Rooftop cracks cause campus leaks

Heavy rainfall on Monday made its watery way into Stauffer Library and Queen’s Pub

Queen’s Pub closed off a section of its seating area as a result of a leak.
Image by: Sam Koebrich
Queen’s Pub closed off a section of its seating area as a result of a leak.

Water leaks in both Stauffer Library and the JDUC were reported during the past week, following heavy rainfall over the weekend.

Stephanie Johnson, The AMS Pub Services (TAPS) head manager, reported a leak in the pub on Sunday morning, while a student studying in Stauffer reported water dripping from the ceiling the following morning.

Johnson called Physical Plant Services about a leak in the Queen’s Pub (QP), which was then cordoned off in an area near the entrance while plumbers made repairs.

“It was dripping pretty consistently,” she said.

“I came in on Sunday morning and saw a puddle.”

She said the leak has already been repaired, although the area can’t be reopened until the ceiling dries in two to three days.

“The problem’s been solved,” she said. “Right now we’re waiting until it’s dry so they can patch up the ceiling.” She said QP hasn’t experienced a leak before.

“The problem was on the sixth floor,” she said. “It wasn’t anything to do with the pub … it could’ve been any room.”

It’s likely the heavy rainfall on Sunday caused the leak to actually become a problem, she said.

Zach Wells, ArtSci ’14, said he noticed the leak in Stauffer while studying on the first floor.

“I was right in the middle of the first floor, just past the stairs,” he said.

He said the water dripped onto his keyboard sporadically for an hour and a half.

“It was just three or four drops, not an intense leak or anything,” he said.

“Just enough to look up and wonder what it was.”

John Witjes, the engineering and operations director at Physical Plant Services (PPS), said the leak came from a cracked pane of glass in the skylight.

“[It] allowed water to seep through,” he said. “It’s going to be repaired on Oct. 26, which is a Saturday.”

He said PPS will close off the area while they make repairs. To avoid disrupting activities in the library, he said, they scheduled the repairs for Homecoming weekend.

“We’re going to have to barricade the glass off on the floor level to reach up to the skylight,” Witjes said.

“We’re scheduling it around times when the library is not that busy.”

He said PPS has a regular maintenance program as well as longer-term roof replacement programs on their budget. The speed of their response, he said, depends on the severity of the leak. Some leaks, he said, are repaired immediately, while others take longer to fix.

“We dispatch people immediately to look at the leak and decide if it is serious or not,” he said.

For the Stauffer leak, he said, the University had to order glass panes, which will slow down the process.

He said the Stauffer roof is covered by the regular roof maintenance program, but it wasn’t the origin of the problem.

“It wasn’t really the roof that was leaking, it was the skylight,” he said.

“The roof isn’t that old so we wouldn’t expect it to leak.”

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