Dont call me, call the fire brigade!!!

[750 Valve]

Will probably never see this ever again, hope to get the pics off work. Just finishing off a major refurb on a supermarket in a large shopping centre, three racks on R404A, air cooled condensers undersized for noise reasons (slow fans), capacity compensated for by evaporative coolers built around condensers (vertical air discharge, evap cooler underneath) reducing temp of air onto condensers.
System not quite finished being commissioned, metal fab guys were building large sound baffles around the condenser area, they had removed the filter materials around the evap coolers (straw) due to fire hazard as they were grinding, welding and oxy cutting steel.
Somehow they still managed to ignite the straw, placed underneath one condenser for safe keeping (smart move!). the air being drawn through the condensers fuelled the burning straw underneath, the fire toasted one condenser completely until the pressure blew both the pressure relief on the receiver and then the copper tubes of the condenser now creating an oil fire on the other two. All three condensers blew, releasing around 1100 kg and burning the **** out of the roof of the building.
The metal guys got off the roof in time to try to blame the fridge contractors for the whole fiasco and I just finished starting the racks back up on temporary condensers (9 weeks for new ones) with a new 1100 odd kgs. Store was none too impressed, lost all stock two weeks before christmas, shut down for one day and no refrig stock for a week! Not to mention the new pipework needed as the fire brigade soaked the lot and most of the condenser run was filled with water! Got to love supermarkets... anything can and DOES happen.

[evap]

you gotta love the metal guys, they are lucky no one was killed when the condensors blew.Who signed the stock loss??

[750 Valve]

Not I said the fly....
And thats all that counts to me!!!

[rbartlett]

what happened to those pics?

cheers

richard

[750 Valve]

Was told to wait and see what the fallout would be... Its been a while, they paid the bill and we still do the store so I'll have another shot on when I get back from hols.

[Argus]

So, who was managing this site?

It strikes me that when the smoke clears and the loss adjusters get to work they will want to know where the hot work permits, fire precautions and other safety assessments were.
________
marijuana bubbler

[rbartlett]

we had an emergency call 'a/c on fire!!' today to say that the fire brigade are on site and won't leave till we attend..

our guy arrived to watch a heatpump defrosting......bloody fire bragade can't tell the difference between smoke and steam...

cheers

richard

[frank]

you'd be hard pushed to make this up

[Brian_UK]

No Frank, I've had the same thing with a cooling tower blowing its cloud out of the rear of a building early evening just as the street lights came on.

Personally I thought it looked very 'moody', real MTV video type of thing