Posted on 09/21/2009 4:18:55 AM PDT by Red in Blue PA
ST. LOUIS St. Louis is perking up with jokes about the $200,000 cup of coffee. But officials at a college and its insurance company aren't laughing.
St. Louis Community College at Forest Park must foot the bill after a coffee maker rigged to a faucet and left on in a photo lab led to a ruptured water line in July. About 10,000 gallons of water spilled down four floors, damaging ceilings, walls, computers and files.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
OK the obvious question is why anyone would rig a coffee maker up to a faucet.....?
“... a coffee maker rigged to a faucet and left on in a photo lab led to a ruptured water line ...”
How does a faucet left on lead to a ruptured water line?
More like the faucet was left on and flooded the place.
I guess it was too much work to fill the pot and then fill the coffee maker...
Didn't a grandmother get 20+ million dollars from McDonalds when she spilled the coffee?
Much more reliable than having the wife wake up 15 minutes prior .. besides .. that would disturb my precious sleep.
Oh .. reread the post .. rigged up to a faucet??? still not sure what the problem was unless it was a very bad rig. Even the washers in kitchen bathroom faucets can sustain back flow pressure, and if their was an auto valve at the downstream side at the pot, the worst you could get would be equalized pressure on either side of the kitchen/bathroom faucet. Need more information that what was given to make a rational judgment.
I have a coffee maker with a timer that makes my coffee fresh for me 15 minutes before I get up. But at night I pour a pot of water into it. I don’t need to hook it up to a faucet. You must have some kind of restaurant model. I never saw a home model that hooks up to a faucet.
Years ago, over a weekend, someone left a valve open somewhere in the air conditioning system while they were working on it. Well, Monday morning arrived, the system was turned on, and I walked into my office to find water pouring out of the ceiling. What a mess.
Even well-intentioned people make mistakes and do stupid stuff.
Ours is the same. Husband fills the resevoir the night before and then turns on the timer. By the time he’s downstairs, it’s waiting for him. He never had to hook it to a water line to have it ready.
There are a lot of water-sensor alarms on the market that are easy to install and inexpensive to operate. Hindsight is ALWAYS 20/20!
I used to leave the fawcetts attached to the hoses of my clothes washer on all the time, until one day one of the hoses developed a big leak, probably from being under pressure 24/7.
I don’t think its unusual for people to jerry rig things right up to the edge, where it takes only one oversight to something minor to fail or for a person to forget something to cause havoc.
Smoking in bed....
Forgetiing to turn off the stove before leaving the house...
Thanks...I just couldn’t figure that out...not being a coffee drinker...
American voters...
A faucet is plumbed to at most a 1/2” supply line. Most coffee makers that plumb to water lines use a very tiny flexible copper tubing. 10,000 gallons is a huge amount of water for someone not to notice. Something more here than a small supply line bursting.
My father advised my sister to get these....
She didn't and her standard rubber hoses (which come with your new appliance) sure enough ruptured and flooded the basement. One line blew
Ours are that way at work. Filtered water automatically fills the pots.
It’s just like the water line hooked to the ice-maker in your refrigerator.
Gee you could rack up a similar bill for Haz-Mat clean-up from breaking a CFL bulb and releasing its toxic mercury.
If this mess was caused by someone making decaf. someone needs to get a rope.....
A completely open 1/2” line can put out 10 gallons a minute or more. At a conservative 10 gal/min, that’s 1,000 minutes, which is 17 hours. Assuming this was a lower flow pipe, it would take longer. Over a weekend or during a longer time when classes were not scheduled it could escape notice, especially if maintenance and/or security are not doing their job.
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