Cold weather causes water maintenance problems | Interactive map

Students reject winter, and apparently so does University plumbing.

A water outage hit Rodin College House Saturday morning, the most recent in a series of water maintenance issues on campus over the last couple weeks. Water problems caused by the cold weather have also struck the Quadrangle, the School of Medicine and Steinhardt and Houston Halls.

Facilities and Real Estate Services learned of the most recent outage at about 7:40 a.m. Saturday and identified the problem as "tripped pumps," FRES spokeswoman Jennifer Rizzi wrote in an e-mail. She said they reset the pumps and students could use cold water by about 8:30 a.m.

Restoring hot water was harder because cold water leaked into the steam system, she added, so Rodin had no hot water until later that afternoon. According to Rizzi, students were updated on their water accessibility throughout the process.

However, College sophomore and Rodin resident Hannah Skop said she had no water when she and her roommates woke up after 10 a.m. "We went over to Harnwell [College House] to shower," she said. "We came back and there still wasn't water until the afternoon."

And Saturday wasn't the first time this year that students have experienced an unexpected water shortage.

Jan. 13 saw another college house water outage. A leak in the Quad water line caused a water shutdown in the Upper Quad and the portion of the Lower Quad adjacent to Hamilton Walk. Water returned that evening.

Water was shut down again the next day, this time because of a break in a water main further east near the Richards Medical Research Laboratories. Water fully returned to Quad residents at 2 a.m. the morning of Jan. 15.

According to Rizzi, the issues related to an open window that froze a fan coil and a faucet that broke due to low temperatures. In an e-mail update on Thursday, she reported that both problems have been corrected.

FRES Executive Director of Operations Kenneth Ogawa explained that University's systems are designed for certain weather conditions, and the current cold exceeds those conditions.

Ogawa added that "usually we can identify the issue in advance," but the systems are designed to last decades, so their total renovation would cost the University billions of dollars and "is just not realistic."

Similarly on Jan. 17, water was temporarily inaccessible at Houston Hall due to a leak. Though the building remained in full operation, FRES Operations discovered that the leak was caused by a water line that was too large.

To avoid uprooting steps in the building for the replacement, FRES will conduct horizontal drilling and will need to close parts of the sidewalk. "It's just going to take some time," Ogawa added.

The cold weather on Jan. 17 also caused a sprinkler pipe to break in the basement of Steinhardt Hall, home to Penn Hillel.

Building Manager Bob Williams said the building staff cleaned everything and had the facility functioning by Jan. 19.

Ogawa added that FRES also sent a contractor to repair the damaged sprinkler system that caused the burst. Because the University leases the building to Hillel, both FRES and the Steinhardt building staff helped fix the problem.

Ogawa emphasized that maintenance problems happen every day and though this is his first year at Penn, he does not believe the extent of this year's issues surpass those of last year.

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