The Coppell High School sewers have become somewhat infamous among its students.
On Jan. 7, Coppell High School was interrupted by a surprise pond forming near the library during its first passing period. Administration re-routed the student traffic through the back hall to keep the flooding in control, but had to close down the restrooms until it was repaired at the end of sixth period.
However, this is not the first time it occurred.
Just prior to the end of fifth period on Nov. 12, students were required to stay inside their classes until further notice, as the campus experienced plumbing issues. Nearly two hours later, an early dismissal was called at 12 p.m, and students were ecstatic.
“The day before I was studying until 4 a.m, dreading the math test I was going to take,” CHS sophomore Shalmi Sen said. “I was super happy when it got cancelled.”
Many have speculated that a bathroom flooded and the hallways were too wet to use, but the incident on Jan. 7 had nothing more than slight leakage at the bottom stairs of the main hallway.
“It was like the period was extended and you couldn’t leave,” CHS sophomore Sean Kim said. “Some people were working at the start, but eventually everyone went back to playing on their iPad.”
The issues can be explained simply by backed up piping.
“This is a sewer line backup,” CHS Principal Laura Springer said. “It’s not that the bathrooms are overflowing, it’s that there was something backed up in the pipes.”
Near the main hallway stairs is a pipe cap, with the sewers running directly underneath. During both events, something was clogged into those pipes, and all the incoming water had nowhere to go but up.
”We don’t know what blocked it because they just pushed it through the pipes,” Springer said. “It’s probably people putting stuff down the toilets that they shouldn’t.”
To clear the pipes, a special machine called an auger is needed to get the water flowing again. On Nov. 12, the school’s best auger was out of service, and its other options couldn’t reach far enough into the pipes to get to the blockage.
Since the district contracts their custodial staff, it hired Aramark to supply them with a sufficient auger.
“Now we have an emergency auger,” Springer said. “If something happens again, we can get it cleared.”
All the bathroom piping between A through E hall is routed through a single point, which happens to be where the blockage was. The school chose that it would be safer to close these off to ensure that nothing else comes above the surface.
All the other restrooms on the north side and fine arts building remained operational.
Much of the same happened on Jan. 7, where the pipes were clogged once again. But now equipped with multiple augers and past experience, the situation was quickly averted. “We may be walking a long way to the restroom, but we will keep in school as much as we can,” Springer said.
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