Came home last night to find the basement (cellar?) unexpectedly dark. Hmmm. All (three) the circuit breakers in On position. ??? Could the lights all have burned out simultaneously? And the server? And the freezer? Wait. The wiring closet equipment is all lit. Clearly the UPS is working. Turns out there *is* another circuit breaker down here. A GFCI outlet hosting the freezer sub circuit.
Click. Reset.
Walk over to freezer. It's running. Open lid. The waterfall is dramatically backlit by the lights in the lid. For a moment. Until the breaker trips again.
Somehow,
somehow, the lid to the chest freezer had a LOT of water in it. The underside of the lid is slightly concave, to accommodate more insulation, I expect. And when the lid is opened, the water drains downward, toward the hinge, pouring directly over the lid mounted lights. Pow! After the third time, I "got it", intellectually, not electrically.
I drained the lid by the light of my headlamp, drained it well. All the towels in the hamper were not enough to hold back the tide. I eventually mopped the floor dry, and swamped out the freezer compartments. The freezer held a little more than half a gallon of softened ice. I added a little bit of bleach to the mess on the inside. I don't mind telling you I had some uncomfortable flashbacks to the last time
I had to use bleach on a chest freezer.
It's all shiny clean now. Plugged in and working. Well. I thought it was working when I went to bed last night. This morning, it hadn't frozen anything. Looks like it'll be a white Christmas after all. On the inside of our new freezer, anyway.