It's a fire distinguisher!

Canaries were most thankful

Might be an old sailor's tale, but an old Navy man I met claimed they used the broom method to detect steam leaks around damaged boilers. Those apparently could also be nearly invisible and capable of cutting the straws off the broom.

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The 60s/60s

There was an incident during the Apollo Program where they were venting off LOX after a test on the pad, and a car driving nearby burst into flames for no apparent reason. Another car stopped to help, and it also burst into flames. After that, they changed some of the pad crew rules.

I took some classes from an old timer that worked at a power plant that had steam turbines. He said they would look for leaks waving a 2x4 over the pipes for that reason.

Brooms are odorless and colorless. The more you know

Mobile reddit is a bitch

I was in the Navy and was told the same thing. If you could hear a hiss and/or saw condensing water without a known source, you'd grab a broom and Star Wars Kid your way through the space.

Lemme guess.

One of the rules was to not drive around in flammable cars.

Tis true. If you go into any boiler room you grab the broom and star wars everything in front of you, the hand you save may be your own.

That steam is no joke and it will cut you in half.

There's a video somewhere, of a race car crew and driver who catch fire like that. It's seriously fucking crazy. I've never seen anything like it.

It looks like they're all having a really, REALLY bad trip... I don't know how to post shit or even know how to find the video, but I highly recommend trying to find it.

I had no idea hydrogen burned like that...

I talked about this with a guy who worked around power stations, and they do it there in case of high pressure steam leaks.

same thing with high pressure steam

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Thats what I heard, but I erred on the side of caution because hyperbole is certainly a thing. But yes, I figured high pressure steam is no joke... just wasn't sure (first hand, at least) how little of a joke it is.

If they’re aiming for odorless and colorless they should just use iocaine powder. It’s also tasteless—just in case you’re wanting to poison someone.

This? https://youtu.be/Ku7TdLeEGsQ

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60s/60s=1

Yes! But there's another 1, the original maybe, where no one knows what the hell is going on.

I mean, you know what you're looking at, and they're explaining what's happening, but it still doesn't make any sense. It's just crazy...

If your brooms are brown and stinky, you probably have a different problem

To be fair, this sort of broom finding dangerous pressurised steam technology will likely still be useful in the 2060s.

If it works, it works.

> it will cut you in half.

It'll also cut through steel pipe like a plasma cutter.

Water carries a shitload of energy and erosion never sleeps!

I believe it's the same video, but with different live commentary - https://www.youtube.com/shorts/fmcfs6VP0nY

This one?

Yes that's what I mean it's just chaos and fear in the announcer that makes it so dramatic. And they keep saying "they're really on fire! They're really on fire!" but it makes no sense. It's just surreal.

Same way submariners would look for pinhole steam leaks in the engine room of nuclear submarines.

Methanol fuel, I believe.

Someone was reading r/tumblr this morning.

I mean -- this isn't a bad thing. Good old know-how is using the best tool for the job. If you already have a broom -- it works as a great "invisible flame" detector.

I guess you could toss out a cloud of particles to detect flames everywhere -- but that also has a downside of putting more flammable items that could grow the fire.

Other than infrared sensors -- which is a device that need maintenance and can fail. What better thing could they use?

You win the pun award today.

I'm not sure anyone really wins...lol

I can imagine that the "new guy" at any place is told some really stupid things and this sounds like one of them.

I'm also sure a few people have died trying to to look like fools. "Oh, you were SERIOUS about the broom thing?"

I could imagine some IR goggles would be nice if you had them. But a broom is always handy, doesn't need batteries and it works.

You might have been detecting some other hazard and hopefully you avoided stepping in it.

There can be only ONE!!!

I don make the rules and I kinna die.

Was on a large landscaping job years ago. We had the apprentice on the easy job, with the petrol blower just pushing stuff into one area for clean up. We caught him sitting down. Apparently we ran out of 2 stroke oil and he didn't want to damage the machine by using straight fuel, good kid. (Usually we had a few one shots or a bottle knocking about, or someone would run out to grab some, but we were on a time limit this time). So we pointed to the rake and he thought we were joking.

Also useful for detecting hydraulic leaks. Wave a broom ahead of you while looking for a suspected leak. A pinhole leak at a few thousand PSI will blow right through it, just like it would go right through you.

I was a contractor doing some controls work on an HVAC system that was onsite in a military base. They used a (relatively) high pressure steam system for the heating loop. The subject came up, and the guy I was with learned it as a machinist in a destroyer, from another old navyman, who might've actually been around long enough ago that it was an important skill to know!

Can confirm, i worked in power plants and they said that condensation clouds could form meters away from an actual leak which would just peel your skin off. They called it the Blind man walking stick method of finding leaks.

>So we pointed to the rake and he thought we were joking.

Yeah, there are probably communication issues between different cultures.

Him; "I no speak primitive analog device."

You; "Just grab it with both of those hands you use on a joystick and move your arms. Nature will take over."

By then brooms will have wifi connectivity which will let you share your steam leak with social media

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I don't know whether to be relieved or disappointed that it wasn't the Talladega Nights scene.

Iiterally just read nearly this exact sentence in the hunt for red october

That's the first time that's ever been accurate

Liquid Oxygen can turn ordinary asphalt into a contact explosive. There are tales of fire trucks racing to the scene of a LOX spill and having their wheels blown off by the explosions.

Filling the air with fine particles just makes them explosive.

Prior Navy, and yes we did this.

What did they do in the 70s/70s, 80s/80s, and 90s/90s?

Is it because asphalt is like 44% carbon and thus acts as a fuel? So when combined with an oxidiser..

Helpfully it also cauterizes the wound shut too, so you don't bleed much.

Hey, hey, my, my.

You cancelled out your units. Now is a dimensionless scalar!

That announcer made me feel it, for sure.

That was my point. Hence -- why a broom is a great solution when you don't have expensive detection equipment around, it won't fail AND it works as a broom.