All dorms and academic buildings at the University of Maryland will experience a hot water outage from Friday at 6 p.m. until Saturday at 6 p.m.
The Department of Facilities Management must make a critical repair to a steam line that provides heat and hot water service to the campus, according to university spokesperson Hafsa Siddiqi. The line is located on Route 1 between The Hotel at The University of Maryland and Engineering Fields.
To complete the repair, Facilities Management must turn off the high-pressure steam that the line uses to generate heat, Siddiqi said.
The outage will affect all on-campus dorms, buildings and South Campus Commons 1 and 2, according to Siddiqi and emails from South Campus Commons administrators sent to residents.
Facilities Management originally scheduled the outage to take place from Oct. 9 to Oct. 10. On Oct. 8, students received an email that postponed the steam line repair to this weekend.
The repair was postponed due to contractor availability issues, according to an email from Siddiqi.
The outage will not impact cold water throughout campus, so the use of sinks and toilets will not be affected, the email stated.
[UMD Dining Services experiences some food shortages]
The outage is taking place over the weekend to minimize the impact for campus activities that use medium or high pressure steam, such as steam-powered lab equipment. Most residential hot water systems use low pressure steam, so Facilities Management does not anticipate these will be as affected.
In an email sent to students on Oct. 7, the Department of Residential Facilities noted the repair is crucial to ensure student access to heat and hot water as cold weather begins.
Some students plan to find unique ways to navigate the hot water outage.
“I’m just gonna take a towel and soap and do a camping shower,” said sophomore criminology and criminal justice major Anastasia Berdusis. “I hate being cold [and] I need to take a shower every day just for my own sanity.”
Some students also feel the outage will not affect their routines as much as they initially thought.
“I usually get up early and go to the gym,” said Anna Jones, a freshman biology major who lives in Centreville Hall. “It probably won’t affect me that much to be quite honest because it’ll be a nice cold shower.”
This outage comes about one week after the university turned off the water in some North Campus dorms, including Centreville Hall, due to flooding caused by a broken pipe.
“It was already an adjustment … sharing a bathroom and everything and like a room with someone,” Jones said. “The water being shut off … it kind of adds onto this whole different experience.”
