Once the repairs finish and the invoices are paid, Chief Administrative Officer Rich Péwé anticipates that Hillsdale College will have paid around $50,000 to recover from a burst sprinkler head that flooded the Knorr Family Dining Room with 2 to 3 inches of water Jan. 23.
The college will spend $10,000 on building repairs, $20,000 on cleanup, $10,000 repairing the sprinkler system, and another $10,000 on miscellaneous costs including labor and extra Saga costs, according to Péwé.
Students should have access to the booths this weekend, and air tests for mold and mildew have been conducted with no sign of any danger.
“The dining room itself is back to being as good as it was,” Péwé said. “We’ve taken every possible precaution. We’ll do our due diligence to get back to perfection.”
The sprinkler burst when extremely cold temperatures, -3 degrees on the night of the incident, were swept into the attic by a strong wind. According to Péwé, the extreme cold temperatures, combined with a possibly flawed aluminum pipe fitting, spelled disaster.
“A better product would probably not have pulled away even if it was frozen, but it is hard to know that,” he said.
Repairmen and cleaning professionals removed the baseboard and ceiling trim to check for water. They dried all the walls and cut out and replaced any drywall that was touching water.
“Our hope is that we don’t have that happen again,” Péwé said. “We are certainly inspecting all the systems that we have. We are going to get a sensor to go up in that attic space so if it starts to get cold we will be notified.”
Péwé said the college will add insulation to the Grewcock Student Union and remove part of the roof to investigate how cold air is getting inside. He added, however, that they will wait until the spring due to weather concerns.
Saga Inc. prepared meals in the union and carried them over for students to eat.
“I’ve had over a dozen students come up to me and personally thank me for our hard work,” said Saga Inc. General Manager Kevin Kirwan. “It was heartwarming and made us feel good that the students appreciate it.”
Students returned to the regular dining room Jan. 27 after having eaten first in the Curtiss Memorial Dining Room and then in the Old Snack Bar.
“When I returned to Saga it was as if I was seeing food for the first time,” freshman David Flemming said.
