I work at a fabrication company. My time is divided between the shop and being on the road.

Is it a bad sign when you pull into your job after a long day on the road and they're sweeping water (LOTS of water) out the loading dock door?

Apparently, the sprinkler head situated right over the door of the oven used for annealing, got hot enough from the oven that it went off......actually two went off.

This oven is big enough to walk into, and it was installed about two years ago. Those in charge are guessing that the heat slowly affected the sprinkler head, and today it reached it's breaking pint.

For how much water was being pushed out, I can't imagine what it would have looked like if they ALL went off.........

The owner took it in stride and was overheard commenting how he thought the place would get flooded from the bayou that runs along side the building, not from within...........

1st off with a thread name like From the 'you can't make this up' files........I had to open it and see if it was about something I may have done in the past, looks like I am safe for now.
30 years ago I worked as a contractor for SEARS Home Improvement they had a store that had half the stores go off in the middle of the night. Wow was that water.

Our new sprinkler system has these rubberized compression type joints in it. The runs through the cold/freezer areas are pumped full of air until a head activates. We had a section blow apart twice in the rib room. A 3" pipe puts out a lot of water before you can get the pumps shut off.

At a house next to the ocean, the last two “floods” were:
1. Safety pressure valve on top of 60 gallon electric hot water heater went bad and started spray pulsing out water despite water pressure being normal.
2. Eleven years before that, copper water pipe broke in bedroom bathroom.
About $8000 of damage each time.

Another time I casually walked outside by the electrical meter and was shocked to see a stream of clear water literally shooting out the electrical conduit from below the meter where it made an elbow to go under the concrete slab the house sits on.

Turning off the main water valve for the house stopped this stream of clear water.

I eventually found that when the house was built in 1953 they had laid the electrical conduit on top of a copper water pipe, and galvanic corrosion slowly created a hole in both the steel and copper.

To find this spot I hired an “Ultrasonic Leak Detector” company to pinpoint the spot in the floor of the house using triple microphones with low frequency sounds first ( low freq travels farther) and subsequently higher and higher frequency sounds that could only be detected very close to the leak. I then used a hammer drill to make a 12 inch circle of holes in the concrete floor at this suspected spot, then drilled between the first drilled set of holes with larger diameter holes to intersect and lift the circle out. Leak was within 3 inches of where the leak detection guys predicted.

Soldered a repair and refilled the circle with urethane instead of concrete. I still worry that somewhere beneath the house slab there is at least one more spot where the original construction crew let copper water pipe touch steel electrical conduit.

The last grocery store I worked at, the bonehead store manager was moving a very tall pallet and not paying attention; he snapped off a sprinkler head. Because he's store manager and trained for such calamities, he instantly starts panicking and nearly loses control of his bodily functions.

Lucky for him, I took control of the situation and got some of the grocery kids to roll up some rugs and redirect the water instead of flowing out to the sales floor but down the back hall to the floor drain. The rest of us went in search of the emergency shut off.... which, we found was OUTSIDE the building behind lock and key. So, we had to phone the local fire department. Meanwhile, the store owner shows up and he starts panicking. Luckily, Gerry our fire chief (yes, small town, most of us are on a first-name basis with each other) shows up and turns off the sprinkler system at the same time the store owner is in the back of the store losing his mind. Seriously.... we had to calm the guy down - he thought all the stock was going to be ruined until it was explained to him that it's all on pallets and only the pallets will get wet.

So, with 3/4 of the staff in the back with squeegees pushing water into drains, since I'm a former janitor, I grabbed the great big floor machine (with suction vacuum) and start moseying up and down the back hallway sucking up gallons of water. Seemed like a great idea to me.

Guess I shouldn't have been singing "I washed my hands in muddy water" because the owner was glaring something fierce at me. Oh, if looks could kill.

On a related note the big cordless P770 Ryobi
6 gallon wheeled Wet-Dry Vacuum has good suction
but man does it suck down Lithium batteries quickly!

4 amp-hour Ryobi batteries last just a bit more than 11 minutes
5.5 amp-hour knockoff “Powerextra” batteries last 16.5 minutes
6 amp hour Ryobi batteries last around 19 minutes

Vac motor seems to be around 360 watts and 20 peak amps draw from battery.

I am fitting a second battery receptacle to this vacuum so it can be powered by 2 batteries at once and run continuously for 30+ minutes and “hot swap” batteries for near continuous running.

I have a corded wet dry vac with 7 gallon stainless steel reservoir but since quick reaction time to water problems is valuable I like the cordless idea too.

Nope! turn your back and whistle. Best you can do.

I worked at a large factory. One morning I showed up and all the doors were open, floors wet, rugs and mats hanging. Found out from 3rd shift co worker that someone had a load lifted on a forklift too high and clipped a feeder pipe for the sprinkler system. He described it as a tsunami of water came thru the dept aisle. Plus the dirt and smell from that water sitting in pipes for years and there's ALOT of water in one of those towers that feed it.