Recent problems plague the girls’ main hallway bathroom
The girls bathroom has already been closed several times this school year.
November 23, 2018
The girl’s main hallway bathroom has already been closed six times this year due to sinks flooding and a broken hot water heater. Maintenance has been working hard to keep things properly functioning, but some of the problems are inescapable.
The hot water heater located in the girl’s bathroom broke which resulted in a flood. Maintenance had to shut down the bathroom for a significant amount of time, and the girls had to use the bathroom outside the Haben. “There were two major things that happened. One of them was the hot water heater: we had a flood, so we had to get in there and clean it up. Then we had to have it replaced and that was a different day, so we had to get in there and shut it down,” maintenance and event coordinator Ms. Anne Moen said.
We couldn’t figure out what was wrong with the one sink that was closest to the windows that kept flooding the floors.
— Anne Moen
The worst leak took place on Grandparents day which was a major inconvenience. People who were inside the bathroom at the time, were evacuated in order to prevent anyone from getting hurt. This was an inconvenience to the large amount of people who were trying to use the bathroom and couldn’t. “It was right in the middle of grandparents day where we had a big flood. The sink was leaking and we were trying to get people out of the bathroom because we were scared that a grandma would fall,” Moen said.
Once the bathroom was vacant, maintenance had to rush to clean the floors and fix the hot water heater so that it could be opened up before the end of the day. “The hot water heater took almost half of a day and cleaning up usually took about a half hour. Sometimes when we cleaned up we had to mop it, but then let the floor dry so nobody would slip and fall. That was one of our main concerns so that nobody would get hurt,” Moen said.
Even after the hot water heater was fixed, flooding was still an issue, so the bathroom was closed for multiple days at a time. Once maintenance found out where the leak originated, they were able to secure it quickly and the girls were able to get into the bathroom much sooner. “We couldn’t figure out what was wrong with the one sink that was closest to the windows that kept flooding the floors. We had to go in there a number of times and clean it up and shut the bathroom down while we cleaned it up. Eventually, we figured it was leaking from the back and we tried sealing it and we had to shut it down while the seal was drying,” Moen said.
Since then, the bathroom hasn’t had any issues except the occasional jam in the paper towel dispenser. The bathrooms were just redone two years ago and problems with leaking just started appearing this year. Although it has been an inconvenience to the girls trying to use the bathroom in the middle of the day, nobody was hurt and everything is fixed. “Eventually, we had to call the company back out and they came in and fixed [the sinks],” Moen said.
