While many students spent the summer relaxing on vacation, Physical Plant was hard at work with the upkeep and maintenance of the many utilities and buildings on campus.
Among the repairs was the replacement of feeder cables to Cogswell Laboratories, which lost one of its two feeder power lines when weather took out a transformer and knocked over power lines in the spring. That power outage caused a surge on campus, tripping a breaker and extending the outage to many academic buildings.
Both feeder lines were slated for replacement, and the process is about 75 percent complete, with the final replacement of the lines to be completed on a weekend at the end of September, according to Director of Physical Plant Mark Frost. That replacement will require
the building to go without power while the lines are placed.
In its continuing work, both of the boilers on campus were taken offline to allow for yearly maintenance of the steam system that extends from the west edge of campus to Burdett Avenue, including Freshman Hill. At the end of the summer, one water tank being reexamined required some additional work to repair a leak. A few early-returning students were affected, but all the work was completed before the main population returned to campus last week. Frost commented that Physical Plant would have preferred to have done the shutdown when no students would have been affected, but that conferences prevented the maintenance from being done earlier.
Work is almost complete on the roof of the Houston Field House which was replaced to deal with growing leaking issues. The Quad dorms have also received some waterproofing, with work ongoing this semester. The department is working on repairing the roofs on the dorms and waterproofing the bricks walls which have shown some signs of leaking from wind-driven rain. Many showers in those buildings have also been waterproofed to protect water getting into the walls of the building that way.
Work continued over the summer to improve the energy efficiency of buildings on campus. According to Frost, RPI “has already seen significant savings from the work done in the Union.” The Troy Building is the current focus of energy improvements, and while not yet complete, savings are already being seen in that building as well. The project will take many years to complete across campus, with the Folsom Library slated to be next.
Physical Plant executes over 24,000 work orders every year, many behind the scenes. More visible improvements include the new Greene Plaza in front of the main architecture building and upcoming work to replace the flagpole in front of the Armory and repair sidewalks on campus. Work was also done on the 15th Street bridge, repairing concrete and painting.
The fire systems in the Armory were also replaced and updated, with the Field House next on that list. “Safety is our primary concern,” said Frost. As a part of that, RPI is playing host to a fire demonstration, to take place at the Commons on September 7. The demonstration, which will include the Troy City Fire Department and the New York State Office of Fire Prevention and Control, will use a mock-up of a student’s dorm room to demonstrate how quickly a fire can start and spread.
