Reports until 12:39, Saturday 19 February 2011
LHO FMCS
kyle.ryan@LIGO.ORG - posted 12:39, Saturday 19 February 2011 (560)
CP3 and CP4 at seriously low levels
I became aware (in the middle of the night) of a voice message left by Cyrus R. on my work cell phone informing me of a reboot and burt restore of the Y-mid VE computers that had occured earlier in the evening.  At 1030 this morning I logged in (remotely) to view the Vacuum Site Overview (as I routinely do on non-work days) and noticed that CP3 and CP4 were "in the red" and indicating 40% full levels.  I immediately came to the site and corrected the problem which was due to the lack of enabling the instrument air to the liquid level control valves (LLCV) -> Following a reboot, manual enabling of this is required from the "Fill Control" portion of the HOVE_MY.adl screen.  The PID outputs of the CDS system have no effect on the LLCVs, and thus can't control the 80K pump levels, if the electropneumatic LLCV valves don't have instrument air available, i.e., enabled.  

I am not sure why the default following a reboot is for the instrument air to the LLCVs be disabled.  If this is the result of concern of overpressuring the 80K pumps(?) then we should revisit this reasoning.  

NOTE:  Cyrus had left me the voice message shortly after rebooting and burt restoring on Friday evening-Good!  I did not recieve any alarms via text message during the entire period-Bad!  Had I not routinely logged in this morning, it is entirely possible that CP3 and CP4 would have got "warm" over this 3 day weekend (boil-off rate ~2.5%/hour).  Had this happened 13 years of adsorbed water and "gunk" would have be release into the beam tubes and all of us would be looking for new employment opportunities!!!!  

No crisis is more important than preventing the site 80K pumps from getting too low (except maybe shattering a viewport, hmmm)