPS’s complaining?odd, since the power was on. I open the unfin door and hear a sound like a waterfall?.
I flip on the lights and look towards the sump pump.
Ever see a fire hydrant that was opened with no hose on it? Well, that’s what I saw. Only it was spraying up and slightly towards the phones blocks, cable router, and servers.
I was stunned for a moment and didn’t quite know what to do. I was standing in about an inch of water.
Unplugged the sump pump once the gyser stopped.
Apparently the one of these had happened:
1.) the line froze somewhere between the basement and the ditch
2.) the pump ?fell? since it need rocks placed under it later to reconnect to the pipe it had let go of
3.) The ditch is just too full of crap and it backed up.
I ran to the store and bought 14’ of 1 ½? hose and some clamps, Traci started Hoovering up water with the Hoover Wet Jet.
Came back and hooked up the hose and ran it out the window, just in time too since the water was only a few inches from overflowing.
I called Jeff and told him service on the Cobalt server would be down for awhile and he came over to help out.
We knocked the elbow join out on the sump pump line out in the back yard and connected my hose to it, now I don’t have an open window in the unfin. Seems to be working for now. Digging nice holes in the yard though with water.
Called RR service since the router was filled with water. They said dry it out and plug it in and call us if it doesn’t work. My pair of 24 port 10/100 switches were likewise filled with water.
After a few hours on the heater vents they all dried out and amazingly work just fine.
The phones are another issue. I think I blew two of the gas fuses and the 66 blocks are quite wet even after blasting them with Jeff’s wet/dry vac. After swapping fuses I got spark again and have phone service, though it’s crackly beyond belief?probably just have to wait till that dries out.
Water was mostly stopped by all the crap in the unfin and the carpet remenants I had in there. The only carpet that seems wet is right at the entrance to the computer room and we’re pulling that up anyway to put in new floors.
The unfin is still damp and smells like wet cement and I have to move everything out so it can dry better, but so far, 5 hours after discovery things are back up and running and under control.
The only casualties were some surge protectors and Jeff’s rack mount APC 1400 UPS.