Mad Science Two: Up on the rooftop

Pumps get dropped. It’s just part of life for a pump. And pump companies warn you that if your pump gets dropped that something…. bad… could happen. Its delicate circuits might get scrambled. Its moving parts could get jostled. Its casing might get cracked, leaving an opening for water to get it and short-circuit the mother board, causing the mother of all pump failures.

The Snap isn’t drop-proof, but it’s the first pump to quantify the risk of damage after a drop. It has a drop sensor in the body. I guess, more correctly, it’s considered to be an impact sensor. To be honest, I did drop the Snap once, onto a tile bathroom floor at a Holiday Express no less, but the pump didn’t seem to mind. That was about a four-foot drop to a hard surface. I can’t find it in the manual or on their website, but I think one of the Asante people told me they felt the traditional FDA guidelines for pump drops of only a couple of feet were silly, as most dropped pumps are dropped from at least waist height onto hard surfaces, so for an extra measure of safety the Asante engineers shot for a six-foot survivability. And they added the drop sensor, which (perversely) was so innovative it delayed FDA approval of the Snap system for months—further proof that no good deed goes unpunished.

The impact sensor in the Snap will shut down the system if it detects a big enough impact to damage the pump’s parts. Naturally, I wanted to test the drop sensor for myself.

So the first thing I did was to take a used body and hold it as high as I could. I’m about six feet tall and my arms add another couple of feet, so I dropped the body from about eight feet onto my library floor. Now the floor looks like tile, but you need to remember that I’m working-poor, so it’s really self-sticky linoleum tile from Home Depot.

Down plummeted the pump. Ka-thwack! It bounced once. Clunk!

I slipped the Snap out of my pocket and unsnapped the active body. Then I slid the skydiving body into place. Snap! What would happen?

Snap said: “Pump body connected.”

Apparently, it was undamaged. It was time to get more aggressive. Next step, the ladder test.

Down plummeted the pump. Ka-thwack! It bounced once. Clunk!

I clambered down off the ladder, slipped the Snap out of my pocket and unsnapped the active body. Then I slid the skydiving body into place. Snap! What would happen this time?

Snap said: “Pump body connected.”

Apparently, it was still undamaged. OK. No more messing around. Next step, the roof test.

Standing on the very edge of my roof I dangled the hapless pump body over my porch far below. So long, sucka! I dropped it. Down plummeted the pump. Ka-thwack! It bounced once. Clunk! It came to rest in the coiled-up garden hose.

I clambered off the roof, down the ladder, onto the porch, slipped the Snap out of my pocket and unsnapped the active body. Then I slid the skydiving body into place. Snap! What would happen?

Snap said: “Pump body connected.”

Having failed to break the pump by dropping it from as high as I can reach, dropping it from a ladder, and dropping it from the roof of my house, I had only one card left to play. I gave it to a eleven-year-old boy.

My son Rio son grabbed it by the tubing and swung the pump body wildly around his head like biblical David with the sling shot, then let it fly against the house. It impacted with a sickening thud.

If this fails, I thought to myself, I’ll rent a plane and drop the damn thing out the window over a shopping mall parking lot.

But there was no need. Where I had failed, Rio succeeded:

Well, not dropped so much as flung.

Next week: A ’graph or two on graphs