Being unable to get hot water created additional difficulties and frustrated feelings during the first week of school for the residents of Hope Hall. The university has fixed the pipe that caused the hot water outages, but a large hole in University Drive has been left unfilled. Biola is also continuing to prioritize the maintenance of residence halls.  

ABOUT HOPE HALL

Hope Hall is a co-ed dormitory for returning students and is the university’s largest residence hall with two communities on either end of the building — Hope North and Hope South. It was constructed in 2003 and is a 4-story building with a spacious main lobby. It has community restrooms on each floor and a total of 16 washers and 16 dryers for laundry. It is home to about 430 students who were affected by these hot water outages.

HOT WATER OUTAGES

Residents of Hope Hall have been dealing with issues with the temperature of their water for the past couple of weeks leaving them frustrated and impatient after being unpleasantly surprised by cold showers. Many students have been forced to walk all the way from Hope Hall to the Chase Gymnasium to take hot showers or bear with the cold showers within their residence hall. 

“The hot water issues started August 29th,” said Natasha Salvador, sophomore cinema and media arts major and Hope Hall resident. “I noticed it during the first week of school which was such a weird time. The pipe was fixed around August 31 but around September 8, we encountered another problem.” She also added, “I honestly didn’t have such a big issue with this because I enjoy cold showers, but when I craved a hot shower, I found it incredibly uncomfortable and inconvenient.” 

The university is providing monetary housing credit to the students affected by the hot water outages in Hope Hall. Beverly Cain, the senior director of Auxiliary Services, said, “Affected students will receive a credit on their student account as a result of the inconvenience caused by the hot water outage. Auxiliary Services is providing this credit.”

PIPE REPAIRS AFFECT ROAD AND TRAFFIC

In addition to the water problem at Hope Hall, there is a hole in University Drive next to Hope Hall. The hole is directly tied to the hot water outages and the university’s efforts to fix the pipe. 

“The excavation in the street near the baseball field is a repair to underground hot water piping that began to leak two weeks ago,” said Brian Phillips, associate vice president of Facility and Auxiliary Operations. “The repair is complete, but the new pipe needs to be insulated before we can fill, recompact and pave the road. I expect the repair will be completed in the next week or so.” 

As of right now, the pipe should be completely fixed, but the hole in the street has been present since the beginning of September and still is there. This has caused all traffic flow to be directed through Parking Lot E for about a month.

RESIDENCE HALL MAINTENANCE

Keeping the residence halls up to date and running is important to the university. 

“The maintenance and improvements at our residential buildings has become an increasingly high priority,” Phillips said. “We recognize the importance of the residential experience and have allocated more spending in housing areas as a result. This last year, we spent $2.3 Million on improvements to residential buildings. This was in addition to the routine clearing and maintenance performed by teams over the summer.”

He also shared that the university plans to continue renovating residential areas for students including the apartments for next year.