Some students who moved back to Elon University’s campus had an early surprise, as the ceilings in the Oaks D building leaked rainwater into many of the structure’s apartments.
Leaks were seen primarily in the third and second floors of Oaks D, although Robert Buchholz, director of Physical Plant, said there were some leaks that reached the first floor.
Buchholz attributed the leaks to the way the roof on Oaks D was constructed.
“It’s at a place where the face of the building juts out, so the roof had to adjust to being an angled roof and they didn’t do a good job with that one particular spot,” Buchholz said.
This angled construction, as opposed to a flat roof, allowed for more places where water could seep through.
“You usually have to make an adjustment on the pitch on the roof and it’s two uneven angled pieces and so it leaked there at that joint,” Buchholz said.
“When (my roommate and I) first got back from summer break, there were pieces of our ceiling all over the common room floor,” Maraghy said. “The roof leaked over the summer and someone came to patch it up. It has since rained a second time and it made an even bigger mess.”
The Oaks apartment complex has had other maintenance issues in the past, like external heating pipes leaking out of the complex’s two water houses.
“It comes out of the house and goes to three of the buildings and we’ve made repairs three or four times on that pipe,” Buchholz says.
Buchholz said Physical Plant is also planning on replacing the front entrance doors to some of the Oaks buildings.
“Is it bad construction or is it that the students go in and out of the doors a little rough? I don’t know,” Buchholz said. “We thought the doors could have been a higher grade, but that’s because we’re in here and operating.”
While the Oaks apartments were built in a relatively short period of time, Buchholz said he would not describe the Oaks as improperly built, as there is no pattern of similar maintenance errors across the six buildings.
“We did some investigating on the other buildings to see if that was an issue,” Buchholz said. “There was one other place that we did some touch-ups on the flashing to help prevent it, but it wasn’t something that we had to go in and change on all six buildings.”
The construction of the Oaks occurred before Buchholz became director of Physical Plant.
The Oaks were built by a private contractor and, according to Buchholz, the apartments were originally supposed to be run by a third party, but negotiations turned to Elon running the complex instead.
“When you build a house, when you build a new building, you shouldn’t have problems for 10 years, but that’s also in a dream world where everything is right,” Buchholz said.
With Physical Plant’s FIXit function, Buchholz encouraged students to directly call in any damages or issues they have in their homes.