I run a museum house… It’s old (most museum houses are)
We have been having fun with the fire system again… It seems that this is a regular exercise… As a public building fire sprinklers are a good idea… As a Victorian House they are a good idea (The National Trust for Historic Preservation published an article several years ago about how many Victorians are lost to fire)
But the fire system is a pain… Our system was installed in 1991. It is a plastic pipe residential system, installed in part as a demonstration project with a mix of donated parts, labor and staff time. As a residential system it wasn’t required to have regular inspections and certification… or maybe it was… but we were not having it inspected or certified… Until the fire inspection four years ago… We generally did OK on the inspection… But the inspector wrote us up for not having the system inspected (and certified)…
Soon after the inspection had our sprinkler contractor come inspect the system so it could receive its 5 year certification… There were issues (of course there were issues, there are always issues.) Because it was a residential system it lacked some valves used during the inspection, further the exposed pipe in the attic needed to be wrapped to protect it from UV light, and finally many of the sprinkler heads were subject to a recall.
Valves were installed… volunteers wrapped the pipes… and we filled out the recall paperwork for the sprinkler heads… and waited…
There were phone calls, appointments were made to have a technician come and replace the recalled heads… appointments were canceled… after several tries all parties gave up… We tried again that winter… and failed again… the sprinkler installer decided that they couldn’t be liable for damage to a historic house and contents, the company wanted a release, they wanted more money… all parties went away frustrated… no progress was made…
We made a couple of additional phone calls… every month or two… with little result…
Until July 2009 when…
We had another visit from a different fire inspector… She was here at the park to look around… we had suffered a dumpster fire, and the fire department had responded, so eventually the fire inspector comes to look around… She was making the park’s operation manager really nervous and miserable… I don’t believe she intended to make her nervous and miserable, but fire inspections can do that… She (the fire inspector) saw my fire connection and asked to see the sprinkler riser… I showed it to her… she asked where the 5 year inspection sticker was… Things deteriorated from there…
Luckily I had documented the issues with the fire system quarterly… but alarms were raised, and we were put on fire watch… for nearly nearly 2 months as people were called, plans made, contracts signed… We finally replaced the recalled sprinkler heads, worked on the alarm, and received our 5 year sticker… which expires in a year or so…
During the 2 months we had to stand fire watch… one employee had to physically check the house every 15 minutes when ever the house was open… it isn’t fun and made us really unproductive… But with the sticker we were released from fire watch… for a while…
Fast forward to January 1010… I leave on vacation (there is a blog about the vacation) the day after I leave the water main serving the house fails… (it has failed a dozen times in the last 8 years) the house loses its water… the park makes a decision to replace the water line rather than patching the patches (again). They run a 5/8” garden hose to supply the house with water… It leaks, it gets disconnected, it gets shut off… it is the water for the house (including the fire system) for the next 23 days or so… the Park’s plumbers and their bosses don’t have a sense of urgency about the situation… They expected local park staff to call to have the utilities marked before trenching, local staff thought the plumbers would call, there is a whole bunch of he said she said going on but not any digging or plumbing, after all they rigged a hose and everybody has water, or do they
I return to the house from a really good vacation (did I tell you there is a blog about the vacation???) to find the 5/8” garden hose in place, the water off, and no information about when anything might happen to fix it… Having learned about fire watches and the rules which trigger them, I call our fire folks, who place us on fire watch… I call my boss who calls park people, who call other people…
The park’s plumbers arrive bright and early Tuesday morning… They replace the garden hose with a fire hose… while it increases water flow to the house it’s still a hose, and in the fire codes a hose is a hose and it’s temporary, and the fire watch continues…
Discussion continues… the parks plumbers return and plan the repair on Thursday… they dig out (by hand) the ends where the connections will be made… they trench by hand where a gas line runs to the house (the gas line is deep, deeper than the water line so there is no problem…) but the plumbers won’t be working Friday (they work 9 hours a day and take every other Friday off) or Monday (it’s a holiday).
The fire system has another problem… we have had a reoccurring leak in the sprinkler riser… where the valves, alarm sensors and other neat stuff is… we have repaired the leaks a couple of times but the sprinkler contractor (the good one, the one who does inspections, not the one who replaces recalled heads) wants fix it right and replace the whole thing… so, since we are on fire watch anyway, we plan to take the system down and replace it on Friday…
Friday comes… the plumber is here bright and early as planned… He takes it apart… he needs to disconnect the alarm, and to do that he should shut off the power to the circuit, but none of the breakers seem to do that… the house’s electrical system is Byzantine… There is a modern electrical service with a breaker panel… it feeds three different fuse boxes… one of the fuse boxes feeds a fourth fuse box… One of the fuse box is in the house, a second in the attic, the other two in the crawl space under the house… which is how I end up on my stomach in the mud and shrubbery trying to inspect the fuses and scribbles on asbestos sheets (sans paragraphs and arrows) which tell us what each fuse and circuit powers… but first, the plumber decides to disconnect the alarm “hot”, then replaces the stack, then while reconnecting the alarm… there is an ark… an electrical flash, and the lights in the elevator room die… dead…
I go in search of the blown fuse… The panels in the house and attic have glass fuses… in theory you can see which fuse has failed… the theory requires that you have a flashlight and good eyesight… I have a flashlight but my eyes can occasionally fail me… I deduce the problem is found in neither of the inside panels… I make my way to the panels under the crawl space… they use cartridge fuses that look the same when working or blown… You need meters and other electrical stuff that I don’t have at work… I fail in my quest… I call building maintenance…
Its not an emergency… what are they going to do, put us on fire watch… we are already on fire watch… Building maintenance shows up on Tuesday (the park plumbers are also here trenching… ) I unlock the house and start this day’s fire watch log. Together we check the breaker box… we check the fuse box in the house, we check the fuse box in the attic… we check the other two… The ones under the house… I lay on my stomach in the bushes and get muddy…
We don’t find any blown fuses…
Confused (at least I am) we decide to try tracing the wiring… (or I should say our electrician tries to trace the wiring… He finds no power where I thought we had no power… he finds that those now unpowered wires run to the elevator controls… (the elevator was installed in 1940… experts tell me it’s really a big dumb waiter with a brake… it is cut into the house wiring in interesting ways…) He finds the elevator and its controls have power… He starts to open various electrical devices which look like they should be powering Dr. Frankenstein’s lab looking for loose electricity… He finds a screw in fuse… a blown screw in fuse… after much effort we determine it’s a 15 amp screw in fuse… It is likely I have spares in my boxes of “stuff” in the house… after a short search I locate them… we install it… the power is restored…
Who in their right mind puts a fuse for the house wiring in the elevator controls???
The alarm restored, the electrician leaves… I knock off as much of the mud as possible lock the house, log it on the fire watch and go back to work… We should have water again on Thursday… I can hope…
On other issues… I have been posting more photos to Picasa… the most recent are of Antarctica… http://picasaweb.google.com/RandyHees/Antartica?feat=directlink I am still adding so haven’t changed the slide show yet… I did update the previous post… Next up will be Valparaiso (maybe… if it gets complicated I will do something else…)
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