Faucet stops after many drops

Unattended water faucet has leaked since last fall

You've got a leaky faucet, but you're not handy with a wrench. You ignore the problem for a while, until the drip, drip, drip keeps you awake one too many nights. You call the plumber in the morning.

According to several SF State employees who work in the Humanities building, a "faucet" on campus had been leaking ever since the opening of the building last fall.

Although the leak was not keeping anybody awake at night, the water from the "faucet" -- actually a bleed valve for the alarm system of a fire-control sprinkler -- was trickling out at the rate of 7.87 gallons an hour on Tuesday afternoon, according to measurements taken by the Gater. If that rate of flow was constant over the past year, 68,962 gallons of water flowed out of the leaky pipe.

That's enough to supply water for a day to about 1,200 San Franciscans, who use an average 55 gallons of water a day, according to the San Francisco Water Department.

The leak was not hidden away in some obscure corner of campus. In fact, it was coming from the plumber's house, so to speak -- the offices of Plant Operations, next door to the Humanities building.

The wall beneath the pipe was streaked with rust, and somebody had carefully arranged some stones beneath the drip to prevent the falling water from eroding the soil around the building's foundation.

Robert Hutson, director of Plant Operations, said the leaking pipe was part of an abandoned fire protection system. "It should've been taken out this summer. It was disabled ten minutes ago," he said Wednesday morning.

Hutson said he was not aware of the problem until he was contacted by the Gater on Tuesday. "There's too many square feet out there on campus. We really rely on people saying, hey, there's a leak in the faucet somewhere. We don't have somebody waiting around for things to happen."

He said a groundskeeper probably put the stones under the drip, thinking that the pipe was a "drip leg" -- an outlet for water collected by air conditioners through condensation.

According to a January 1995 report commissioned by SF State Capital Programs and Support Services, state budget cutbacks have forced $66.1 million in maintenance at SF State to be deferred until funds become available. Although 54 percent of the buildings on campus are in "poor to very poor" condition, Plant Operations has lost one-third of its employees and 32 percent of its budget over the past five years, the report stated.

"Funding for Special Repairs and Minor Capital Outlay have been reduced to minimal levels and restricted solely to addressing life safety and accessibility issues," the report said.

The leak was an oversight, and not related to budget cutbacks, Hutson said.

And although the 68,962 gallons of water that may have been wasted sounds like a lot, the cost for the water at rates charged by the San Francisco Water Department -- $1.17 per 748 gallons -- comes to about $108.

Compared to the 52 to 56 million gallons of water Hutson said the campus uses in a year -- a figure which includes campus housing and residence halls -- it's just a drop in the bucket.

[ Golden Gater Online September 28, 1995 ]

[ back to top ]