From a burst pipe in the Sanderson parking lot to leaking pipes in Carter over the Tuck Shoppe, students have been noticing many issues with the plumbing here at Covenant College.
Photo taken by Corey Dupree
The pipe that burst in the Sanderson parking lot the first week of January was a drainage pipe placed there around the 1970s. The cast iron pipe had completely split, and was leaking water underneath the lot. The entire parking lot had to be dug up because this pipe was eight feet underground; it required a larger hole to go down and patch the pipe.
This pipe leak caused a big problem for faculty and students who had already returned to campus. Virginia Barnes ’27, a sophomore back at school a week early for rehearsals for the upcoming musical, said, “It was a big upheaval for everyone on campus. The whole Sanderson parking lot had to be torn up and put back together and housing plans had to be adjusted because the water wouldn’t work. It was a lot of hard work for our faculty to get us all back on campus.”
Currently, there is still gravel in the Sanderson lot, because companies will not lay asphalt in the winter. Repaving will have to be pushed back to spring or summer. “This is an opportunity to do some other improvements as well. We’d re-line, put some new parking bumpers, curbing, and some other things of that nature,” said Corey Dupree, head of campus security.
This cracking of a cast iron pipe is also what occurred above the Tucke Shoppe. According to Jonny Hill ’25, who works under campus carpenter Glen Wieldraayer, the pipe was a sewage drainage pipe that had a two foot long crack in it as wide as one inch. Hill said in an interview that the plumbing and the people who work on campus to fix it are “one of those things you take for granted but that is actually so necessary and not everyone thinks about it.” Through the teamwork of Wieldraayer and campus plumber Joshua Wallin, they were able to fix this issue quickly and with minimal disruption to the everyday lives of students.
The overarching issue lies in the cast iron pipe system that was put in when Covenant was first built. The pipes installed in the original construction of Carter in 1927 were all cast iron pipes, which have a life expectancy of around 100 years. Since it has now been 98 years since the construction of Carter, these pipes are reaching the end of their usefulness. When leaks are discovered, “they fix the pipes by either relining the pipes with plastic or by replacing them… with PVC pipes,” Hill said.
Overall, Covenant is conscious of the current age of the cast iron pipes. “Something that has been considered on a much larger strategic scale is the infrastructure of this building needs to be upgraded in the coming years and there’s been discussion of how to go about doing that,” Corey Dupree said. While it causes momentary issues in the present, this issue is something that Covenant is working to fix in the near future.
Thumbnail photo taken by Corey Dupree