On today’s episode of “What’s wrong with my residential brownstone?”

I live in one of the eight residential brownstones that Columbia offers, and while it is lovely for the close-knit community it creates, it has its unique challenges. The radiators in each room are indicative of our house’s old age, and we have a bit of a ghost problem. But when it comes to our plumbing, I’ve never seen a more disastrous situation.

A couple of weeks ago, I woke up to a WhatsApp text from our Resident Advisor informing my housemates and me of some sewage issues on the second floor. This floor is notorious for being, as my RA put it, “unable to handle a shit.” While I do think some of these second-floor clogs are avoidable with a bit of conscious wiping and conservative toilet paper use—of course, within good reason—this is just getting to a concerning point. I lived at this same residence last year, also on the third floor and safe from the horrors of the second-floor sewage nightmare, but still I recall similar issues occurring on the second floor. Aren’t the pipes connected throughout the house? What Poop-Pipe Demon is inhabiting the second floor bathroom, and how can we exorcise it?

Little did I know that my safety from the scaries of the floor below would be short-lived…

After our house meeting addressing all of these issues, I assumed we were all on the same page. Imagine my surprise as I woke up the following morning to rancid, brown sewage water leaking from the second-floor bathroom onto the living room floor.

Okay, ignoring that… facilities will come soon.

They patch it up, put a piece of plastic over the brown water stain on the ceiling, and good as new!

Oh wait, but the first floor bathroom is suddenly missing a toilet seat. Okay, great. Maybe someone wanted one to decorate the walls of their room. Maybe they flushed it, which would explain the plumbing issues. So downstairs bathroom: out of service.

The second-floor bathroom clogs again. Both toilets. Boom, out of service. 

I’m hanging out with my fourth-floor friends and suddenly get the urge to pee. Thankfully, I know that the lovely third, fourth, and fifth-floor bathrooms are functioning smoothly. Oh, but what do I see:

So, not only is the fifth-floor bathroom leaking onto the fourth-floor one, but the ceiling is caving in on itself. And that takes out the fourth and fifth floors.

The third floor was the last to go.

I wake up on a grim Monday morning to an email from facilities:

“Please be advised that all bathrooms in the house are temporarily out of service while the plumber completes the work. Please do not use them until 12:00 pm today.” All bathrooms. Gone.

Even after it hits twelve, we are still not permitted to use the toilets, and many of my housemates are getting antsy. “I really have to pee,” they tell me, and “I just got yelled at for flushing!”

Of course, this incorrect time estimate was not the facilities team’s fault, but an underestimate on Housing’s part. We so appreciated the facilities team’s hard work in doing what I later found out was a complete replacement of our downstairs pipes. They had to completely open up the wall to build bigger pipes to prevent blockage. They also attached a brown piece of butcher paper to our ceiling for aesthetics, so we would no longer be reminded of the poop water horrors of the first floor.

While the fourth floor ceiling disaster was actually due to rainwater damage, I’m grateful to report that peace has been restored on the bathroom front. Walls are painted, toilets are flushing, life is good. However, I know it’s only a matter of time until our toilets become a burden again; this house has just been through too much. Truly, it’s not fair to the facilities to keep coming back to fix it when it is just so fundamentally outdated.

I think what we really need from housing is a new house.

Ceiling images via Bwog Staff

Header via Bwarchives