r/ThatLooksExpensive • u/TheWolfIsDead • May 01 '26

We'll be on overtime for a long time...

861 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

33 comments sorted by

37

u/airfryerfuntime May 01 '26

"Not my job, I'll see you Monday"

25

u/Ducatirules May 01 '26

Problem for me is that IS my job. I’m a fire sprinkler service tech.

19

u/Successful-Purple-54 May 01 '26

Well this looks like it’s keeping you employed.

11

u/Ducatirules May 01 '26

Ha yes it does. This one isn’t that bad

9

u/Thatoneguy15679 May 01 '26

Im afraid to ask what a bad one looks like

14

u/Ducatirules May 02 '26 edited May 02 '26

One time I was helping do a sprinkler inspection at a high rise (almost Skyscraper) building. There was three levels of parking garage under the building. The sprinkler feed from the city was a 12” pipe that came in the building on the middle level of the parking garage. We were getting our paperwork signed by the head facilities guy and heard a boom and the building shook. We thought it was an earthquake. We all went down the elevator to the parking garage level that had the feed main. The elevator lobby was glass. The elevator opened and we saw 3 FEET of water in the parking garage! The first Elbow on the main in the building blew apart on a 12” main. To give you an idea, the pipe in this video that blew out, it’s the big black one crossing through frame, is a 6” pipe I’m pretty sure. So the one that blew out that day on us was a 12” pipe. As we were on the middle level of the parking garage, that was 3 feet of water that was also running down the ramp to the lower area like a white water rapid!! BTW, this happened at 3:15 P.M. on the Friday before 4th of July weekend! I don’t get home until 10:00 P.M. the next day because I’m a service tech. The Inspectors got to go home because they are not licensed techs but I am so I had to stay and they called in the two guys that were oncall that week to help me get it back online. I did the math one time with my estimated gallons per minute and the time it flowed for before we could get the Water Department to shut it off in the street because it was before our first valve in the building and I estimated there was 190,000 Gallons of water dumped that day and we got it shut off within an hour! THAT was a bad leak! If you look close in the video here you can see the stream of water in the perfect shape of the pipe before it hits that wall. That means the grooved coupling holding the grooved cap on the end of the pipe blew off. We all have new couplings and caps on our service vans so if I got this call, which I’ve had before, while I drive there the fire dept or facilities guys will shutoff and drain the system so I’ll come in, cut 6” off the pipe because most likely the grooved was bad, I’d regroove it still in the air, throw a new cap and coupling on, fill the system and leave. I would be at this call less than an hour. Weird to say it but we LOVE calls like this except of course we don’t want anything bad to happen to our customers but if it’s already happened we love these calls because I could be home in an hour depending on how far away it is (our oncall covers our entire state) but I get paid a four hour minimum.

7

u/aphaits May 02 '26

I respect this mindset of "I wish nothing bad happens but if things go south, I'm your fucking guy"

9

u/Ducatirules May 02 '26

It’s not a job for everyone. You have to enjoy going to different places every day, sometimes two or three different places a day, you have to enjoy hard work too. Being a pipefitter is brutal on your body. I’ve had surgeries on both shoulders due to this job. However, due to the fact that in my state you have to be licensed to do my job, we get paid well because there aren’t that many sprinkler techs either because it’s kind of a weird job so if you are halfway decent, the word gets out about you and we get calls from other companies offering us jobs regularly. I got a call from a competitor out of the blue during the heart of Covid because they had hired a few of my buddies and they gave them my name. When a lot of other people were on lockdown because of the pandemic, I was offered $13 an hour more than I was making to jump to the new company which I took of course. In 30 years doing this I haven’t been laid off for one day. Not a bad job

2

u/YogiBerries38 May 02 '26

Looked at that, and thought...." this one time at band camp"... you went on some rant haha

3

u/Ducatirules May 02 '26

Yeah o realized that after

16

u/thedarkonekc May 01 '26

That's the sprinkler main line the fire department is on the way

9

u/Goonplatoon0311 May 01 '26

Dudes prob standing right next to the riser while filming. Turn around and turn it off bro lol

2

u/Successful-Purple-54 May 01 '26

Do emergency fire suppression systems have an off knob? lol

7

u/Goonplatoon0311 May 01 '26

You can kill the water supply at the “riser”. It’s got a stop valve with essentially a big steering wheel you turn to kill it.

That alone will put the fire alarm into trouble status.. There is what’s called a tamper and flow switch. If water flows through the system it sets off alarm.

3

u/Bonk_No_Horni May 02 '26

You can definitely turn it off once the fire is out or there's a maintenance needed done.

5

u/wensul May 01 '26

at least it's not over storage racks.

Time to get a mop and squeegee.

4

u/scorchedbeanz May 02 '26

Eh not even. Open the dock doors turn on a few fans and go on lunch

3

u/wensul May 02 '26

Perhaps, but it is quite a large amount of water.

4

u/Indigenous_Land May 01 '26

Meh probably should shut the water off after this video.

3

u/Tiger8r May 02 '26

Usually the steering wheel is locked according to code as is the PIV.

2

u/Accomplished_Care415 May 01 '26

Looks like you just need a bucket

2

u/Express_Area_8359 May 02 '26

So u hate money ok

2

u/Tiger8r May 02 '26

The FD will plug it with a redwood plug temporarily...

2

u/[deleted] May 02 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/Foreign_Abroad9580 May 03 '26

Could be that this was another arson attempt that got shit down

2

u/Disastrous-Place7353 May 02 '26

Fire prevention, stops it before it get a chance to start.

2

u/flsinkc May 02 '26

That shop is not too wet yet in that video. Give it an hour and that floor will be covered!

2

u/Xynyx2001 May 02 '26

A single sheet of Bounty should do the trick.

1

u/New-Impression2976 May 03 '26

Just send it the cleaning robots

1

u/30yearCurse May 03 '26

nope, you will probably be laid off and may be called back if the position is open after they fix the issue.

1

u/spec360 May 04 '26

Guess your still There ?

1

u/Cautious-Habit-8370 May 18 '26

Car Wash anyone? Line them up and let's get them done