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The Story:I have been a firefighter for almost 5 years. Practical jokes at the fire house are an almost daily occurrence. At our fire house if you were a volunteer can live at the station in return for a certain number of hours of duty each week. I certain live-in firefighter was having trouble getting out of bed in the morning and waking up for calls, etc. etc. A few of us were sitting in class (at firefighting school) one night, and a plan began to form... Picture this... A certain firefighter is asleep in bed. From up in the ceiling panels above his bed there is a rumbling grating noise. Slowly one of the ceiling panels begins to hinge out of the way. When the panel is fully open there is a pause. Then a bright light illuminates the whole bed. The unsuspecting firefighter tosses a little in his sleep. There is a second rumbling noise, within a matter of seconds almost 2.5 gallons of water is jettisoned at about 50 psi. Our hero is now bolt upright in bed, swearing like a sailor. The water stops, the light turns off, and the ceiling panel retracts back into place. |
All the parts pictured above were all installed in the void space in the ceiling above the target bed. This project took about 3 months to complete because we could only work on it when the firefighter in question was not around. We had to have plenty of time to clean up all the mess made from rooting around in the ceiling.
A piece of plywood was glued and screwed to the back of the ceiling panel. Then the edges were carefully trimmed down and hinges installed to allow it to pivot freely when it was in place. The extinguisher assembly and the motors were then mounted to the rafters with hose clamps. the headlight was then hung. Finally the control wires were run across the bunk room in the void space. The control box was also hidden in the ceiling. It was placed near the door to allow for a quick escape from what would surely be a very large and angry firefighter.
Unfortunately due to a gross oversight on my part nobody had a camera or video camera handy to record the event.
The device did proform flawlessly.
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The Motors and gear boxes were salvaged from a broken "Power Wheels" kiddie car. |
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The light was a halogen head light from a junked Toyota Corola. |
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The power supply was the battery from a Makita cordless drill. |