how we almost burt the barn down, but didn't

Two weeks ago I came out from the milk house and found the barn full of smoke. Most of the cows were outside and I quickly freed the ones being kept in that day and chased them out of the barn. By the time I had done this, the smoke was gone. Someone from the cheese plant had seen the smoke and come over to see what was going on. We searched around for a while before we found what had burnt up - a transformer box that controls the pulsation on the milking system. The wires had caught fire inside the box and burnt themselves out once the fuse tripped. The dairy supply place came and replaced the box saying the other one must have had some dirt and dust and moisture (all things present in a barn) that led to the burn out. Sigh of relief from all involved ....
Until last weekend, when I went to milk the cows and the pulsation didn't work. And the dairy supply company came and said the box they put in last time must have been no good and put in a new one which worked fine ...
Until Friday when my co-worker, Nate, went to milk and there was no pulsation. Okay ... something is getting strange now. On Monday we were definitely gonna have to call the electrician and have this stuff looked at - at least because the dairy supply place was running out of transformer boxes.
But then yesterday I was on my way to get the tractor and I thought *sniff* "yuck ... it smells like burning plastic .... oh fuck!" Indeed, the box was on fire, again. And again we dodged the bullet of catching the barn on fire mostly because god looks out for fools and little children and dairy farmers. Well obviously it couldn't wait until Monday and we called to have the electrician and the dairy repair people come out and figure out what was going on.

They searched and they searched and finally, when they were looking for something else, they found a section of the milk pipe that had a little smear of soot on it. Then they realized what was happening. (In a pipeline milking system there is the stainless steel pipe that the milk goes through and then a plastic pipe that the vacuum goes through right next to each other. There are little ports on each pipe to plug the milking machines into.) In this one spot in the barn the wires that control the pulsation went in between the milk pipe and the vacuum pipe. When the wash cycle ran (which makes the pipes jiggle) the wires were getting pinched. Eventually they got pinched enough that they plastic stripped off of them and then they got pinched again, completed the circuit and blew out the transformer - sometimes with fire and sometimes just with a big jolt of electricity. This happened 4 times before we finally figured out what was going on.

The creamery's owners came in the afternoon to get the whole story. I told them that the repair people had been there for 5 hours. (on an emergency weekend call)
That was probably expensive. he said
But less expensive than a new barn i said
yeah ... but still scary. you need a medal for bravery. he said
what i really need is a valium. i said