It rained on campus Sunday, but since Friday it has been raining in the architecture building.
The air conditioner above the third year studio in Giles Hall started leaking Friday, delaying students in completing their final projects.
Third-year architecture student David Grisham normally sits directly under the leaking air conditioner, so he had to improvise to avoid the water.
“It made the project twice as hard to finish,” Grisham said. “Nothing was ruined, but I had a couple of close calls.”
Grisham and others sitting near the leak moved their desks several feet to avoid water damage to final works in progress.
“We made a funnel out of a Coke bottle, attached it to a garden hose and ran it up to the leak to try to catch most of the water,” Grisham said. “It worked for a while, but the water leak spread.”
Jane Greenwood, associate dean of the College of Architecture, said that workers from the physical plant came to the architecture building Friday to fix the problem, but were unable to because the cause was unknown.
“Since the air conditioning was out in the other part of the building, they were not sure of the cause of the leak,” Greenwood said. “It (the broken air conditioner) was more of a priority than the leak. We had one student so hot that he was sick,” she added.
Greenwood said the college was pleased with the physical plant’s cooperation.
“When we have had a problem, the physical plant has been very good about working with us,” she said.
The final deadline for third year students to turn in their design of a rural wellness center was Monday at 1 p.m., and the leak still has not been fixed.
Air conditioning troubles were not the only delay for students. During a blackout on campus Wednesday, many architecture students were left in the dark with work to do. Several students worked on their laptop computers as long as the battery would last and others used flashlights to continue working.
Second-year students David Dill and Will Stanford were both working on the design of a restaurant when the power went out.
“We just looked at each other and said ‘Oh, great’,” Stanford said. “I thought I had lost half of my final project,” he added.
Dill stayed in Giles Hall, working until the power came back on.
“When the power came back on, I had 15 minutes left on my battery,” he said.
“My battery ran out before the power came back on,” Stanford said. “I had to leave so I could plug my computer into an outlet.”
The final project is the focus of an architecture student’s semester. It usually involves the design of some type of building and can last several weeks and sometimes is the only project of the semester.
“When we get to the final project, students are already stressed enough; a problem with the building is the last thing you want to have to worry about,” Greenwood said. “We don’t ever want to have problems, but at final time, the problems are just compounded.”