My home connection to my computers died on Friday

[Suff]

And I got home to find that a shut valve on a disconnected pipe, in the ceiling of my office, had sprung a leak. It was spraying a thin stream of water into a ceiling beam and then dripping lots of water all over lots of plugged in electric equipment.

Due to the stupidity of French/European plugs, which don't have fuses, three of my plugs shorted in the sockets and started to draw huge amounts of power, effectively burning the plugs out. Fortunately two of my trips went before it became a fire and I arrived home on Saturday to find my office inundated with water. Equipment swimming in it, one of my PC's filling up with water (plugged in) and everything on the desks flooded. Even my network switches, deliberately on top of the cupboard, were flooded. Although this one is (sort of), working. I have a spare but it was also well watered inside the cupboard.

It's going to take days to dry the room out and probably weeks to find out how much damage it did to electrical equipment....

So I'll be busy for a while...

[cromwell]

Oh heck Suff, what a pain that sounds! Good luck with it.

[Workingman]

Disaster Suff. I hope that your insurance is in order and that it all gets sorted in quick time. You were very lucky that the trips worked and there was no fire.

[Kaz]

Oh noooooooooo what a pain!!!

Thank goodness there wasn't a fire though xxx

[Weka]

Oh no oh no oh no.
Crossing fingers for you suff

[Diflower]

I suppose it could have been a whole lot worse

[Suff]

Thanks for the thoughts.

It could have been a lot worse. I've managed to salvage one router (the expensive gigabit one) and at least I didn't lose one of my monitors. I'm not trusting a bunch of gear. At least Mrs S had finally decided to take my old Laptop or that would have been flooded and ruined as it was right under where the leak started.

To be honest I don't think that the water has destroyed that much that I want to claim. The pc which was flooded was an old media centre machine. Probably worth £150 or so on Ebay. The switch I lost was an old 10/100 switch and I have a Gigabit replacement if I need it, which I'm not sure right now. I'll need more ports when we move through next door for the living room, but I think that's about it.

The rest of the stuff was fairly minor. I may have lost a few mice and, maybe, a Swedish format wireless keyboard. Which I see as a purchase opportunity to replace it with a UK one.

I'm going to have to rethink my new office upstairs to ensure it's a whole lot safer with French Electrics. The system is inherently unsafe and I can't rely on my own safe practises to ensure that it works the way it should, I'm going to have to make the system safe by design. I think I'm going to have to do a lot more wiring and have circuits with much less power and much fewer sockets hanging off them. It's really annoying to have to do this as copper wire has tripled (or more), in price, since I started renovating the house.

Key to the rethink is that there are going to be no pipes anywhere near my office.....

However, anyway, I'm back online, I'm able to work today and I have an electric radiator in the room getting it warm enough to get the water out before it festers. I'd prefer a dehumidifier but that's a step too far as I'd probably have to drive an hour each way to rent one. Thank God it's almost summer, although it's raining constantly at the moment....

[Kaz]

Glad to hear that the most expensive of the equipment has been saved and that the rest dries out soon! x

[Suff]

Ah well, it was more stressing on Saturday as I was trying to get the water out with the power off (I killed all the power in there as it was swimming and I like life.

I've lost one of my newest wireless mice, which is irritating, but I'll live I guess. At least I can work.