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Lost 3 hours on a door lock that was fine the whole time

Last Thursday I got called to a mall on the north side about an elevator that kept stopping between floors. I checked every limit switch, the door rollers, the gap sensors, everything you can think of. Turns out the janitor had wedged a wet cardboard sign into the hoistway door track to hold it open while he cleaned. Cost me three hours and a $40 service call fee I had to eat because the building manager laughed at me. Has anyone else had a simple fix that made you feel like a total rookie after chasing a ghost for half a day?
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ellis.rose
ellis.rose1mo ago
The cardboard thing is wild but I actually think your building manager was kind of right to laugh, not at you necessarily but at the situation. Door lock problems are different though, a lock that tests fine on paper can still be sticky in real use because of humidity or how the latch springs back. I spent a whole afternoon once swapping out a magnetic lock that kept failing the fail-safe test, turns out the power supply was just dropping voltage under load. It's like the simplest thing hides behind the most obvious suspect.
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