The day before Christmas a main water line 16 feet under ground burst at the northeast corner of the Classroom Building filling the basement nearly to the first floor.
“We really didn’t know anything about it until it was time to come back to work and we were just able to get our food truck delivery on the Friday before classes started,” Elements Café supervisor, Alex Faber, said. “We were only able to get in and start prepping things on Monday morning but we came together and made it happen.”
The café couldn’t open or prepare any of their food or coffee display ahead of time because water service had not been restored until late Sunday or early Monday. A large pit is filled now with dirt outside the east exits and will be temporarily capped soon.
Faber has worked at the café for over three years and remembers another pipe bursting in the same general location but thought it had happened during the summer.
“We had to really be ready to come in and work on Monday, ready for anything,” Elements Café Student Lead, Andreas Degrave, said. “It would’ve been nice to have the weekend but we’re happy to be open at all.”
Classroom Building Manager of Central Scheduling, Crystal Bennett, said, “I think the biggest thing we had to get on top of right away were those access points for students on Monday morning. There was some real logistical need to keep people moving through these doors and the entire east side is essentially closed because it’s treacherous out there with that pit.”
The usual entry for students arriving from other classes are the east doors, but the doors are barricaded with boards, vices and yellow caution tape to keep students from entering an active construction zone. Nearly the entire concrete slab at the east entrance is gone to provide access to the pipes below.
“It’s nothing short of miraculous we’re up and running,” Bennett said. “The contractors and the UW Service team have been incredible and really rose to the occasion here.”
At the forefront of UW’s facilities response is Deputy Director of Utilities Management and Engineering, Forrest “Frosty” Selmer.
“Well, if this would have happened a day or two later it could have been absolutely catastrophic,” Selmer said. “The area has been a problem for a while because of old concrete conduit girders and ancient concrete slabs weighing down on things but we learned a lot in this process and made some improvements.”
The water pipes bursting allowed UW’s facilities to discover the main cause of the issue.
“Essentially the powers that be had been patching, repairing and putting tourniquets on problematic pipes throughout this entire east side of the Classroom Building and never addressed the real problem,” Selmer said. “We’ve pretty much deduced that these old supports and concrete are shifting over time and taking the pipes below with them.”
One of the issues was pipes buried 16 feet below the surface rather than six feet below the surface, which is being addressed. Selmer also said they are creating access for power and other services which needed to be upgraded.
“A temporary slab will be poured around spring break until work can be completed during the summer,” Selmer also said.
