So just before lunch, a cow-worker (an idiot who insists on wearing too little for the weather, then having a heater blazing under her desk making the rest of us suffer) kicked over her heater. As soon as it hit the ground, the fuse for the sockets on our side of the office tripped, with the result that all our machines swtiched off and I lost some work.
Was this just an odd co-incidence? Or did whacking the heater cause the tripped switches (and if so why?)
The heater is probably designed to suddenly shut down when tipped over. This probably caused a brief variation in flow that tripped the breaker, especially if the breaker is a GFCI.
It was no coincidence.
She should buy a sweater and leggings. It is a terrible idea to have electric space heaters on the same electrical circuits as Computer equipment.
Unfortunately this is also very common in offices and cube farms.
Athough I’m tempted lto say this is the fallacy of cause and effect I’d bet a bundle this was from the heater. The heater’s got to go, unless she can put it on a different circuit.
Not sure about the GFCI though, since it doesn’t sound like there was a ground fault. Unless you’ve got concrete floors and the heater isn’t grounded properly.
BTW “cow-orker”.
How big is the company? Why no UPS?
Common SDMB phrase for Co-Workers that you don’t like or respect.
Jim
I thought it was just the SDMB term for any co-worker. I remember the original typo thread title that spawned it.
I have seen people use both in the same thread and picked up the meaning I relayed based upon my observation.
Based on what you just posted, I would have to change the meaning to:
It varies by user but can either be:
A humorous SDMB Meme for coworker or
Common SDMB phrase for Co-Workers that you don’t like or respect.
Jim
Actually, it’s a dilbertism. In one of his early newsletters, Scott Adams asked for titles of those people who we work with who annoy us, and who would be excluded from Dogbert’s New Ruling Class (that’a another story). The winning title was, indeed, cow-orker.
What kind of heater is it? How old? Most heaters do have a tilt switch that turns them off if they fall. But I’m not 100% sure that I buy the argument that this would cause a surge. If it’s a crufty enough heater, I suppose two heating elements could have touched (or touched the grounded case), or the fan could have gotten momentarily wedged, causing a short. (In the first case, this probably would have been obvious, as the heater would have released its magic smoke.)
It could also have jostled the thermostat, causing it to turn the heater on full.
But you’re right – doesn’t sound like a coincidence.
She’s a cow-worker alright, someone I barely like and don’t respect. Electric heaters are banned where I work (a university) as a fire risk. This risk was upped when she shoved hers under the desk and was asked to have it moved to somewhere less risky. I could feel folders and other stationary heating up from sitting too close to her desk.
In her defence the other women in the office (our uni’ is predominantly staffed by women) have heaters too, but then she was the only one klutzy enough to knock hers over :rolleyes:
So we’ll go with the tilt switch or two filaments bumping together then shall we? The heater isn’t a fan heater but an older upright heater.
Recent thread about space heaters and office wiring.
I think CookingWithGas was pointing out that it’s spelled “cow-orker”, as in one who orks cows. As opposed to “cow-worker”, as in an employee of the beef industry. Note the misspelling in the OP.
:smack: 
Hey Pushkin, can I ask, QUB or UofU?
And can’t you just go over this lovely lady’s head and report her to the Dept. of environmental safety/occupational health or whatever? An electric heater placed close to large piles of paper is a definite fire risk, never mind the fact that it tripped the fuse and caused you to lose work.
The office has a contract with FedEx?
Seriously though…
The company may not use desktop UPS due to the cost. Even for cheap units at $50 each, you get into some serious bucks - providing “personal” units would run past $10,000 for this floor alone. Centralized UPS protection (also hugely expensive) would only help against utility failure. If a circuit trips out because somone kicks over a heater, the power still goes out. Most people in this building use laptops, so they have a built-in battery backup, so for us, it doesn’t really matter.
There’s also a safety issue. Between corporate policy and local fire code, we’re not allowed to have UPS units except in server rooms and data centers. Reason for this is it’s not going to be possible to disable all of those devices producing electricity before firefighters come in with hoses full of water.
DHL actually 
And yes, I see the cow-orker now :smack:
Irishgirl, QUB, in the lovely redbrick bit you see on banknotes (and Russian news apparantly.) When the School of Civil Engineering didn’t want me as a student, Admin took me in as a paper shuffler 
The heaters have now been hidden away, I didn’t even realise they were banned outright until the office manager stowed them away under someone else’s desk before the electrician came up to us.
I’m going with ground fault. Those old filament heaters were prone to having the filament sag over time, often eventually making contact with the metal chassis. Since the chassis was not normally grounded, this would have no effect on the operation, but the unit was then dangerously energized. All it would take is contact with a grounded metal object, like a computer case, metal cable connector and the like to cause a short and blow the breaker. Test with an ohmmeter between the plug prongs and the chassis–any reading other than near infinity means it’s unsafe and should be tossed out.
In many offices, the place was wired for typewriters and the occasional calculator. Now, every desk has a computer, and there’s a variety of chargers for phones and pagers, faxes, shredders, plug-in air fresheners, etc., etc. Add a few 1500W heaters into the mix, and your circuit is on the verge of blowing all the time.
It’s older than that even. I remember the phrase being in common use on alt.fan.cecil-adams and alt.folklore.urban back in '93 or '94.