Marguerite Hall’s central heating unit overheated and broke down leaving residents without heat for three days at Saint Louis University on Dec. 1. Heat has temporarily been restored with a backup boiler hooked up on Dec. 3 at 7:30 p.m. 

Facilities services are repairing the primary boiler as soon as possible. In the meantime, they have distributed over 100 space heaters to student rooms.

“Our goal is to have system wide heat restored tonight,” said Vice President of Facilities Michael Lucido. “This will be with a temporary system, but it will allow us the time to continue fixing the older boiler and getting it online to serve us until we can get the newer boiler fixed or replaced.”  

Cooper Banholzer, a Marguerite Hall resident, said when the fire alarm went off, he initially thought it was a mistake. A false alarm went off about 30 minutes earlier, he said. After making his way outside, he saw the gravity of the situation. 

“DPS actually started showing up, and things started smelling like gas, then they told us there was a fire in the basement, ” Banholzer said. 

Lucido later confirmed the boiler did not catch on fire. The boiler overheated due to low water which is what caused the smoke. 

“The boiler is only seven years old, but unfortunately there was a malfunction which allowed the water level to drop and it overheated,” Lucido said.

Cooper and other residents waited outside for DPS to give them further instructions and assistance.

“It took about an hour for us to get any real information. There were four DPS cars with nine officers and three fire trucks,” he said. “Turns out one of the central heaters [almost] exploded.”

Students were relocated to a room in Xavier Hall while waiting for DPS and the St. Louis Fire Department to resolve the issue. 

After three hours, residents were allowed to reenter Marguerite Hall. “We were told we could go back and it was safe to live in Marg, but it smelled really bad because of all the smoke,” Banholzer said. 

Banholzer left for the day and when he returned, he said Marguerite Hall was in worse condition. 

“I came back around 10 p.m., everything still smelled kind of bad, and everything was just really cold because we opened up the windows,” he said.

The building’s backup heating system was used to try to return heat to the building, but that broke down as well. After the backup heating system didn’t work, residents were given individual space heaters for their dorms. 

“They walked door to door last night and it was originally one per suite, but then it turned into one per room,” Banholzer said. 

In addition to the HVAC failure, some residents are also facing power issues. 

“[We] were told to unplug all unnecessary electronics, because if [we] had too many things plugged in, [our] power would go out” Banholzer said. “A couple of my friends don’t have power.” 

Maggie Fischer, another resident of Marguerite Hall, weighed in on how residents are reacting to the situation. 

“People are starting to email to ask for reimbursement on housing,” Fischer said. “Is there going to be a new boiler? Is this just gonna be what it’s like for finals week?” 

Facilities brought in additional outside help to get the old boiler in Marguerite Hall running as a temporary solution while they worked on fixing the boiler that overheated. 

“We’ve been working on replacing tubes in the old boiler and it has taken much longer than originally anticipated,” Lucido said.

Lucido and his team are still investigating what will be done about the broken boiler. 

“The newer boiler that overheated warped some of the sections and we are still exploring the extent of the damage to determine if it will be a total replacement or just a replacement of certain sections,” he said. 

A temporary boiler was delivered at 4 p.m. and hooked up to the building’s system by 7:30 p.m, Dec. 3.