Burning fingers. 1/11/2005
I was up on seven this morning in Neurosurgery, pushing things around and such, and I slipped out onto the emergency staircase landing for a quick roll up. I was happily puffing away and I saw one of the plumbing contractor’s general dogsbodies walking around and running taps.
I walked over, and said hello, and asked what he was doing. He was running the tap, which is a mixing type tap, and taking the temperature reading of the hot water. Nothing wrong with that, standard procedure, but I noticed something really odd. The tap has only one long handle, meant to be elbow operated. And there is a circular marking on the handle, which is basically a circle cut in half, with the left hand semi-circle marked in red, and the right side in blue. Which is correct, because cold water is supposed to come on the right hand side. Yes, all you left handed people can complain about discrimination by the righties now. So, for cold water on this tap, logically you would turn it all the way to the right for cold water, and to the left for hot.
The thing was, the tap was turned all the way to the right, i.e. the cold side, and plumber stuck the thermocouple under the running water, and it showed 63.2 degrees Centigrade. Which is hot enough, almost, to make a mug of hot chocolate. Or scald someone badly.
I remarked on this, and this young chap just shrugged his shoulders, and said that’s the design provided by the consulting engineers, and the tap was specified by the architects. Outstanding. A triumph of stupidity over safety.
- Posted in : General
- Author : thesnark
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