Aysha Celestin
Reporter
Several days of sub-freezing temperatures in late December caused breaks in numerous water lines around town, as well as problems on the Mississippi University for Women campus.
Maintenance issues were encountered in several buildings, including Columbus Hall, the Stark Recreation Center and the Poindexter music building.
Columbus Hall experienced an issue with the HVAC unit that controls the temperature of the dorm.
“It circulates water through it [the unit] whether it be hot water in the wintertime or cold water in the summertime,” said Jody Kennedy, the director of university facilities. “And then it blows air across that, and that's how you produce your heating and cooling.”
Kennedy went on to explain that the coil that the water rotates through ruptured, causing the water to leak into a room on the second floor, and that water trailed down to the first floor to a suite of rooms.
Poindexter had a similar issue, with a coil ruptured in the HVAC unit, but it wasn’t because of the cold weather.
“It was because of mechanical error,” said Kennedy. “Which caused the boiler to shut off.”
Since the unit was off, water was able to freeze, leading to the coils rupturing and the circulating pump cracking. The HVAC unit for Poindexter is located outside of the building, so it did not experience any flooding inside, but the building was left without heat.
The issues in both buildings were found by the police before students moved back in for the spring semester. Poindexter’s HVAC unit has been fixed, but Columbus’ is still in the process of being repaired.
Kennedy explained the coil that needs to be replaced in the unit is so old that they no longer are in production. To repair the unit, maintenance sent the broken piece to a company in Atlanta that specializes in those coils.
The company will fabricate the required piece needed to fix the unit. Once the piece is done, they will send it to maintenance for them to fix the unit in Columbus.
“It should be an easy fix,” assured Kennedy. “Just we’ll install the coil, pipe it back up, and turn it on, it should work.”
He also added that the maintenance team is contracting an air-control engineering team to make the repairs in both buildings, recognizing that they are doing the physical work of installing and repairing.