North Quad Floods - Big time
For those interested in the University proper, North Quad yesterday had a fire suppression pipe go and seriously flooded a floor and leaked into another. Badly enough they needed to be evacuated.
(Picture AnnArbor.com)
http://annarbor.com/news/university-of-michigan-students-stunned-by-nor…
Tweets with pics, vid, and comments (obviously)-
http://annarbor.com/news/university-of-michigan-students-react-to-flood…
(find the looping video pretty funny)
And the University's "huh, wha happen?"
http://www.ur.umich.edu/update/archives/130328/nqflood
Be interesting to hear from people on here who might have been displaced by the problems there. Wouldn't expect this out of the newest, fanciest dorm (and one of the newest buidlings) on campus. I imagine I would be kind of pissed. Especially in this age of electronics.
Edit: More AA.com photo fun-
http://annarbor.com/news/nearly-100-students-displaced-by-flooding-at-u…
North Quad?
/Old man
I don't know if I spelled that right, but it's in that location. It's freakin beautiful, way nicer than any dorm when I was there. I heard it even has AC, not sure though...
But after 99 years, it came down to make room for this.
http://www.michigandaily.com/content/rise-and-fall-frieze-building
I'm normally all about historic preservation, but the three days a week I spent in the Frieze during the last few years it was around convinced me there was no building I wanted reduced to rubble more than that shithole. Windows painted shut under about 15 layers of paint, weird half-stairways connecting ill-fitting additions (it was three buildings in one), lumpy floors, rows of tiny lockers...
I for one welcome our new North Quad overlords. Waterworld and all.
And while I really liked the theater in basement, it still felt like Ann Arbor High...I mean I guess a classroom is a classroom, but it didn't feel very collegiate.
I went to the open house of North Quad, and it was gorgeous. Made me super jealous how bad it made my dorm days look. You know, other than that having all my stuff under a foot of water thing.
I think that's what the Admissions Office would call "charming in-suite pools."
My recollection of the Frieze was that it had one of the weirdest heating and cooling systems ever. One room would be about 80 degrees in winter and the next-door room 60. The following day, it would be reversed.
I'm pretty certain the second layer of hell was the basement on the MLB side of the building. No windows, always like a thousand degrees, and seemingly the only place on campus my discussion sections were allowed to be scheduled. At 8:30AM.
March 29th, 2013 at 10:25 AM ^
But I still think it's weird to have guys living in Stockwell.
Especially Wilford Brimley.
March 29th, 2013 at 10:41 AM ^
Wait... guys can live in Stockwell now???
GODDAMMIT I'M NOT EVEN 30, I SHOULDN'T FEEL THIS OLD!
Also, this totally ruins all the Stockwell jokes, and by 'all', I of course mean 'one'.
March 29th, 2013 at 11:09 AM ^
March 29th, 2013 at 12:27 PM ^
Stockwell is a women's dorm. No way there would be any men living in there.
March 29th, 2013 at 10:41 AM ^
Guys can live in Stockwell??? ugh, I'm not even that old...
The University has a water park now?
Put it in the brochure!
The kids love them
Hmm. Looks like my basement, twice -- 2006 and 2011.
On an unrelated note... um... anyone wanna buy a house I know of? Top two floors are great....
March 29th, 2013 at 11:06 AM ^
do we live in the same house?
Cool thing about California - your basement never floods.
Lame thing about California - you don't have a basement.
I would take a flood every year if it meant I had a basement.
My kid stayed at NQ for UM swim camp and it was really beautiful. A sharp contrast to the older days of South Quad.
The jokes are now endless.
March 29th, 2013 at 10:01 AM ^
Also a sharp contrast to the newer days of South Quad.
Some kid took a dump in the stairwell of Mary Markley in 1992 and wiped it all over the wall...disgusting. Ruined my Sunday morning brunch. I remember opening the door and smelling something akin to death, as I walked downstairs it got worse and worse. Then I saw the horrible crime scene. I reacted thusly:
March 29th, 2013 at 10:34 AM ^
March 29th, 2013 at 10:40 AM ^
Ohh man, someone did this without the smearing it everywhere NEXT TO the toilet in the bathroom on my hallway in Bursley in 2006. We had a nice hall meeting after that.
The film program is in the basement of NQ. Lots of VERY expensive shit down there.
That looks like the water cascading down the stairwell after an early 80"s water fight in West Quad. The football players broke out the fire hoses. As remember we got fined for that. Thankfully we were not on the ground floor.
March 29th, 2013 at 10:01 AM ^
When North Quad was being built, the company contracted to do the metal inspection messed up big time and had a shitty, just awful, shitty, (one more time? shittyyyyy) inspector sent to the North quad job site.. My girlfriend, who works in the construction industry, was told to not be surprised if there were any problems with the piping..... Now this.
TLDR; I'm not surprised a metal pipe broke. The guy doing the inspecting should have been fired five times over already.
March 29th, 2013 at 11:03 AM ^
The sprinkler contractor has about 100x more responsibility for this than any inspector
March 29th, 2013 at 10:01 AM ^
A floor in south quad also flooded, though this was a more minor issue (sprinklers went off). Fun story behind it (and this is 100% confirmed, not a rumor), it was caused by a kid who got high and was shooting nerf darts around his room. He aimed for the sprinkler head, took a shot, and hit it dead on in such that it not only set it off but flooded all of 3rd Taylor. The whole floor had to be temporarily evacuated, and slept in other buildings for the next couple of days.
March 29th, 2013 at 10:40 AM ^
March 29th, 2013 at 10:46 AM ^
The bottom floors of South Quad completely flooded my freshman or sophomore year right at the beginning of finals week. The students living down there had to be moved to a hotel and lost a lot of their study materials. One kid also got zapped pretty good. I was thankful to live on the 7th floor.
March 29th, 2013 at 10:08 AM ^
See, this is what you get when you paint fire suppression piping red.
March 29th, 2013 at 10:12 AM ^
I remember this scene from Titanic.
March 29th, 2013 at 10:30 AM ^
Oh Michigan, why are you not immune to basic incompetence in your brand-new residence halls? At least it wasn't The Courtyards (North Campus is better at engineering).
March 29th, 2013 at 10:35 AM ^
March 29th, 2013 at 11:12 AM ^
Yeah, political economy is, in its very nature, political.
You could imagine someone going on a rant about how the contracting of this work to private sector contractors, rather than being carried out by the university itself, encourages cost cutting and shoddy construction.
The truth is, we don't know why this pipe broke. To ascribe it to unions or penny pinching contractors or to university oversight or to the poor quality of metallurgy in a globalized economy, is to impose a political overlay on something none of us know the slightest bit about and serves no purpose other than to annoy other posters who might hold the opposite opinion.
Thus is the rationale for "no politics." Now, if you know something about this particular pipe, and why it broke, then, go for it.
How about this:
You don't know why the pipe broke, so shut up about unions.
March 29th, 2013 at 11:03 AM ^
March 29th, 2013 at 12:44 PM ^
Haha, very funny. That's exactly what I thought when I saw the picture.
March 29th, 2013 at 11:08 AM ^
For missing out on the Soviet era charm of three people living in a South Quad room (built for two) with no air conditioning that had not been renovated since the 1950’s
March 29th, 2013 at 11:21 AM ^
March 29th, 2013 at 11:24 AM ^
i think i saw this on the front page of imgur.
March 29th, 2013 at 11:24 AM ^
i think i saw this on the front page of imgur.
March 29th, 2013 at 11:33 AM ^
Saw this on Reddit last night, had no idea it was North Quad. All it said was "So, my dorm flooded big time" and linked the images. Crazy. Part of West Quad flooded my sophomore year after people playing soccer in the hallway kicked the ball off the fire suppression sprinklers, it was wet but not anything like this.
As an aside, did anyone have renter's insurance while living in the dorms? I certainly didn't. I don't even know if my parents' homeowners insurance would've covered damages. Thankfully I purchased renter's insurance when I moved off campus.
I was in South Quad when that soccer incident happened. We had some friends near where that happened, they were pretty pissed.
I didn't have rental insurance at all while I Michigan. It would have been handy when our house was robbed over Winter break during Dental school . . . . . .
It would be pretty lousy if the students who lost valuables are screwed if they didn't have renter's insurance. This is a university dormitory, not a for-profit apartment complex. The university should offer reimbursement for damaged property here. This is a man-made problem, not a natural disaster - and in a brand-new building, no less.