How does insurance work in this case?

[bean]

This morning my store lost several thousand in product. Actually, probably tens of thousands.

We're in the middle of a large remodel on one side of the store. If you haven't noticed my other thread, my store has 2 separate refrigeration systems, due to doubling their size several years ago. We also have 2 separate 480 volt 3 phase power feeds.

About 1/2 of the coolers in the original section of the store lost power sometime overnight. Meat and seafood were hit hard (losing about 2/3 of their product in the display coolers). Cheese and produce as well, except their products can survive a bit longer than raw meats/fish.

The blame is being pointed at the contractors working the remodel. Except the remodel is at the other end of the store - working off an entirely different power feed (since that side of the store used to be a different business entirely) and a different refrigeration room.

1 meat cooler, 1 seafood, 2 produce, and 4 cheese coolers went down overnight. Maint is saying the reason they went down is construction shut down EVERYTHING at one point, which reset the defrost timers (construction has no access to one of the refrigeration rooms, and the timers run off of batteries, not A/C). I find it really, really hard to believe that skipping 1-2 defrost cycles caused about 10 coolers to freeze up to the point they couldn't cool. I also saw maint tearing into the coolers, only to find that the fan motors weren't even running anymore (no ice on the coils - the coolers had completely shut down). In addition, I saw several more coolers stop cooling shortly before I left work (all of the beer coolers along with the rest of the cheese coolers) - their fans completely shut off.

So in this case - whose insurance is responsible? The store insurance, or the contractor? I'm more likely to blame a large failure on the store equipment since most of the cooler failures were on the side of the store that's NOT under construction. Actually, out of all the coolers that went offline in the past 24 hours - only ONE was on the side where construction was taking place.

We did lose a shitload of food - I'd say close to $50k. The last major failure had us eat about $500k in product though (main breaker on our 3 phase power failed - about 75% of the coolers died and most of the compressors in the building got fried along with our phone system, several motors in our electric doors, both dishwashers, all of our hot water boosters, and a lot of electronics in general got toasted).

[myswtghst]

I'd guess that maint and the store will try to blame the contractors and engage their insurance, and in turn, their insurance will point out that this equipment was not connected/related to what they were doing. I'm sure they'll both be engaged, and just have to debate it out to determine who was responsible, and I'm sure they'll both point fingers at eachother. Yeesh, sounds like a mess!

[PuckishOne]

Depends on the cause of the power outage. If it was just your garden-variety outage then the store should have damaged-good insurance that will take care of that. If negligence on the part of the contractor can be proven, you can claim it against their umbrella policy (liability).

From what you're describing it sounds like the store needs to take a good look at its electrical setup - find out if the outages keep happening because of the design, the construction, the coolers being used, or just using the wrong machines for the power supply. My guess is that the store's insurance is the way to go, but if this isn't the first claim of this sort they should be prepared for rising rates very soon (hence the advice preceding this).

[bean]

I should have been a little more clear.

It wasn't a total power outage. Supposedly, the only power cut was to the compressors, and it was brief. Also supposedly, this reset the defrost timers, causing equipment to freeze up.

Like I mentioned, there's 2 completely different refrigeration systems in the store. One is leftover from the original store, the other was added when the store doubled in size 6 or 7 years ago. Since the addition was originally a different store, it has a different power feed, power meter, and distribution system.

Therefore, the only thing that can cause BOTH refrigeration rooms to go out at the same time is a building-wide power failure (which is rare).

The last major failure was because a power surge caused one of the main breakers in the original section to literally explode (big ice storm at the time, surge happened right before the power for the whole block went out), knocking out 1 phase of the 3 phase feed for that side of the building (took 1 refrigeration room offline along with shutting down everything on that phase - phones, some lights, servers for the registers, and any 3 phase equipment on that side of the building).

The majority of coolers do run on the "old" side - except for the deli, prepared foods, bakery, and dairy coolers (both storage and display coolers). The remodel is in... deli, prepared foods, and bakery. The contractors haven't touched the refrigeration room on the old side, and don't even have a key to it.

Clear as mud yet?

Though.. the contractors have been working on the electrical on the old side. Specifically, because there's more spare capacity on that side. Most of the new equipment is powered by panels installed alongside existing breaker panels on the old side. The new panels were installed a couple of months ago, though they're still running wires to them.

Oh yeah, this is going to be messy.

[bean]

Also in response to PuckishOne - both sides run on 120/208/480 3 phase, each with their own step down transformer inside the building.

All of the refrigeration room compressors on both side run on 480 volts. Same with the dishwasher and hot water booster for the dishwasher. Most other stuff in the building runs on 208 volts, including all of the HID and fluorescent lighting (halogens run on 120). The electronic stuff is mostly 120. In the original large failure, all of the equipment was fine except for the breaker - 1000 amp 480 volt. Replacing that breaker took several hours, but as soon as they got it replaced, everything except the phones came right up.

I do agree that some of the designs need to be re-examined. Mostly, they should install some kind of redundancy for the blamed defrost timers. They're mostly electronic, and they do get reset if the power flickers. I'm pretty sure they run on either 120 or 208, so backup power for those wouldn't be (very) expensive to install. I don't think replacing the entire defrost setup is an option - mainly because taking compressors offline isn't an option. I also seriously doubt 1 skipped defrost cycle will cause so many coolers to freeze up to the point that they quit working. We've had multiple power outages in the same day before (not just us, but the entire block), and nothing was lost at all.

[Alfie]

1 meat cooler, 1 seafood, 2 produce, and 4 cheese coolers went down overnight.

No! Not the cheese! It had the potential to be so yummy!


...I admitt, I know nothing about insurance.

[bean]

Apparently I know 3 phase goooood. Y and Delta are 2 different configs. The store runs on Wye.

Anyway, some cheeses are one of the few "refrigerated" items that can get warm and still be safe to eat, as long as you get it cooled back down within 12 hours or so. Many cheeses don't even have to be refrigerated at all (except for "cheese food" - I'm looking at you, crappy shitty "American" cheese.. also known as processed cheese). Your more common cheeses do need to be refrigerated a bit, but they're perfectly fine for up to a couple of days unrefrigerated (they just get oily).

On the other hand, some varieties of cheese start growing nice toxic mold within a few hours of being removed from refrigeration.

They threw out all the stuff that was close to its expiration date anyway. And any cheeses that absolutely positively had to be refrigerated (such as brie), along with stuff like pimento cheese spreads. The package that the pimento comes in is pretty small, and had swelled up like a damn baseball. Even still, I'm not buying any cheese from work for a couple of weeks

[PuckishOne]

Well, since it sounds like the electrical is adequate (and, presumably, up to code) I'd say the store is going to -- pardon the pun -- eat this one on their lost-goods coverage. The breaker didn't fail, so that tells me that the contractors did their jobs properly...sounds like your idea for redundant systems on the defrost timers is a good one, and IIRC that would be a management call.

And, yeah, good call on the cheese. Ewwww.

[bean]

The contractors did, however... cut into the slab to run new lines and cut right through the conduit carrying most of the wiring for the bakery recently. I can only imagine the sparks (and shock!) they got taking out a 100 amp 480 volt subpanel feed with a concrete saw.

No, I don't know why they chose to run panel feeds through the slab instead of through the ceiling. They're fused runs, so code here should allow it to be run through the ceiling as long as it's in conduit. All of the feeds being run during this remodel are ceiling, unless they have to run them through the slab. The salad bars get everything through the slab (power, drain, water, refrigeration).

We also have them on camera walking out with a LOT of product.

Obviously the particular people involved in both cases are long gone.

I don't know enough about refrigeration systems to bring the redundancy up with management. For that matter, our in-house maint people barely know what freon is.

[digilight]

How close to the any of the affected refrigeration units were the contractors working (I'm assuming this was after hours when their weren't employee's in the store (or very few who weren't in the area for a while).

Is there a chance that they opened one of the color doors to cool themselves down while they worked and toasted the system that way. Possibly overloading the system for a bit and causing a chain reaction since the cooler was not able to chill the air as well as it should have?

Just a though.

[bean]

All of the coolers affected are open - no doors. The only self service coolers with doors in the entire building are on the frozen aisle (both sides).

The affected coolers are on the other end of the building. If they wanted to cool off, there's 4 walk in coolers and 2 walk in freezers, all less than 30 seconds away. Hell I'm guilty of walking into one of them myself from time to time if I'm sweaty.

Our refrigeration systems are retardedly overengineered - to the point that ANY cooler can be turned into a freezer with just a thermostat change, including the open self-service coolers.

The coolers went down shortly before close (10pm) - contractors come in at 10:30pm. Another reason I'm not buying the "Contractors reset the defrost timers" bit that everyone else is spouting. The coolers go into defrost 2-3 times per day - freezers 4-6 times. So a defrost timer being reset shouldn't cause much of a problem beyond a little extra condensation runoff, right?

At this point, I honestly don't think the contractors had much, if anything, to do with it. I'm on the same boat as one of the meat dept managers - opinion being defrost timers may have failed, but it was store equipment that failed. When I started the thread, I was trying to stay neutral. Everyone in the store except for said meat mgr said it was the contractors fault... but they weren't anywhere near the refrigeration room (which also houses the timers) and for that matter, weren't even in the building when this happened. And if it'd been related to the timers, it should have happened pretty quickly.

The loss was indeed found to be caused by frozen units (coils froze up, no air could pass through them). Since the defrost timers control the compressors in groups (not sure how many per group), I'm betting 1 or 2 groups of timers failed. It usually takes more than 1 or even 2 skipped defrost cycles for equipment to freeze up.

too long/didn't read version: personally I'm going to blame store equipment. Sucks for the store, but oh well. Hopefully our insurance rates don't jump too much. We've lost a LOT of product in the past year - between the 2 major refrigeration failures and a bad rat infestation (company policy is to trap and release.. but this area has a REALLY bad rat/mouse problem.. the problem changed the entire company's policy).. we've lost a lot of stuff. We had to throw away all 3 of our salad bars twice because, as one customer put it, "a mouse is doing backstrokes through the corn on the salad bar!".

(we haven't seen mice/rats in several months, at one point we were seeing several per day on the sales floor)