Hey Guys,

Just wanted to let you know where I have been in case you were wondering. On Monday morning when I got to work our water vault which is 8ft X 8ft X 8ft deep was totally submerged in water. We lost power and the sump failed on Friday night.

Installed in 1995, the water vault takes the 4” water line from the city and delivers it to the back side of a vertical 6” water pump. The water pump is controlled by probes in a 35,000 water tank located 3,000 feet away located at the Olympic Natural Resources Center. It is then re-boosted to the facility using 3 pumps located in the pump house.

Inside the water vault, located down the hill are several mechanical systems that ensure water delivery as well as vault protection and problem notification.

A 208V panel delivers power to a vault heater, a water control panel, a disconnect and magnetic starter that feeds power to a 7.5 hp pump motor, as well as power for lights and plugs.

Well I spent all day on Monday pumping out the water, pulling the heater out, the 208 panel is OK since all the busses are nickle or silver alloy plated, but I did have to change out all the breakers. The 7.5 hp motor actually runs, but being an open frame motor, it's just a mater of time before it goes south. The disconnect breaker for the motor and the magnetic starter is also OK after using an air compressor a fan and a portable heater to dry everything out.

Last on the list is the 24V water control panel. It's shot. Imagine dipping you're motherboard in water and wondering if it will work again. Well I'm still getting a price on that one, and luckily the company that made it is still in business and actually remembered me after 10 years.

So it's been a stressful couple of days, and in the process I discovered that our Fire Panel trouble relay in the main office was wired backwards all these 10 years. I asked Guardian Security about this and they never had an answer, but it seem that when we actually had a trouble mostly when the power failed, ie power outage, Guardian would call us after the power came back on and would tell us we had a zone 2 trouble. I called one of the engineers yesterday, and we did a couple of tests and he said that the relay was showing a trouble when we were normal and visa versa. Hmmmm I still am learning new things about this facility after 10 years. So I called my fire panel tech guy an hour away, and he said he didn't want to charge me 300 bucks to come and switch 2 wires so he got his book out and talked me through it. After a couple of tests to the monitoring company we got called right away when power was cut to the panel. Yeaaaaaa.

We had a horrific storm last night and we lost power a half dozen times during the day. After getting the fire panel to call me when the power goes off instead of back on, I headed home for the day. Well last night I got a call from guardian at midnight telling me there was a zone 2 trouble, and I knew it was a power outage, so I grabbed the portable generator and drove to the vault and ran the sump pump until the power came back on.

Well here is the good part. While I wish all of this had not happened, two really good things came out of it. I finally figured out why we were not being called right away when the power goes out, but our office admin assistant, who's husband owns a commercial fishing boat asked me...."why don't you have a 12V battery back-up sump pump?" I stood there in a daze wondering why I had not thought of that, I found several kits that will pump 700 gallons an hour at a 10 ft rise. I figure that when the ground is really saturated the incoming water is about 5 gallons a minute. So it is not only possible that a 12V system will work, but it is something I will be installing in the next week or so. I also need to get my involuntary, voluntary inmate crew to dig a around the vault and I need to seal the seam that is about 24 inches from the top. then the pump would probably only cycle once or twice a day, instead of the cycle of every 2 1/2 minutes, running for 1 1/2 minutes. Quite a cycle.