• grammernarzee (unregistered) in reply to DES
    DES:
    Valerion:
    One day something fell behind the oven so I pulled it out to get it. That's when I noticed the old, rusty AA battery installed at the back of the oven. Replacing that miraculously bought my sparky-clicker back to life.

    That's strange, because these sparky-clicky things don't need batteries. They're piezoelectric.

    No, there's 3 types: Mains-powered (like mine), battery-powered (like his), and piezoelectric (like yours). You can tell the piezo ones because they take some effort to press, and go with a clunk. Electric/battery powered options you can press with your little finger.

  • itsmo (unregistered) in reply to wingcommander
    wingcommander:
    the real wtf fool:
    Zé:
    Unfortunately I can't understand the measures specified, are the rooms small or big? Is 98F too cold or too hot?

    http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=98+degrees+f+in+c 98 degrees Fahrenheit = 36.6666667 degrees Celsius 65 degrees Fahrenheit = 18.3333333 degrees Celsius

    My, aren't WE feeling metric today.

    The celcius/centigrade scale is not metric just because the boiling point of water is 100 - it's not like you go up to 100 in one unit (e.g. cents, centimetre) until you reach the next unit (e.g. dollar, euro, metre) - it's all just degrees. Mind you 1.01 hectadegrees (rather than 101 degrees) has a certain ring to it.

    Currently I am striving for general acceptance of the decimetre as a regularly used unit. A six foot tall person is about 18 decimetres (instead of the overly scientific 1.8m or 180cm).

    I should get out more...

  • Tephlon (unregistered) in reply to itsmo
    itsmo:
    The celcius/centigrade scale is not metric just because the boiling point of water is 100 - it's not like you go up to 100 in one unit (e.g. cents, centimetre) until you reach the next unit (e.g. dollar, euro, metre) - it's all just degrees. Mind you 1.01 hectadegrees (rather than 101 degrees) has a certain ring to it.

    Currently I am striving for general acceptance of the decimetre as a regularly used unit. A six foot tall person is about 18 decimetres (instead of the overly scientific 1.8m or 180cm).

    I should get out more...

    At my old job we used to refer to 1024 pixels as 1,024 kilopixels. Just because it sounded cooler. (It came from a discussion about Marketing speak). We didn't get out much...

  • Grant (unregistered) in reply to itsmo
    itsmo:
    The standard clicker on a modern gas hob in UK is wired to the mains to provide the spark. This means that if there is a power cut you can use the gas burners but you have to light them with a match or other flame. It also means you need a power outlet near where the hob is to be installed(usually underneath). I would be surprised if this was unique to UK.

    My gas oven uses mains power for its sparker, and for the control panel and temperature sensors. In a power outage, I think only the burners on top work, not the oven part.

    My guess would be that his was an older one that was only going to need power for the sparker, so they went with a battery instead. Smart thing to do would be to have a labeled door on the front of the oven that you could see easily...

  • Anonymous Coward (unregistered) in reply to Grant
    Grant:
    itsmo:
    The standard clicker on a modern gas hob in UK is wired to the mains to provide the spark. This means that if there is a power cut you can use the gas burners but you have to light them with a match or other flame. It also means you need a power outlet near where the hob is to be installed(usually underneath). I would be surprised if this was unique to UK.

    My gas oven uses mains power for its sparker, and for the control panel and temperature sensors. In a power outage, I think only the burners on top work, not the oven part.

    My guess would be that his was an older one that was only going to need power for the sparker, so they went with a battery instead. Smart thing to do would be to have a labeled door on the front of the oven that you could see easily...

    It doesn't need to be an old oven. Gas ovens are often used in places where electrical power is not always available (think of camping vans, small boats, etc.), so there's still demand for an oven that works without a power cable.

  • (cs)

    Gas cookers need power for the clock anyway (if they have one), so using the battery to also power the igniter simplifies things.

    To me, putting the fridge on its own circuit seems stupid. In the UK, typically only the cooker and water heater have their own circuits, then it's one per floor for sockets, and one per floor for lighting. That way, if the breaker trips (or fuse blows), everything on the floor goes, so YOU NOTICE! If the fridge is on its own circuit and that trips, you won't notice. Now that's how to spoil your food! Then again, we (the UK) use 240V, so we can send about twice the power through the same cables compared to the US.

  • RiF (unregistered) in reply to m0ffx
    m0ffx:
    If the fridge is on its own circuit and that trips, you won't notice.
    Don't you keep your beer in the fridge?
  • (cs) in reply to m0ffx
    m0ffx:
    Gas cookers need power for the clock anyway (if they have one), so using the battery to also power the igniter simplifies things.

    To me, putting the fridge on its own circuit seems stupid. In the UK, typically only the cooker and water heater have their own circuits, then it's one per floor for sockets, and one per floor for lighting. That way, if the breaker trips (or fuse blows), everything on the floor goes, so YOU NOTICE! If the fridge is on its own circuit and that trips, you won't notice. Now that's how to spoil your food! Then again, we (the UK) use 240V, so we can send about twice the power through the same cables compared to the US.

    240V? Twice the power? WTF? Is that a troll?

    Cable power tolerance is more or less in watts. W = VA. So double the Voltage = half the amperage.

  • Anon Ymous (unregistered) in reply to fruey

    No you're wrong. The reason the amount of power you can send through a wire is limited is due to power dissipation due to resistance. This dissipation is P = IIR (current squared times resistance). Doubling the voltage, but maintaining the current doubles the power you can safely send through a wire.

    However, nearly every house in the US has both 120V (or 110V) and 240V (for high power devices) run to the house. There's usually a 240V plug in the laundry for the drier and in the garage.

  • Paul (unregistered) in reply to fruey
    fruey:
    240V? Twice the power? WTF? Is that a troll?

    Cable power tolerance is more or less in watts. W = VA. So double the Voltage = half the amperage.

    TopCod3r is that you?

    There are a few limiting factors in cables

    1. The size of the conductor
    2. The length of the conductor
    3. The thermal insulation around the conductor
    4. The electrical insulation around the conductor

    (1), (2) and (3) limit (safe) current (4) limits (safe) voltage

    Cables are NOT rated by 'power', but by voltage and current separately. A 1kV/10A cable is NOT rated at 10kW (or people might want to use it at 100V/100A or 10kV/1A, both of which would be deadly)

    So, if you take the electrical insulation out of the equation, if you have a higher voltage on the cable you transmit more power. So, a 1.5mm core will supply around twice the power in Europe than it would in the USA, because it can carry the same current, but has twice the voltage. Electrical insulation is a minor part of the cost, and I expect USA insulation is identical to European insulation.

    This means that USA domestic electrical installations use more conductor material (copper) than European ones of the same size.

    This is why power grids use HV, the cable thickness can be less for the same power transfer. If your power grids ran at 110V instead of 110kV, the cables would have to be as thick as buses...

  • (cs) in reply to savar
    savar:
    The dialogue in these stories is so unrealistic. Every single sentence is cutoff by the other person interrupting mid-word! Nobody talks like this in real life, especially at work.

    Funny... You start off by saying people don't talk like this, and then go on to say exactly the opposite:

    savar:
    Well, except for the really annoying indian guy I worked with at my last job

    So you can't even get your own stories straight, and yet you complain about other people's stories?

    savar:
    But anyway, human beings don't really talk this way, and it's incredibly distracting while trying to read. Why aren't the WTFs written in the same style as the sidebar -- just a description of the actual event, not glammed up with all the extraneous information and dialogue.

    But they do. I just had a phone conversation with someone this week who called to ask me a question. When I started to answer, she interrupted to say something else. I waited for her to finish, and then started to answer her. Again, she interrupted me to say something else.

    This went on for about five minutes, until I finally got irritated and told her, "If you'll stop interrupting me and let me finish a sentence, I can answer your question.".

    There was about a 15-second pause, and then she said, "Excuse me?". I said, "I said, if you'll stop interrupting me and let me finish a sentence, I can answer your question.".

    She said, "I'm sorry. Please, go on.", and I answered her initial question. She asked a couple of brief follow-up questions, allowing me to answer each of them before asking the next. We then got off the phone.

    She emailed me later that day apologizing for her rude behavior.

    So people, as you contradicted yourself and said, do in fact talk and behave that way.

    And if you find the included dialog too complex for you to follow (to the point of distraction), perhaps this isn't the site for you. I mean, there are lots of really complicated things discussed here.

  • OneMillion (unregistered) in reply to DaveyDaveDave

    Nope, he couldn't have. Nobody talks themselves out of their own arguments in real life. Human beings don't do that.

  • Gerrit (unregistered) in reply to Don't Like Monkeys
    Don't Like Monkeys:
    It's a great story, but just that, a story. Monkeys really don't have foresight of cause and effect like that. They might panic and cower in a corner when they see the banana being touched, just before the water comes out, but they won't equate assaulting the new monkey as a way to stop the water. Stupid monkeys.

    I think it's about chimps, and otherwise basically true. I seem to have misplaced my copy of "The Ape and the Sushi Master", by primatologist Frans de Waal, so I can't verify it right now, but it's higly likely I read about it in that book. If you don't believe this kind of behaviour is possible for non-humans: read it, you're in for a surprise.

  • (cs) in reply to itsmo
    itsmo:
    How in hell would they know where you were going to plug the fridge in?

    Ummm... The same way they know where you'll be plugging in the electric stove, washer and dryer, and dishwasher; they use the architect's plans.

    You know, the ones they call "blueprints" and use as a design during building? Or did you think they just randomly threw together building materials into walls and then put random boxes together to make a house?

    You didn't really think that, did you? Did you?

  • Firethorn (unregistered) in reply to Anon Ymous
    Anon Ymous:
    However, nearly every house in the US has both 120V (or 110V) and 240V (for high power devices) run to the house. There's usually a 240V plug in the laundry for the drier and in the garage.

    To get really technical - 240V is run to the house via two wires, then is split in half by a 'split phase' system. Essentially you have half your 120V loads on one side, half on the other, evened out via a local ground in the middle.

    120V Peak, 110V 'Average', or DC equivalent.

  • Zap Brannigan (unregistered) in reply to Firethorn
    Firethorn:
    Anon Ymous:
    However, nearly every house in the US has both 120V (or 110V) and 240V (for high power devices) run to the house. There's usually a 240V plug in the laundry for the drier and in the garage.

    To get really technical - 240V is run to the house via two wires, then is split in half by a 'split phase' system. Essentially you have half your 120V loads on one side, half on the other, evened out via a local ground in the middle.

    120V Peak, 110V 'Average', or DC equivalent.

    120V or 110V are nominal RMS values (equivalent DC value). Peak voltage for 120V RMS is 169V. Assuming a sine wave the average is 0.

  • Paul (unregistered) in reply to Firethorn
    Firethorn:
    To get really technical - 240V is run to the house via two wires, then is split in half by a 'split phase' system. Essentially you have half your 120V loads on one side, half on the other,

    Really? So, what is the reason for having 120V then?

    I always thought it was for safety, but doing that means that you could get 240V shocks quite easily (in the same way that you have to be careful not to get 400+V shocks if you have a three-phase supply in Europe (which is why three phase supplies are rare in residential situations))

  • awacs (unregistered) in reply to Paul
    Paul:
    Firethorn:
    To get really technical - 240V is run to the house via two wires, then is split in half by a 'split phase' system. Essentially you have half your 120V loads on one side, half on the other,

    Really? So, what is the reason for having 120V then?

    I always thought it was for safety, but doing that means that you could get 240V shocks quite easily (in the same way that you have to be careful not to get 400+V shocks if you have a three-phase supply in Europe (which is why three phase supplies are rare in residential situations))

    It is safety. The two hot leads, in general, do not come together in powering 120V outlets - you get one or the other, but never both. Except in the 240V outlets - don't stand on a puddle touching these.

  • (cs) in reply to itsmo
    ???:

    How in hell would they know where you were going to plug the fridge in?

    Um, maybe the fridge will be plugged into the outlet that's 4 feet off the floor, in the only section of the kitchen wall that doesn't have a built-in counter in front of it.

    Most modern kitchens (built in the last 20 years) that I have seen, have exactly ONE place to put the fridge. My house was built in 1988 and it's like that.

  • airdrummer (unregistered) in reply to snoofle

    our house had 1 GFI, in the upstairs bath, that was d-c'd to all the other req'd outlets (garage, other baths, outside) i can't imagine running all the extra wire cost less than another gfi...

    then again, @ my current workplace(no pun in10did;-) the kitchen has 4 GFIs side-by-side...

  • Worf (unregistered) in reply to KenW
    KenW:
    itsmo:
    How in hell would they know where you were going to plug the fridge in?

    Ummm... The same way they know where you'll be plugging in the electric stove, washer and dryer, and dishwasher; they use the architect's plans.

    You know, the ones they call "blueprints" and use as a design during building? Or did you think they just randomly threw together building materials into walls and then put random boxes together to make a house?

    You didn't really think that, did you? Did you?

    Or the alternative is to look at the kitchen and see where it makes sense.

    That cutout in the counter top with the hood above it? Dishwasher fits, as does fridge, but the venting hood would imply that a stove went there to vent snoke/steam/etc. Same with a missing lower cupboard but the counter is continuous above it. The stove might fight if the counter's high enough, but then you can't cook on top, so a dishwasher goes there. The fridge is usually the big cut outs with smaller cupboards aligned at the top...

    And there's usually a shelf with a plug on it (or a hole to let a cable through that sticks out a bit from the rest of the cupboards... where the microwave is supposed to go.

    Plus the fast that the stove plug is often special (two 120V phases for the 240V electrics, plus a neutral to give you 120V for everything else)...

    Of course, this is in North America, other parts of the world probably have smaller appliances and thus a fridge can go anywhere...

  • hapbt (unregistered)

    we had the rooftop a/c go out in on our server room, came in one weekend to blinking orange and red lights, servers too hot to touch, crashed servers left and right. complained to the maintenance manager. the next day, he brought in a floor-standing a/c.
    i asked him when he was going to connect the vent tube to it and where he would vent it to. he informed me that it did not need a vent. "what does it do with the hot air?" i asked "well it just cools it off" he responded my co worker chimed in at this point "the laws of thermodynamics state that energy can neither be created nor destroyed" he said, half sarcastically. "you're thinking oldschool, this is a new unit" said the maintenance guy. we looked at each other for a second and said "old skool thermodynamics?" needless to say, after the vent hose, which was included with the unit, and which the box specifically informed the user to connect before activating the unit, was connected to the suspended ceiling to vent above the room, the temperature dropped quite nicely.

  • NH (unregistered) in reply to BobB

    Ungrounded - that can be a spooky story.

    But actually too much ground can also cause problems. I once worked at a site where one girl had a CRT that had a really swaying picture. Since I had seen a bit before and I worked at the IT department I took a closer look and found that the PC was connected to the outlet with a shielded cable. This could have been well, but since this was an old building with a 4-wire installation (3 phases+ground) the zero and ground shared cabling and her computer was at a different central than the network switch. The rest can easily be imagined - a few amps of 50Hz through the ground cables back out through the network shield... An unshielded cable fixed the problem.

    So shielding isn't always right.

  • NH (unregistered) in reply to Stewie

    That depends on where in the world you live. Electrical code is different in different countries. And in old buildings there may be very few fuses or breakers.

    Patched electrical systems in old buildings are seldom fun, but often interesting.

  • Shill (unregistered) in reply to yossi
    yossi:
    regarding the Goldilocks office: all you had to do was tape a bit of cardboard to block most of your air vent.

    Unless the problem is like my office, where you are freezing your ass off in winter.

  • NH (unregistered) in reply to GettinSadda

    Yellow/Green is for ground and blue is for neutral. All other colors are supposed to be hot.

    Unless you live in an old building where Red is ground...

  • (cs)

    Dear Alex,

    "Exasperated" is an adjective, not a verb.

  • NH (unregistered) in reply to Carnildo
    Carnildo:
    Valerion:
    Now that's a decent WTF!

    I did a similar thing at home. The sparky-clicky thing that lights the gas hobs had been broken for like 2 years. I was considering replacing the oven, but we were getting along fine with a cigarette lighter to light them so I didn't, although we did go looking for a new one a couple of times.

    One day something fell behind the oven so I pulled it out to get it. That's when I noticed the old, rusty AA battery installed at the back of the oven. Replacing that miraculously bought my sparky-clicker back to life.

    That's the Real WTF(tm): nobody uses a battery when designing a stove igniter. Since it only needs to be replaced once a decade or so, you can't count on the user remembering that it exists. Every gas stove I've seen either uses a pilot light or compresses a piezoelectric crystal to get a spark.

    That's a way to make you buy a new stove now and then. Pure marketing thing.

  • Dan (unregistered) in reply to Zylon
    Zylon:
    Dear Alex,

    "Exasperated" is an adjective, not a verb.

    Unless it's past tense, as in "This post exasperated me"

  • NH (unregistered) in reply to fruey
    fruey:
    m0ffx:
    Gas cookers need power for the clock anyway (if they have one), so using the battery to also power the igniter simplifies things.

    To me, putting the fridge on its own circuit seems stupid. In the UK, typically only the cooker and water heater have their own circuits, then it's one per floor for sockets, and one per floor for lighting. That way, if the breaker trips (or fuse blows), everything on the floor goes, so YOU NOTICE! If the fridge is on its own circuit and that trips, you won't notice. Now that's how to spoil your food! Then again, we (the UK) use 240V, so we can send about twice the power through the same cables compared to the US.

    240V? Twice the power? WTF? Is that a troll?

    Cable power tolerance is more or less in watts. W = VA. So double the Voltage = half the amperage.

    Cables are specified for a certain current, so if you double the voltage you can have a load of twice as many watts than you originally did. But the insulation of the cable must be up to the higher voltage.

    So no troll there.

  • NH (unregistered) in reply to Firethorn
    Firethorn:
    Anon Ymous:
    However, nearly every house in the US has both 120V (or 110V) and 240V (for high power devices) run to the house. There's usually a 240V plug in the laundry for the drier and in the garage.

    To get really technical - 240V is run to the house via two wires, then is split in half by a 'split phase' system. Essentially you have half your 120V loads on one side, half on the other, evened out via a local ground in the middle.

    120V Peak, 110V 'Average', or DC equivalent.

    But that's in the US, here in Sweden we run 230V to the ground and 3-phase so we have about 400V between the phases. Many stoves are 3-phase, but there are 230V single-phase stoves too since older buildings with apartments usually are 1-phase.

  • Phil (unregistered) in reply to Dan

    No, not even then. In that case it would be "This post made me exasperated."

    I think the word Alex was looking for was "expostulated" or "ejaculated".

  • (cs) in reply to Phil
    Phil:
    No, not even then. In that case it would be "This post made me exasperated."
    Nah, he's right. I overstepped when I said it's not a verb. While it usually isn't, it can function as a transitive verb, meaning a verb that requires a subject and an object, eg-- "MFD exasperates me."
  • (cs) in reply to JamesQMurphy
    JamesQMurphy:
    DOA:
    I'm ashamed to say I had something similar happen at home. The microwave stopped working one day and we went without for a month or two. Until one day someone noticed something in the breaker box...
    I'm even more ashamed to admit it: We replaced our dishwasher because it kept tripping the dedicated breaker. It was only when the brand-spanking new dishwasher started doing the same thing that I noticed the loose wire going into said breaker. (Aluminum wire is notorious for that.)

    Capchta: eros. Now I know why I was feeling randy.

    I can beat that one. For some reason my dishwasher is attached to a random light switch behind the sink, so flip the switch and it mysteriously dies. So one day while toggling switches trying to fix a light (which actually was dead, I left the dishwasher switch in the off position, and promptly forgot about it. A few days later we notice the dishwasher is dead.

    I checked the breaker, but I was too lazy to pull the dishwasher out and check the plug before I called the repair guy. He pulled it out, checked the outlet, and immediately started flipping light switches.

    Nothing like paying 50 bucks to have a guy flip a lightswitch. My goddamn voltometer was sitting on top of the toaster, about 6 inches from this light switch, from when I replaced the light...I'd had it out because I couldn't tell which of the switches that didn't do anything was attached to the light.

  • Dizz-E (unregistered) in reply to Kermos
    Kermos:

    You know on that note, I have absolutely zero clue if my stove needs power or not for the spark. That is something I definitely have to go check out now.

    You don't need to go check.

    If you press the button and it sparks over and over again until you release the button, it uses some sort of power source.

    If you get one spark per press then it's a crystal.

  • (cs) in reply to d*
    d*:
    but if any one of the core components – such as the core router or PBX – failed from overheating, it would be a business catastrophe.

    That in itself is stupid. If the components are that critical, there should be a backup. Equipment in "cold" server rooms dies too.

    Heh. Back when I worked for a State Government office, lightning struck the phone lines. It killed 2 DSL modems, one very costly ethernet switch ... and the $20k PBX that serviced the entire office complex. Yeeeowch!

    Oh, and that damned thing was already falling apart. The best WTF on that is that it still is, they just (kind of) fixed the thing.

  • Atario (unregistered) in reply to Valacosa
    Valacosa:
    This sort of left-hand right-hand stuff happens in any sufficiently large bureaucracy. It still makes me sad every time.
    Seems to me it's more of a "not noticing there are vents in the ceiling" problem.
  • Tim (unregistered)

    About 15 years ago when I was in the Air Force working flight operations, our building's central AC went out in the middle of July and the small mainframe room soared to 100 degrees. Our commander railed the wing commander to light a fire under civil engineering, and they couldn't fix it for a couple of weeks. So the wing commander sent us a B-1B Lancer A/C cart. By that night it was 42 degrees in the server room. Unbelievable. The downside is they had to bring dozens of gallons of fuel in every day to keep it running.

  • maserati (unregistered) in reply to spectro
    spectro:
    In my old days as IT Guy I coined the motto "always check the cables first" for this very reason. I recall countless occasions where I "saved the day" fixing something seconds after showing up because of that:

    Llaneza's Law of Network Engineering: 80% of all network problems are cabling issues.

    I coined that after getting one of the dirtiest looks I've ever gotten in my entire life. It was a full buildout, tons of new kit. We were replacing the hubs nailed to the wall with a shiny new rack of 10BaseT switches. Late Friday everything is patched in. I wave my hands at the call center full of computers and suggest we run a quick test. The IT director (about whom I will only say that he was a lying, dishonest moron) decided we'd call it a night then. It's blindly obvious what happens next. Saturday we do the test, and I had to make an ass of myself to get the time. One whole row of workstations can see each other but not the rest of the network. I then get told to check the workstations again more carefully. Moving a known good machine onto the bad segment finally convinced him it was his shiny new server room.

    I'm on my way out but don't know it yet, so the system administrator is not allowed in to work on the problem, he gets to putter around for two hours while a consultant is called in. At $200 an hour. In 1996 money. Friend of the boss naturally. He takes a look, says it's gonna be a while. I get released to do other actual work on the buildout. As he goes into the server room I tell him to check the cables. That's when I got that dirty look. After two hours of painstaking work he comes out and tells the boss he has nothing. While he distracts the boss I duck into the server room and go behind the racks. Sure enough, the uplink on the one switch wasn't in right. I get the happy click from it, check a workstation and report success while the consultant is still explaining how much he'll have to tear out and do over to get it working.

    Then I got the absolute dirtiest look I've ever gotten in my entire life. From both of them. If I remember the timing, less than two months later I walk out. It's also possible I've blocked out a whole year.

    This anecdote has gone on for too long to relate how overheating servers got us the new server room in the first place.

  • foobar (unregistered)

    And that's why Ted gets the big bucks.

  • Casey (unregistered)

    Hey, I just had a high temp alert yesterday. Server room went from under 80 to 103 in about an hour after the AC shutdown.

  • (cs) in reply to savar
    savar:
    The dialogue in these stories is so unrealistic. Every single sentence is cutoff by the other person interrupting mid-wo
    I noticed that too! It really bugged me.
  • Dr_Barnowl (unregistered) in reply to maserati
    Then I got the absolute dirtiest look I've ever gotten in my entire life. From both of them.

    I suppose you considered the possibility that they were intending to split the proceeds of a week or two at $200 an hour... plus a the sales of a good wedge of "faulty" equipment?

  • zyrorl (unregistered) in reply to CynicalTyler

    wow... thats special. I wonder what else this prophecy says about the Time when the terrible CXOs will come down from the mountains to smite us, and what will happen to The Race of Men.

  • Wanon (unregistered)

    The real WTF is them not wondering why there was no air coming through the air vents...

  • Namfan (unregistered)

    We had our own estimates for enhanced A/C to serve our portion of a shared lab, and the cost was in the same area of 170k. Finally, on one of those many days when we were summoned to power down the equipment due to high temps, I overheard the lab manager say "yeah, I guess I need to turn the A/C up".

    Yep. For over a year the lab manager hadn't wanted to turn the A/C up because it made the entire lab too cold, and his secretary didn't like to wear her jacket.

    Now the A/C runs 24/7 at the correct lab temperature. No more emergency shutdowns. All that's left is a functional lab and one pissed off secretary bundled in a parka.

  • Overworked, Underpaid... (unregistered)

    As more and more servers were installed we approached the limit that our current 20 ton unit could handle. When the coolest the room could get was 78F, it was agreed that a new AC would have to be installed. An additional 20 ton unit was installed.

    The old AC unit came with the building, and the new unit had a bad thermostat, so someone just set the unit to On until the new thermostat arrived in a few days.

    We get an alarm that the server room is at 85F, so I start heading in... along the way get 3 more alarms... 93F, 99F, 107F... within 15 minutes... and I start to wonder WTF?

    The old AC was working in unison with the new AC until the room hit 68F and shutdown... and the new AC took the room down to <57F at which point the old AC switched to HEAT MODE...

    The new AC couldn't keep the equipment cool with the old AC heating the room too...

    Since then the old AC's controller has been replaced with one identical to the new one.

  • Tyler W. Cox (unregistered)

    Reminds me of an install I did in Plymouth, UK. When I arrived from the US with a pile of pricey server equipment and asked where the server room was supposed to go I was told I could "choose an office". I asked which ones had the AC necessary and was told "We thought you could just open a window." Needless to say, the install was delayed until proper AC could be installed.

  • Not-the-admin (unregistered)
    The Hot Room, on the other hand, was more like a server closet. It was a cramped 8’ by 10’ room that housed core telecommunications equipment including the firewalls, routers, switches, VPN concentrators, and the PBX system.
    ...and sometimes it additionaly housed crates of water, cola and juice for the office staff.
  • Rhialto (unregistered)

    The real WTF is that the temperatures are not mentioned in proper international units. Say Kelvin. Or I'd accept degrees Celsius too. 65 degrees to me sounds way too hot (though perhaps a bit low for a sauna).

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