Even those indoors at Ohio University haven’t been able to escape the winter break’s abnormally low temperatures and massive amounts of snow.
The winter weather caused several leaks in OU’s buildings during break. Those leaks may continue into Spring Semester.
Sing Tao Center and Kantner Hall had the most extreme problems, but many other buildings had leak issues as well, including Seigfried Hall, Bromley Hall, Morton Hall and the Computer Services Center.
The leaks can be attributed to frozen pipes that defrost as the ground warms up, said Mike Gebeke, executive director of facilities management.
“They haven’t seen this kind of cold weather in this part of the county in over 40 years,” Gebeke said.
As pipes — such as water lines, HVAC coils, condensate lines and sprinkler pipes—froze around campus, the facilities management team responded as quickly as they can, Gebeke said.
Facilities pulls the money to repair these leaks from their general operations budget, Gebeke said.
“We’re trying to fix them as soon as we find them,” Gebeke said.
Gebeke also sent a crew around the empty residence halls to make sure there were no leaks that went unnoticed, he said.
Gebeke said he hopes to have all the leaks fixed by the time students return to campus, but there is the possibility that new leaks will occur as the weather continues to warm.
Harry Wyatt, associate vice president for Facilities, said these leaks are a regular occurrence, and Gebeke’s team has responded to them quickly and efficiently.
“These were all really relatively small breaks as compared to what you might see on the news in Columbus,” Wyatt said. “No one’s immune to these little nuisance things.”
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@DanielleRose84
