Merlin MannWhatever this is, it looks like the kind of thing my late grandmother would get talked into buying.
“They said it will make my water nicer.”
“Hmm.”
Still thinking about this.
Les Orchard@hotdogsladies it certainly has a lot of wires
@lmorchard They’re all just right out there, aren’t they?
Dustin Rue@hotdogsladies not at all. You can remove that because I don't know what it is now and I won't know what it is when it's gone either
LAUREN@hotdogsladies The icing on the icing on the icing on the cake.
Dr. Drang@hotdogsladies It’s an open and shut case.
@drdrang Take him away, boys.
@drdrang Any chance you’d wanna take a crack at this one?
Give it to me straight, Doc. What am I looking at here?
Dan Sturm@hotdogsladies @drdrang This apparatus is 100% a trap. I'd check the ground for hinges if I were you.
Drew Pederson@hotdogsladies @drdrang Judging by the components I think it's related to the fire sprinkler system for the building. Someone may have been trying to clean their truck out on this one.
Craig Hockenberry@hotdogsladies @drdrang Someone who had too many gift cards for Home Depot.
Chancerubbage@hotdogsladies What am I, a plumber? I assume there’s a backflow preventer in there, but that’s only because municipalities love to add backflow preventers and then force you to have them inspected every year.
Mainly I just wanted to make a joke about the red case having the words OPEN and SHUT stamped into it.
@hotdogsladies OK, I’ve just scrolled to the new photos, and the words are cast, not stamped. I regret the error.
@drdrang You probably didn’t account for wind shear and ground effect.
Scott Wright 🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️@drdrang I am struck by your last sentence and can’t help but think that had your job involved writing a lot of performance reviews (think military or academia) you would have buried many posers by damming with faint praise.
@hotdogsladies
@hotdogsladies
Ethan Mateja@drdrang @hotdogsladies I have experience managing a small community water company and the annual backflow certification thing is very real.
Laxdude@drdrang @hotdogsladies I know why backflow preventors are important, I watched the Quincy episode in syndication after school where the deadly chill was sucked into the stadium water system! Then he probably had relations with a young woman, perhaps on his boat.
@hotdogsladies @drdrang the water fountain that was *covered* by a board on first inspection. But Quincey had tenacity!
@hotdogsladies is Quincy why I have high expectations with municipal employees and am always disappointed?
@Laxdude It’s how you learned punk rock causes screwdriver stabbings vaguely involving Melora Hardin.
@hotdogsladies the 80s were weird, Quincy was 4pm after school. I think I remember a different screwdriver shanking episode where they hadn’t considered screwdrivers with reversible tips. A Craftsman 4 in 1 as I recall.
: j@fabrica:~/src; 
@hotdogsladies I love that it’s halfway between OPEN & SHUT
Zach LeBar@hotdogsladies That's what the guy from Patriot sells, right?
@zachlebar Oh Zach you CRACKED it!!
@zachlebar Great piping, son.
John Porter@hotdogsladies @zachlebar Keep it simple. Something like this...
@maletero @zachlebar Above the spurv plint.
Joey Gibson 
Patriot was such a great show.
@zachlebar Just so you know, Zach, today your toot was praised on a podcast and recognized for excellence in how to play with me in the space.
Legit thank you.
@zachlebar (upcoming at dobyfriday.com)
@hotdogsladies That warms my soul. Glad to be a part of the solution and whatnot.
Kirk van Gorkom@zachlebar @hotdogsladies those patch-hampers are definitely seated more than one-third of the distance from the girdle-jerry to the maiden apex.
Fredrik Björeman@hotdogsladies “DAAAD, that Kickstarter you backed just shipped!”
Matt Griffin@hotdogsladies CPAP machines are out of control. or bongs. or both.
Kathryn Elrod@hotdogsladies I think that’s a mortgage reverser
Troy Patterson@hotdogsladies The Flux Capacitor needs cooling though. You don't want to endanger the future.
Do you?
Kyle Bradbury@hotdogsladies oh, I know exactly what this is! that one mechanical engineering class I took in college really paying dividends on social media. here's the deal:
what we're looking at is a field of half-seized sprats, and brass-fitted nickel slits, the bracketed caps and splay-flexed brace columns vent dampers to dampening hatch depth of 1/2 meter from the damper crown to the spurv plinth
@kyle How many baker’s?
Chris Huck 
@kyle @hotdogsladies I think you missed the four-start dumaflache, which is the real star of the show
Nora Neurosismancer ✅@hotdogsladies i swear i saw something like this on display at some hipster art gallery in brooklyn a few years back
Old account@hotdogsladies “Which part should I use?” “Just use what we have in the van.” Later… “you used EVERY part we had in the van?!”
Jeff@hotdogsladies Long shot, but sometimes geocachers create elaborate contraptions (functional or not) within which to hid a scroll of paper. Does this thing get traffic?
Robert@hotdogsladies This is a Ecto-Containment System, Storage Facility, and Protection Grid.
Someone didn't listen to Egon's TED talk...
@Ceronis “It’s true. This man has no dick.”
William Conner@hotdogsladies The red fitting at lowest left looks like a fire department connector. None of the rest of it makes a lick of sense unless it is a tribute to Rube Goldberg.
David Nelson@hotdogsladies sorry to be Mr Serious Answer, it looks like a temporary(?) dry sprinkle switch head. So the part that keeps the water out of sprinkler pipes until a head pops and the most god awful rusty water flows. But it doesn’t appear to be wired or active (valves are closed). Why yes, I do work at a museum. How did you know?
@Laxdude Seriously thank you!
@hotdogsladies It's not wired up, has no air compressor and it better get a shed over it to secure it and stop it from freezing if it's permanent. Dry means it's for a museum like space (because 'air' is smaller than water it can't drip) or a parking lot that might freeze (which seems unlikely for your area)
And you are welcome.
@Laxdude A San Francisco residence. I think it's either a duplex or maybe a four-plex.
It's been undergoing a seismic retrofit for literally years.
Maybe it's money laundering? I honestly have no idea.
@hotdogsladies Probably a modern code thing then. Dry means less maintenance and risk of water damage. You might also have seismic sensors to prevent water flowing unless there is also fire? There are a LOT more wires than we have up here in Western Canada on the valves.
@Laxdude @hotdogsladies I was wondering, the backflow prevention looked all wrong for an irrigation setup. But I makes more sense to realize that it’s trying to take water in from outside, and keep the bad water in the pipes. Totally the opposite of keeping pesticides out of the building water lines!
@josephholsten @hotdogsladies it's air pressure keeping a valve closed against the water pressure. Probably behind the lower canister is a water inlet (or it hasn't been plumbed) maybe at straight main pressure.
Knowing a bit about a system meant I saved work about a million in water damage but had to ask "are you sure we aren't on fire, I'm going to shut the water off"
Faysal@hotdogsladies "that actually saves water in the long term"