My First Yard Sale

As part of decluttering the house I've had boxes of stuff in my dining and living rooms awaiting the day our neighborhood did another block sale. We didn't exactly have another block sale, but both of my neighbors asked me if I would do a yard sale with them. Are you kidding!!

I took Thursday and Friday off from work to prepare and man my tables since the sale Friday and Saturday. As it turned out I couldn't take Friday off and worked on work stuff Thursday morning which goofed things up some, but in the end I got 80% of my stuff out onto the tables.

Thankfully about 50% of it sold. After giving my neighbor who watched all my stuff Fri., and part of Sat. while I brought more stuff out, $20 for her trouble; I cleared $74.75 on the whole thing.

We put some of the big items out on the curb to see if anyone would take them and boxed the remaining stuff up for Goodwill. On Sunday while loading up the van for the Goodwill run, a woman pulled up in front. She had trouble walking so we asked her if she needed any help. She wanted my mom's old porta potty. My mom very big and needed an extra wide model. She only used it a few times and it still looked like new, but all these years I could never find anyone who wanted it. Turns out while at church this particular Sunday morning another rather heavy woman got up and said she needed a porta potty and booster seat. This woman, on a whim, came down our street and lo and behold what did she find! Way to go Holy Spirit!! After a bit of moving stuff around we fit everything into her car and she sped down the street praising God's name for bringing her friend the very thing she needed. I praise God for getting the porta potty, booster seat and accessories out of my dining room and into a good home.

The Most Incredible Day

I'm still intending to update everyone on why I've haven't posted in so long, but in the mean time I had the most incredible day today at work.

Arrived a bit before 11A and got on the phone with a vendor. The fire alarm went off, I asked my boss if it a drill. I swear he said "Yes". I continue with the call, he comes back in and says I need to go out with everyone else. As I go out I smell steam coming out of the main mechanical room. Open the door and find the room filled with steam and an electrician for the steam tunnel project saying he needs to get down the tunnel, but the way blocked by the steam. I look back in the room and see our main steam safety relief valve venting full tilt.

I go upstairs and call in the steam emergency and contact the fire coordinator via our FRS radios. Evidently someone thought the steam coming out of the roof vent smoke and called the fire dept. so they on the way.

I go back down and see no one from the Physical Plant has arrived. Now the whole hall filled with steam too. This has happened before, although not in quite such dramatic fashion so I run into the shop to grab a pipe wrench. With the electrician in tow we charge into the mechanical room to shut off the main steam valve. Steam still coming out, so we shut off the secondary line as well. No more steam, but water pouring out like crazy from somewhere up by the ceiling. I can't see a thing, my glasses fogged up so bad. We eventually realize one sprinkler head going off because the room got so hot with all the steam. By now the University plumbers arriving and set about the task of shutting down the sprinkler system. The firemen show up as well and demand we turn off a major electrical panel under the streaming sprinkler head. We turn off the panel which in turn shuts down a whole slew of major mechanical systems in our building. Lets see, domestic water, compressed air, temperature control compressed air, air conditioning pumps, pure water system, you get the idea.

About 15 minutes later the water stopped coming out of the sprinkler head revealing the full extent of what happened. The whole room covered with water and the electrical panel very wet, at least on the outside. The firemen allow folks back into our now crippled building with no water on the 4th and 5th floors due to the lack of water pressure and the main ventilation systems shutting down due to the lack of compressed air to run the controls. The plumbers set about replacing the sprinkler head while I await the arrival of a university electrician to OK turning the panel back on. While waiting, my boss informs me our cooling tower in the penthouse has gone down due to the lack of water pressure. It will run for an hour or so, before all the water evaporates away, which in turn greatly diminishes it's cooling ability. Well an hour plus had passed by now, so we needed to shut down over 100 walk-in coolers and freezers throughout the building which rely on the cooling tower.

Eventually an electrician comes over and sets about verifying the panel dry enough to turn back on. It looks OK, so he throws the switch and we start turning the vital pumps, etc. back on one at a time. At this point we come to realize the computer control panel which runs everything in the room completely drenched inside so none of the equipment coming on even after we restore power to it. We bring the pumps, etc. online using manual overrides while a fellow from the HVAC shop tries to tenderly dry up the water on the circuit boards with paper towels.

By about 2P or so we have everything back up and running, but the computer controls a lost cause now giving off a distinct burnt electrical smell. The pump guys come by later and get all worked up about us running the pumps manually. So we were supposed to leave the building without water, coolers, freezers and A/C for whole rest of the day and night, because they don't like to run stuff on manual?!?

I spent the rest of the day vacuuming up all the water and keeping an eye on the system pressures and the odorous computer control cabinet. Part of the computer controls did eventually recover, but we didn't have confidence in them and left the pumps running on hand overnight on reduced speed to insure no problems develop. We will see tomorrow if they are able to get the computer cabinet up and running again.

When I left at 6:30P or so my pants and shoes still wet, but I felt good that we had conducted ourselves well under very chaotic circumstances. For the most part the folks from the physical plant also said we did a good job, especially in terms of taking the initiative to turn off the runaway steam system before it caused any more damage to the equipment.