Kravis Shortcomings Explained
Flooding abates, and awards flood in
On Tuesday, September 20th, the personnel of the Center for Writing and Public Discourse arrived at their new space in the Kravis Center to find it that it had flooded with several inches of water. The damage was severe enough that all of the carpets had to be replaced, and sections of dry wall had to be torn out in every room of the Center. While the Center for Writing hoped to be back up and running in the damaged space within two weeks, the Center’s staff will not be able to resume working in the space until just before the Kravis Center’s dedication on October 21st.
This was not the first flood in the new Center for Writing. A similar – though less damaging – incident occurred over the summer.
The reflecting pool, sitting just outside the Center for Writing, is intended to be the aesthetic centerpiece of the Kravis Center. It hasn’t been full of water in weeks. Currently, it lies dirty, brown, and barren in the middle of the courtyard. Plans have been announced to place plants around it to beautify it, but, for the moment, nothing of that nature has actually occurred. What, exactly, is going on with the Kravis Center?
According to Frank Perri, Claremont McKenna’s Director of Construction, and Matthew Bibbens, CMC’s Vice President for Planning and Administration, the floods in the Center for Writing were caused by a failure in the Kravis Center’s air conditioning system. Instead of having a conventional air conditioning system, they explained, Kravis implements a chilled beam/radiant panel system to regulate the temperature inside the building. Rather than circulating air, the building is kept cool by a system of pipes that circulate cold water through the beams of the building itself. Those large grey columns in each of the classrooms? They’re filled with rushing water. This process, Perri and Bibbens assured, is extremely energy-efficient.
One particular section of faulty pipe is responsible for both leaks in the Center for Writing. According to Perri, both floods were caused by a failure of a “shark bite” fitting that connects the female and male ends of one pipe segment. “There was no actual damage to the metal of the pipe,” asserted Perri.
The reason this happened – not once, but twice – remains somewhat of a mystery. The connecting pipes that carry the water are rated by their manufacturer as being capable of handling water pressure levels up to 120 pounds per square inch (psi), and have been tested up to 150 psi. The water in the chilled beam system is at a constant pressure of roughly 40-45 psi at all times, which should be well within the the pipe’s capabilities.
“Director Perri and his department are currently in talks with the manufacturer [Twa Systems of Canada, the same manufacturer of the chilled beams and radiant panels] of the pipe itself to investigate what went wrong,” said Bibbens.
The problems with the reflecting pool are similarly frustrating. The pool consists of a concrete base completely waterproofed on all sides by hot rubber asphalt, and on the visible surfaces by standard pool waterproofing materials. When the pool was filled with water earlier this semester, bubbles floated to the surface. “That was our first sign something was wrong,” Perri explained.
Perri’s office – after deliberating with the architect, contractor, and planning departments – decided that the problem was probably just that the concrete was exuding water that had no place to go, so vents were installed beneath the reflecting pool to collect runoff. Unfortunately, the vents began removing far more water than had been anticipated: roughly 55 gallons an hour.
Fixing the reflecting pool would require invasive reconstruction that would close the walkways on each side of the pool, effectively isolating the Kravis Center from the rest of the campus. To repair the pool while classes are in session would be too disruptive. And it can’t be fixed during winter break because doing so will probably require stripping the top layer to get at the supporting layers of the pool. This is problematic, Perri explained, because it tends to rain in Claremont during the winter. Getting water in the exposed, uninsulated supporting layers of the reflecting pool would cause even more problems. For these reasons, the reflecting pool repairs are being deferred until the summer.
Despite these mishaps, however, the administration remains upbeat about the Kravis Center. Perri and Bibbens both highlighted the project’s overall success. Claremont McKenna Director of Facilities and Campus Services Brian Worley opines: “Given that there are roughly four thousand connections of [the type that failed in the Center for Writing] in the chilled beam system in Kravis, the failure of the two of them is not that bad.”
While these shortcomings pose an inconvenience to students and faculty alike, we should not overlook the incredible resource that the Kravis Center offers the entire five college community. Recently Engineering New Record, a commercial construction industry publication, named the Kravis Center the Best Higher Education/Research Project in all of California and, more significantly, the Region’s Best Project out of 34 project categories. This is a notable honor because the judges of the competition are national leaders in the architectural and construction industries.
Professor Audrey Bilger, Faculty Director of the Center for Writing and Public Discourse, echos this praise. “We feel quite fortunate to have been given a space in the Kravis building. The new facility is centrally located and well suited to become a hub for CMC’s writing culture. We were just settling into our space when the leak occurred, and we can’t wait to be back in Kravis again.”
