{"id":1770,"date":"2012-01-18T11:23:55","date_gmt":"2012-01-18T16:23:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/?p=1770"},"modified":"2012-01-18T11:23:55","modified_gmt":"2012-01-18T16:23:55","slug":"imperfect-pitch-62-year-old-steam-pipes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/2012\/01\/18\/imperfect-pitch-62-year-old-steam-pipes\/","title":{"rendered":"Imperfect pitch: 62 year old steam pipes"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

As a bit of a clean freak, it's nice to know that my studio once was the "Sterile Supply" room.<\/p><\/div>\n

NCPR’s studios are located in an early-50s hospital building. \u00a0If\u00a0you live in an old house you know that unexplainable structural phenomena happen pretty regularly. \u00a0Turns out it’s not much different here. \u00a0And while the Canton-Potsdam Hospital staff keeps the place running smoothly, the case of the mysterious banging steam pipe had us all kind of stumped.<\/p>\n

Since I started working at NCPR in 1998 my production studio<\/a>, where we can have as many as 16 microphones working at any given time, was always a nice quiet room all year ’round. \u00a0Then suddenly two years ago, winter brought some pretty noticeable pipe banging.<\/p>\n

I grew up in an old house and I knew the sound right away. \u00a0It wasn’t too loud and didn’t happen all the time, so I worked around it. \u00a0Then last winter it was much worse. \u00a0Imagine someone hitting a pipe with a metal hammer just a few feet away from you every couple of minutes. \u00a0On the colder days when the boiler was running on high, that was the sound. \u00a0It was so bad that I had to shut down the studio for five months.\u00a0We had to forego many recording sessions worth thousands of dollars in rental income.<\/p>\n

Oh yeah, did I mention that there’s no steam heat in or near my studio?<\/p>\n

All the while Radio Bob and several folks from the hospital tried to figure out the problem. \u00a0The heating plans were nowhere to be found at Saint Lawrence University (the building owner) or CPH (the building manager), so Radio Bob decided to do some detective work. \u00a0After lots of phone calls, emails and legal delays, we had the plans in-hand from the original architectural firm.<\/p>\n

When 62-year-old plans start as large blueprints, get converted to microfilm, and get converted again to PDF files, a LOT of clarity is lost. \u00a0Matching those blurry plans with the pipe grid in the boiler room, which looks a lot like an upside down box of spaghetti, would be tricky. \u00a0But Radio Bob is a bit of a pro at squeezing success out of chaos and was able to figure out that the violating pipe was in the studio floor and wasn’t even part of the heating system. \u00a0A long time ago it was used to feed steam to sterilization tables. \u00a0A couple of years ago a valve that kept that old pipe steam-free started to fail.<\/p>\n

So, just before Christmas our building manager, Kevin, was able to separate the pipe and cap it. \u00a0Fortunately there were a couple of cold nights on the way and he was going to run the furnace on high. \u00a0I ran a recording of the room for a few hours on a sub-zero night and heard…absolutely nothing. \u00a0Silence never sounded so good.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

This is what 5 hours of silence looks like.<\/p><\/div>\n

So now we can get back to partnering with local musicians no matter the season. \u00a0If you know anyone who might need some recording work done, please let them know that we’re happy to help.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NCPR’s studios are located in an early-50s hospital building. \u00a0If\u00a0you live in an old house […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1770"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1770"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1770\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}