Avoiding water damage during floods
Filed under: environmental monitoring, water leak monitoring
This past weekend, the remnants of tropical storm Ida showed up in Southern Maine as a rain-soaked nor’easter. Fortunately, for us, we didn’t see the wide spread flooding and coastal erosion that other areas experienced further south on the New Jersey and Delaware coasts. 
Seeing all the news footage of flooded streets made me think about how important it is to be prepared for water infiltration due to flooding. According to the Red Cross, floods are among the most frequent and costly natural disasters, causing more than 90% of the damage related to natural disasters. On average, floods cause more than $4 billion in damages worldwide, per year. Proper preparation is equally important for businesses and homeowners.
Water leak detection systems in the server room
Filed under: environmental monitoring, water leak monitoring
With the importance placed on temperature and humidity monitoring and detecting hotspots in the data center, it is easy to forget that the second most common cause of catastrophic failure are water leaks. Whether your server room is located near refrigeration equipment used for building cooling, building facilities like bathrooms and kitchens or air conditioning units, precautions need to be taken.
Prevention
It all starts at the building planning level. Having an initial survey, to know if your building is in or near a flood zone, sounds like a no brainer, but it’s surprising how many people I speak with on a weekly basis that are in the heart of a flood zone with no water monitoring system in place. Once you know the situation your server room is in, it is important to take the necessary precautions by having the proper drainage installed, including a sump pump. This protects you in the event flooding becomes present.
Ravica Sensor Probes help at the WaterPark
A few weeks ago, I wrote a blog about how I helped a local amusement park solve an overheating problem with Ravica’s sensor probes. Luckily, I schedule follow up calls to make sure that everything is working as planned. I found out that they have another issue that I can help with.
This amusement park has an attached water park with 20 plus rides. The water for all of these rides is supplied from three pumping stations. Each pumping station has a small data center. The pump section of each of these units has all the emergency equipment that you could ask for, but the data center lacked.
A few weeks ago, they had one of their sump pumps fail. The water backed up quite a bit and flooded the floor of the data closet. The good news is that they only had to replace a few of the items that were near the floor, but it was clear that they needed a solution.
I suggested that they get the BitSight2 and use the water sensors along with the AC voltage detector. The water sensor would detect if any water is getting near the door. It would then alert if the water starts to build up near the door. We then would use the AC Voltage Detector to monitor the power coming from the sump pump. Now we can detect if the pump kicks in and turns off. If water is getting to a certain point and the pump is not on, you need to check the situation.
The BitSight2 can store all this information for historical reporting. Now they can generate reports on how many times the sump pumps had to kick in and how many times the water level reached the marked point.
The customer placed the order today and we are going to implement the solution next month. I can’t wait to see it in action.
- JimmyD