No coffee; time to go home
The adoption of a new regulation dealing with force majeure only a few weeks ago came in handy this morning. Not enough to seed world peace, but enough to send the employees of my building “packing for home” as they say. The first sign of difficulty came early. When I took my rightful place in front of the coffee dispenser, the LCD display notified me that the level of water was extremely low. This did not augur well.
All corporate decisions must be carefully weighed, but within the hour we received notice of the building closing for the day, due to a lack of water supply. We are on city mains, and the infrastructure is starting to show strain. A bit of cold weather used to be normal for this time of year; nowadays, the pipes laid down close to a century ago get “cold feet” and break, with nasty side effects. Like, in our case, a cessation of coffee production and sanitary flushes.
I’m not clear on the physics (I think that’s the field of science that applies here) of cold weather and pipe breakage, but something tells me that I’d better learn before we return to personal water wells and other grounded facilities. I understand that digging up the wellhead in winter is low on the list of “fun ways to spend the weekend”; I have been there once, and have photos to keep the memory fresh. If I recall, there was a lot of cold mud involved. Our current home shouldn’t suffer from such things, as the city replaced our water pipe some years back, but it’s better to be prepared.
