This article was updated at 1:30 p.m. on Tuesday, March 19.
St. Thomas residents woke up Sunday and Monday mornings in Grace Hall to cold dorm rooms as they waited for help from Public Safety and maintenance. The university received word of the problem around 2 p.m. on Sunday from residents and that the issue was fixed on Monday morning, according to Director of Residence Life Aaron Macke.
An error in the heating system caused by the scheduled power outages in Grace and Cretin Halls on Friday was responsible for the lack of heat in Grace, according to Macke.
While the typical temperature threshold for the heat to activate is in the mid-60s, Macke said, the outage seemingly caused this threshold to reset.
“Usually after a power outage, the systems default back to what they were previously set at, so this is kind of uncommon, which is why they don’t know if that’s exactly what happened or not, but for some reason, it defaulted to zero, so the system would not kick on until it got to zero degrees,” Macke said. “Well, it didn’t get to zero (outside), but of course it got far colder than 60, 65 degrees.”
The weather Saturday afternoon reached below 45 degrees by 3 p.m. and got down to 32 degrees by midnight. Sunday’s temperatures remained under 45 degrees all day.
Based on a thermostat reading in Grace Hall Monday morning, the building temperature was roughly 58 degrees. The furnace setting was roughly 67 degrees.
Macke says that the delay in temperature change — both in the building cooling down after the system error on Friday and heating up after it was fixed on Monday — can be attributed to the building’s older radiators.
Sophomore Grace resident Jacob Pfiffner noticed the lower temperature at the start of the weekend. Despite attempting to adjust the thermostat and close the windows in multiple rooms, he ultimately “bundled up” in three to four layers to keep warm. Pfiffner said that the temperature seemingly returned to normal Monday morning.
“At the end of the day there’s nothing I can really do about it, but it kind of sucks, all of the crap that we have to deal with and still pay full price,” Pfiffner said.
Macke said that he understands students’ frustrations about the heating issues coming in conjunction with other inconveniences caused by the ongoing construction of the Lee and Penny Anderson Arena on South Campus.
Students living in the affected area should expect to see fewer disruptions to utilities and daily living now that construction has shifted to the east.
“We don’t have any planned power outages anymore for that Cretin, Grace area,” Macke said. “Things are now moving to the next phase of construction. So we’re all feeling good that we should be good to go here, and we shouldn’t have any more issues with that going forward.”
Elaina Mankowski can be reached at mank2823@stthomas.edu.
Emmy Schulz can be reached at schu4600@sthomas.edu.
Kevin Lynch can be reached at lync1832@stthomas.edu.