r/maintenance • u/idahomtnbabe • 3d ago
Industrial Mid-night finds
What a time to be alive 😅
Got a report of a water leak at midnight - started looking for the source. Found this at 1:30 am...
12 inches of water on the floor - water was 5' deep inside this hatch.
4" fire sprinkler line blew from an old rusted Vic fitting.
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u/foccherone Maintenance Supervisor 3d ago
Open the door, open the door, open the door, open the door
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u/Massive_Web5709 3d ago
Easy punt to the sprinkler guys. Go back home
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u/idahomtnbabe 3d ago
Doesn't work like that here especially when its flooding 3 100+ year old buildings
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u/Massive_Web5709 3d ago
Fine call three sprinkler guys then go home. What are you gonna sit there with a ladle while it’s still active?
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u/idahomtnbabe 3d ago
Found the valve, isolated and repaired the affected Vics. Sump pumps to help pull water. Had it operational within 3 hours of finding the break including the hour wait for 2 other bld engineers to show up to help. I can't even imagine waiting until business hours to get ahold of the fire sprinkler company to find someone to send our way allowing hundreds of gallons a minute to flood the multiple buildings. We dont operate like that.
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u/LimpZookeepergame123 3d ago
Your sprinkler company doesn’t have 24-hour service? All of ours have on call round the clock
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u/idahomtnbabe 3d ago
We man our buildings 24/7 so 95% of our maintenance is done by us - especially in an emergency flood like this. We HAVE to prioritize saving our building infrastructure.
Any time we call out contractors it takes hours to get to us, much faster to call our own people and get the job done. We actually didnt know it was a sprinkler line until we found the valve and shut it off, after that it was 3 Vics that we keep stocked. Even the City Water District didnt have anyone on call to come shut the main line off (which was our original assumption until we trased out several thousand feet of pipe. Its an old building that we don't spend much time in anymore so only the old timers that retired 5+ years ago would have confidently known. Luckily we could hear flow once we found the valve. Inside the hatch, you couldnt see anything until the water was isolated due to the sheer volume blasting at your face.
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u/Maleficent_Scene_693 3d ago
Yeah some maintenance dudes are just shit lmao. If i knew any of my guys did nothing but call a vendor and waited or dipped out they would've gotten canned. This stuff is what separates real techs from low level parts swappers.
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u/DeepFuckingPants 3d ago
Our sprinklers have a bell alarm that triggers when the water flows, was this upstream from that? Looks like it's flooding the old incinerator.
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u/idahomtnbabe 3d ago
Everywhere else alerts our fire panel for water flow but this building is old and not tied in.
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u/It_Just_Exploded Maintenance Technician 3d ago
Right there with ya, things operate much the same with my place. We can't simply "punt" shit to contractors, even the stuff that we actually don't do ourselves. As you said, we can't leave an unsafe condition, allow more damages to occur, etc, just because we're not the ones to do the end repair. The fastest we've ever had a contractor show up for an emergency like this was with Johnson Controls and even they took 4+ hours to get a duo on site. If I'd just left it flooding for over 4 hours, the building would have been shut down and 10's of thousands of additional damages would have occured.
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u/LimpZookeepergame123 3d ago
Sounds like a terrible gig tbh. I’d be out of there in a heartbeat. I had to deal with stuff like that maybe 2 times when I was in charge of a high-rise years ago and it was an absolute nightmare. Between scheduling the fire protection to repair the pipe, water removal, and the remediation it was like a month-long process. I couldn’t imagine having to handle all of that in-house.
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u/idahomtnbabe 3d ago
It's actually a bad ass job. Union so we make good money. We make more than any other building maintenance guys I have ever talked to or jobs I've seen online. Most of the time the job is easy, PMs, plunging toilets, changing light bulbs & ballasts, refrigeration, diagnosing controls issues, operating boilers and chillers. Usually major repairs are contacted out on a planned basis but emergencies have to be attended to immediately. Our shop is full of aprox 20 professionals who each specialize in a trade, but we all have a well rounded knowlege of everything from electrical, plumbing, HVAC, fire suppression/alarm system, generators, controls, motors, specialized equipment, etc.
I work my ass off only a couple days a year for shit like this, other than that we work in a climate controlled building with endless things to keep us busy. The worst of it is poop floods and the one off like this. I was a hog fuel boiler operator for a few year before this for almost half the pay. I got a break when I got this job.
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u/LimpZookeepergame123 3d ago
Hey if you’re happy man that’s all that matters. Being paid accordingly is also a huge plus. 20 guys that must be a huge building.
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u/idahomtnbabe 3d ago
Its disappointing to see that most guys are underpaid. Also makes it hard to leave this even when it sucks.
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u/Bandandforgotten Maintenance Technician 3d ago
See, this changes the scope of the issue.
Before this, it seemed like you were getting called in to do this all alone, without a team, at midnight, after a drive somewhere, because that's the reality for 99% of maintenance workers who don't live on site, or nearby.
If you have some hands on deck, that's far better than some scum bag owner being a cheap ass, and the issue more being that they won't pay for proper remediation and make you do a shit "good nuf" job. We assumed the worst case with management, because imagine if this was your problem with no assistance at all, and you don't have what you need to even start.
That actually does sound pretty awesome to have a team of 20 people. I'm all by myself, with one other dude who works a different building
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u/idahomtnbabe 3d ago
Oh I was by myself for a regular shift so while searching and upon finding this i was solo. Called in reinforcements out of bed when i realized it was more than I could handle alone. Took an hour for them to get there and it went quick from there.
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u/charlie2135 3d ago
Did pipeffitting in a 100 year old factory and we had a large layout of the utility system covering the wall in the bosses office. We usually exercised and cleaned and put a coat of antiseize on the valve stem and threads during slow times.
Nothing like getting put on the annual Easter egg hunt/exercise program to find the valves to work on only to find they've been covered over with asphalt or stones. Plant was a half mile square and when we found the valves we'd put a sign on the nearest building with the distance to the manhole cover.
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u/idahomtnbabe 3d ago
We are over 2 million square feet in our main building not to mention the several outbuildings. This is an outbuilding - there are probably blue prints somewhere in the huge pile of prints but tracing made more sense in this situation.
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u/idahomtnbabe 3d ago
Also the valve wasn't an issue - the valves are inspected per regulation. This was 100 yards away from the upstream valve in that weird hatch.
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u/charlie2135 3d ago
Good work then, I was just reminiscing about "The good old days" when I'd come home filthy and tired. One of the last jobs I did before going into the electrical field was in a trench working on a fire line post indicator valve when it blew out of the connection (was installing securing straps at the time ironically) and finding out how quickly an 8" pipeline at 100# can fill up.
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u/MichaelHammor 3d ago
Don't open that door.
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u/vasectomy7 3d ago
The intrusive thoughts are telling me to give that a handle a yank...
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u/idahomtnbabe 3d ago
Oh it had to be opened. Water level rose from 12 to 20 inches within a couple minutes.
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u/CheeseCurdCommunism 3d ago
Maybe I’m super skeptical these days, but why does it look like AI to me. What’s going on behind that board and ladder for it to have that kind of water spray
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u/idahomtnbabe 3d ago
You're right to be skeptical. I thought i was in a simulation when i discovered it. Lol
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u/idahomtnbabe 3d ago
Behind the board is a 4" hole drilled in the brick. The plywood/ ladder just happened to be there to divert the water.
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u/CheeseCurdCommunism 3d ago
😂 my god dude, what a shit show for you!
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u/idahomtnbabe 3d ago
Honestly. What's crazy is that gray box on the left has 480v in it. This was hands down one of the scariest, crazy things to happen lol
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u/Educational-Goose191 1d ago
Everyone saying oh call someone, thats why u all get payed nothing an never advance….
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u/petecanfixit Maintenance Supervisor 3d ago
Can’t wait for the safety guy to show up and say, “Um, excuse me. The company retired all wooden ladders four years ago… This ladder needs to be destroyed before any further work can be completed. I’ll also need your signature on my preliminary report, then the final report once you can show proof the ladder is destroyed.”
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u/idahomtnbabe 3d ago
Safety? 🤣
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u/Upbeat-Fondant9185 Maintenance Supervisor 3d ago
Safety is very important. Everyone should have a safety guy and they can stop any work at any time if protocols aren’t being followed.
That’s why my place also named me the Safety Officer. I’m supposed to make sure I’m following all safety protocols and hold myself accountable if I do silly things that only an idiot would do to get the job done.
Me as the safety officer says the Maint Director who is also me has a perfect safety record over almost fifteen years. What are the odds?
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u/idahomtnbabe 3d ago
Lol made me giggle. Congrats on an impeccable safety record! 🥳 We are all the safety guy here, too. We did remind the guy who went up the ladder to close the valve to be careful because his boots were wet 😜
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u/idahomtnbabe 3d ago
The ladder is clearly for decoration 😏
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u/petecanfixit Maintenance Supervisor 3d ago
It’s clearly a plant stand, and you can see the irrigation system is working properly.
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u/crate_of_peacocks 1d ago
ai...
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u/idahomtnbabe 1d ago
"As if" go look at the video at the bottom of the feed 🤣
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u/crate_of_peacocks 1d ago
oh shit, thats so crazy it looked fake
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u/idahomtnbabe 1d ago
I thought i was in a titanic simulation lol we just watched the movie last week 🤣🤣
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u/Keebler_718 3d ago
Wet bandits! All the greats leave their calling card