Outside Ellicott Hall, steam leaks from a pipe, which underwent extensive repairs Wednesday. The leak blocked the surrounding sidewalk and part of the road.

A damaged steam pipe located between Byrd Stadium and Ellicott Hall underwent extensive repairs early Wednesday morning, Facilities Management officials said.

Officials learned of the issue last week after noticing “steam venting out some of the drains farther down the road” on Stadium Drive but halted repair work to avoid disrupting the move-in process, Operations and Maintenance Director Jack Baker wrote in an email.   

After the department located the site of the underground leak Tuesday, repairs took place between 3:30 a.m. and 7 a.m. Wednesday and required the steam to be shut off throughout the Ellicott and Denton communities during that time, Baker wrote.

As a preemptive fix, the damaged pipe “didn’t really affect anything,” said Brian Snyder, Residential Facilities maintenance projects associate director. Had it gone unnoticed or had the department been unable to locate it, however, the damage would have spread throughout the Ellicott and Denton communities, Snyder said.

“These are very old pipes that supply the hot water in our residential buildings and academic buildings and provide heat,” said George Mohr, Residential Facilities maintenance assistant director.     

Mohr said it took contractors a couple days to find the source of the damage, because it couldn’t be found on a map of the pipelines in the area. The pipe was located in an unmarked steam vault in front of Ellicott Hall, Baker wrote, and the breach’s cause is unknown.    

After the repairs, steam levels in the Ellicott and Denton communities returned to normal, Mohr said. Repaving and sidewalk restoration on Stadium Drive began after the pipe repair, Baker wrote.

“It was an excellent response with little or no impact on the campus community,” Baker wrote. 

But the repair process did inconvenience some students who live in dorms near the pipe.  

“It’s been loud. I’m a light sleeper,” said Michelle Huffert, a sophomore La Plata Hall resident. “I don’t know why they could [not] have done this in the past month.”  

Added Tom Pago, a freshman La Plata resident: “It’s been a hassle to walk around it to get to class. … It is a little annoying.”