Emergency Visual Inspection resolved a potentially fatal situation -
Routine inspections would almost certainly have avoided it entirely.

There was a site maintained by Damovo at Leeds City Council. The customer reported a strong smell of rotten eggs emanating from the communications room. A little later, the same customer reported that the smell had gone away.

The initial reaction was to cancel the callout visit, but as the engineer was already in Leeds he decided to check anyway. Using a portable spectrum analyser and breathing apparatus our engineer checked the environment within the equipment room. The level of Hydrogen Sulphide and acrylonitrile was sufficient to kill a human being.

Batteries taken from the site took three days to cool down.

The gas emitted by these batteries is basically the same that good old Uncle Sam used in the gas chamber.

Investigation found that the battery was less than three years old. Failure was attributed to the extremes of operating temperatures within the equipment room.

A Routine Maintenance visual inspection would highlight the following potential hazards:

• corrosion
• loose connections
• swollen cells
• cracked cells
• leaking acid
• over heating
• environmental conditions