The Things You See..
As I mentioned previously, I work at a Big Cabinet Shop in Phoenix, AZ. We get very little rain, compared to most of the rest of the US, but we do get some now and again. For that reason, the original builder of the building that Big Cabinet Shop is located in had a dry well installed in the depressed loading dock. There are no floor drains in the rest of building. This dock is covered, so it doesn't get direct rainfall, but the chainlink fence closing it off from the general populace does very little in the area of waterproofing. Unless the rain comes in sideways from the north, not a whole lot of water is drained off through the drywell. The building is more than thirty years old, and it is doubted by the old-timers that the drywell has ever been cleaned.
Being a commercial building, the entire complex (50K+ square feet) is plumbed for fire sprinklers. Being a container of highly costly and resaleable woodworking equipment, it is also alarmed. Being old, the two systems don't communicate to each other very well.
6:20 am yesterday morning (Sunday), the big cheeses get a phone call from the alarm company: "Is this (name of big cheese being called)? You have a fire alarm in your building."
Two of the four cheeses race to the plant. The other two are not responsive to their telephones. The fire department beat them there (thank you, PFD, for the fast response time) but it turns out there are no flames - the alarm was triggered by massive water flow caused by a sprinkler head that finally aged beyond redemption. The two cheeses and several of the fire crew spent a couple of hours sweeping water out the loading door and into the pit (remember, dry well). Soon, the loading dock pit is under about two feet of water.
Enter the Biggest of Cheeses. BoC has owned the company just over two years, has spent just over three years in the building. BoC orders the maintenance crew to call Roto-Rooter to snake the pit. Two of the big cheeses remind the BoC that the pit is serviced by a dry well - no drain to snake. BoC insists that Roto Rooter be called anyway.
The rooter guy, not knowing any of the history of this particular building, is doing his level best to snake the drywell. The frustration is evident on his face when his snake keeps getting stuck on "obstructions." I happened to notice his efforts, and, being the curious type, asked him how many dry wells he had successfully snaked in the past - prefacing the question with the disclaimer of my not being a plumber, since wood was my specialty. He looked at me and said "This is a drywell?" and followed with a string of strong language.
Well, the pit is dry again now - and the Big Cabinet Shop just paid a Roto Rooter guy to play with his snake while the dry well did what it was supposed to do - slowly release water into the ground. BoC is so intelligent - no wonder he owns the Big Cabinet Shop.
Being a commercial building, the entire complex (50K+ square feet) is plumbed for fire sprinklers. Being a container of highly costly and resaleable woodworking equipment, it is also alarmed. Being old, the two systems don't communicate to each other very well.
6:20 am yesterday morning (Sunday), the big cheeses get a phone call from the alarm company: "Is this (name of big cheese being called)? You have a fire alarm in your building."
Two of the four cheeses race to the plant. The other two are not responsive to their telephones. The fire department beat them there (thank you, PFD, for the fast response time) but it turns out there are no flames - the alarm was triggered by massive water flow caused by a sprinkler head that finally aged beyond redemption. The two cheeses and several of the fire crew spent a couple of hours sweeping water out the loading door and into the pit (remember, dry well). Soon, the loading dock pit is under about two feet of water.
Enter the Biggest of Cheeses. BoC has owned the company just over two years, has spent just over three years in the building. BoC orders the maintenance crew to call Roto-Rooter to snake the pit. Two of the big cheeses remind the BoC that the pit is serviced by a dry well - no drain to snake. BoC insists that Roto Rooter be called anyway.
The rooter guy, not knowing any of the history of this particular building, is doing his level best to snake the drywell. The frustration is evident on his face when his snake keeps getting stuck on "obstructions." I happened to notice his efforts, and, being the curious type, asked him how many dry wells he had successfully snaked in the past - prefacing the question with the disclaimer of my not being a plumber, since wood was my specialty. He looked at me and said "This is a drywell?" and followed with a string of strong language.
Well, the pit is dry again now - and the Big Cabinet Shop just paid a Roto Rooter guy to play with his snake while the dry well did what it was supposed to do - slowly release water into the ground. BoC is so intelligent - no wonder he owns the Big Cabinet Shop.
posted by cary | 14:13
1 Comments:
Thank you for the good story. I know how some people will just insist on the impossible.
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