Heat loss caused by leak in a pipe

Trinity experiences power outages due to its location and the low temperatures this week

by Tommie Ethington

Facility Services grappled with several challenges this week, including the loss of heat in residential buildings on the west side of campus, power outages and holes from construction.

According to Melissa Pinchback, assistant director for residential education, Facility Services became aware of the heating problem last Saturday when it began looking for the leak that caused heating loss in the sophomore college residence halls, as well as in Lightner, South, Isabel, Myrtle and Susanna.

Facility Services attributes the heating loss to a leak in a pipe located somewhere underground.

“In most of the dorms, we have a four-pipe system. Two pipes are dedicated to moving chilled water throughout the residence halls for air conditioning, and two are for hot water and the heating of the buildings,” said John Greene, director of Facility Services.

As of Thursday afternoon, Greene said they had not yet located the leaky pipe.

“We’re still looking for it, but we think we’re close to finding it. In the meantime, we’ve implemented a temporary fix,” Green said. “It’s a sort of surgical bypass, where we’re running hot water through one of the pipes normally used for air conditioning. This works because the chilled water pipes are similar in size and are not currently in use.”

Greene reported that Facility Services believes the leaking pipe is located in the lawn area outside of Prassel.

“Normally, with a broken pipe, you see water bubbling up through the ground and can observe a muddy area, but we didn’t have any of that with this pipe,” Greene said. “Instead, we believe it’s been leaking down into the ground below. So that made things difficult, and we didn’t exactly know where to go.”

In reference to the construction on the road outside of Thomas, Green said Facility Services poured concrete into the opening on Tuesday and that the area should now be open and available for use.
“Next week, all of the holes should be filled in, including the one in the middle of the Prassel lawn,” Greene said.

The problems with power outages began early Wednesday morning when the state’s major electrical power grid operator, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas announced that statewide rotating blackouts would occur in order to compensate for the lack of energy spurred on by the cold weather and individuals’ needs to heat homes and businesses.

Trinity experienced its first power outage at approximately 6 a.m. Wednesday morning, and another followed at 9 a.m. The first two outages lasted roughly an hour. A final wave occurred at around 12:30 p.m., but lasted for only 15 minutes.

Nearby schools, such as St. Mary’s University and University of Texas at San Antonio did not experience the blackouts, Green said.

Green argued that the reason St. Mary’s and UTSA did not experience blackouts could be because of their location.

“Ninety-eight percent of Trinity is served by a CPS energy electrical circuit off of Hildebrand,” Green explained. “The admission’s building runs off of a circuit connected to Mulberry, and they didn’t experience the blackouts that the main campus did. They were on a different schedule.”

According to Pinchback, the blackouts on the main campus posed a problem for those trying to enter locked buildings.

Similarly, Facility Services encountered problems with elevators and had to reset some fire alarm control panels.

Greene said they also had to monitor emergency generators.

The power outages also happened during peak hours at the dining halls.

“It wasn’t the ideal time,” said Miguel Ardid, director of Dining Services. “It was 12:35 p.m. on a Wednesday, so there were students in masses in the server area. It was pitch black in the Commons because there were no emergency lights and all of the machines went down.”

Students who had already paid for their food were refunded later in the day, Ardid said. Other options included taking down student’s ID numbers by hand.

Once the power came back on, Ardid said it took only about three minutes to reboot the machines, so Dining Services didn’t end up having to throw out any food.

“In the middle of a crunch, it’s a difficult thing to deal with, but I’m not really sure if we could have done any better even without prior warning or notice,” Ardid said.

Many Trinity students reported having class in the dark or dimly lit classrooms. Few classes were canceled.

Greene reported that there may be more outages in the coming days, but that it all depends on the decisions of ERCOT.