When someone suggests you “boil water,” one would hope they’re giving you instructions on how to cook pasta, not take a comfortable shower.
Oddly enough, the latter was the case for a group of unlucky students at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.
According to local news affiliate KHON-2, the campus’s student housing service sent out the strange e-mail after students complained of a wide range of plumbing issues.
The e-mail included the phrase, “if you absolutely cannot have a cold shower or want to clean dishes and the like, you might want to get a big pot or bowl and heat up your water.”
Um, what?
UH-M student Raquel Lasconia said the bathroom floor of her apartment is constantly soaked. To add to her problems, she claims that “once you turn (the shower handle) to the hot side, it turns off.”
“I’m pretty mad,” Lasconia said. “I didn’t know what to do actually. I’ve been asking other students if they’ve been experiencing the same problems.”
Lasconia is not the only student to experience severe plumbing issues upon arriving for the start of the school year.
Dorm resident Kathleen Gragasin said her ceiling has a disgusting leaking problem. “It’s kind of gross, using the bathroom with water going down your back, especially when you know it’s coming from the toilet upstairs.”
The school claims that all plumbing issues will be taken care of “within 48 hours,” but this hardly helps the students who already moved in to their living spaces. Many think the school should be offering emergency plumbing services to all affected by this heinous oversight.
“Whenever sewer water is on the floor it is spread to all other surfaces and there is a risk of varied human bacterial infections which can range from mild to severe,” says Wallace Chambers, A&A Plumbing Company. “The issue with the hot water probably originated from an out of service boiler. The students tried turning the hot water on in the shower and there was no hot water. The out of service boiler was just an inconvenience, not a safety issue.”
KHON-2 reported that some of the dorms and apartments had been serviced by the next day, but there were still dozens of rooms that were not yet tended to.
Students are being notified of their legal right to either move to a new room or even bring their complaints to a small claims court.
The school hopes to quell all student concerns before things “boil over” and end up in court. In the meantime, surf’s up, kids.