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OT Roof Leak and water intrusion in control cabinet

J

Jay Fleming

Hot Rolled
Joined
Aug 7, 2014
Location
Noble, OK
After the rain we had, I came in this morning to find the roof of my shop leaked considerably, most likely around a heater duct. I emailed the landlord a few minutes ago but don't expect a response this soon. My CNC lathe sits directly under this duct and water was probably falling onto the transformer and running down into the control cabinet. The doors on the cabinet were open and there is moisture on the spindle drive, plus water sitting in the bottom of the cabinet. Besides dealing with the landlord, what is the best way to approach this as far as drying out the cabinet and testing everything? I plan to put a fan or two blowing on everything for the rest of the day and overnight but if the landlord may pay for damages, I'd rather leave it so they can see what all happened.

Jay
 
My experience is it doesn't hurt a thing unless you put power to it. Keep the power off. Sop up the standing water, use fans to circulate the air for a day or two then go buy a bunch of desiccant bags (usually found at places that sell safes and camping gear). Put a handful of packets in each cabinet.

Once it's dry turn the machine on and use it like nothing happened.
 
Jay Fleming said:
After the rain we had, I came in this morning to find the roof of my shop leaked considerably, most likely around a heater duct. I emailed the landlord a few minutes ago but don't expect a response this soon. My CNC lathe sits directly under this duct and water was probably falling onto the transformer and running down into the control cabinet. The doors on the cabinet were open and there is moisture on the spindle drive, plus water sitting in the bottom of the cabinet. Besides dealing with the landlord, what is the best way to approach this as far as drying out the cabinet and testing everything? I plan to put a fan or two blowing on everything for the rest of the day and overnight but if the landlord may pay for damages, I'd rather leave it so they can see what all happened.

Jay
Click to expand...

Yep, every landlord I have had would come a'running with pockets loaded with 100$ bills to make it right! Yeah right! Dry it out, get to work and hope he fixes the roof sometime soon.
 
Water that has gotten into connectors is the slowest to evaporate IME. I have done like Garwood said and added the step of using an air hose (one with good dry air!) and blowing out any wet connectors when starting to dry out a cabinet.
 
they sell plastic tarp with garden water hose connection in center. often used to hang from ceiling and catch roof leaks and then water hose directs it safely to drain.
.
when working in maintenance we always had a few in the tool crib. they often pay for themselves like 10 to 10,000 over what they cost. often roof will leak for months til fixed. i even saw a roof it would leak 1-3 pm everyday a week after last rain. the hot sun warm up roof and push water in the roof layers out as a leak in the building. easier to hang tarp as some roofs it can be months til its fixed as also where leak is on the roof often is far from where leak is inside the building
 
moonlight machine said:
Yep, every landlord I have had would come a'running with pockets loaded with 100$ bills to make it right! Yeah right! Dry it out, get to work and hope he fixes the roof sometime soon.
Click to expand...
I'm not expecting much but I've been here a week, it's never been leased before, I pointed out the same leak which was fixed, not well enough apparently, a couple weeks ago.

Sent from my HTC One using Tapatalk
 
Jay Fleming said:
I'm not expecting much but I've been here a week, it's never been leased before, I pointed out the same leak which was fixed, not well enough apparently, a couple weeks ago.

Sent from my HTC One using Tapatalk
Click to expand...

get the plastic tarp with water hose connection and hang it up just in case. i believe mcmaster sells them
 
Photos followed by more photos from every possible angle of machine and building.

Make backups as well as email to Selk to have handy mail able copy.

Next contact machine manufacturer asking for specific instructions and follow them.

Ask for documentation of possible damage as well as quote for them to inspect it.

Next contact insurance companies yours and landlord and ask them to contact manufacturer and make arrangements for inspection asap.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337Z using Tapatalk
 
Did you get it dried out well enough? I've often thought about this because my shop leaks during toad stranglers but not during light rain.

At my last job we had rain drip into an active paint line conveyor control cabinet. Burned up all kinda shit and took a while to get straightened out.
 
Yeah I got it worked out. Used compressed air all over inside the cabinet then ran 2 fans blowing inside for 2 days. Everything came back on ok.

Sent from my HTC One using Tapatalk
 
It won't hurt anything. I bought a CNC lathe that sat outside in the rain for 48 hours (it rained most of that time). I drained 8" of water out of the hydraulic tank and dried everything out for a week. It fired right up. One encoder cable connection had to be cleaned. No other issues.
 
Be careful with compressed air inside electrical cabinets. If you have any metal chips around, they can be blown up into boxes containing circuit boards and end up laying across solder joints that shouldn't have electrical connection, and the bright white light and arcing sounds from inside the box will let you know you did something wrong. You can then go around to the control display and have confirmation you did something wrong.
 
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