e i g h t - c u b e d . c o m 

Air conditioning

This afternoon, we got a nice break to leave at 2 PM for the start of the long weekend commemorating Memorial Day. Unfortunately, just after I got home, my pager went off and I was informed that there was a fire (!) in the main computer room.

I rushed back to work, and fortunately there was no fire, but a strange burnt oily smell in the air, and all the air conditioners in the main room were off.

And despite Facilities desperate attempts to restart them, they stayed off.

We delayed shutting down the computer systems until the temperature alarms on the disk arrays began to sound, as we were hoping that the air con could be restarted. But it was not to be.

We walked out of the room at about 10 PM, after having restarted everything and repaired a number of disks that failed to spin back up when power was reapplied. Not the way that I wanted to start the long weekend.

The incident was caused by an air conditioner blowing a compressor gasket and dumping all its freon. The oil from the compressor vaporised into the air, giving some people the impression of smoke, but it was the freon that set off the smoke detectors and caused all the rest of the air con to automatically shut off.