We had an air handler lose a bearing last week, causing the belt drive to begin to smoke prior to failing completely. This incident allows me a good opportunity to remind everyone in the building to be proactive in calling the campus police after hours in the event of strange smells or noises from the building or suspicious behavior by people in the foyers, labs or classrooms of the building. 

The campus police can be reached with a campus phone at 5-5555 or on your cell phone at 410-455-5555. The police are well versed in alerting the correct offices in order to handle any type of incident or emergency.  

Thank you for your attention. 

The fourth floor Lancer glassware washer has been repaired. 

Water had gotten into the control board wiring as shown in the photo after the unit was pulled out from under the stainless steel counter and used as additional staging space while loading or unloading the glassware. 

Please do not move the glasswashers and try to keep the areas organized so others can use the equipment. 

Thank you!

I have the communication office coming through doing some UMBC promotional photos today. Research labs will be included in the exercise. No one will be photographed without their permission and of course a signed release if they are interested in being included. 

Details for May 2025 High Temperature Hot Water (HTHW) Outage

This is regarding the annually scheduled High-Temperature Hot Water (HTHW) system shutdown that will affect multiple buildings across campus. The HTHW system affects heat, air conditioning and domestic hot water at sinks, showers, etc. 

The shutdown will begin Friday, May 23 and conclude by Monday, June 9, 2025, and is part of a major infrastructure maintenance and repair to improve reliability and system performance.

- Chemistry Building, HHMI (Howard Hughes Medical Institute)

- Physics Building

- Erickson Hall

- Performing Arts & Humanities Building (PAHB)

- Interdisciplinary Life Sciences Building (ILSB)

- Engineering & Computing Services (ECS)

- Information Technology & Engineering (ITE)

- Library (to include Special Collections)

- Sondheim Hall

- Administration Building

- Commons

- RAC

- Biology/Schwartz

- UC

- Sherman

- Math/Psych

- Public Policy

- Fine Arts

- Central Plant/Police Station

Domestic Hot Water Availability:

 The food service venues at The Commons and Chick-fil-A will continue to have domestic hot water via stand-by electric water heaters. True Grits Dining Hall is not affected.

 RAC locker room bathrooms near the pool will have domestic hot water via stand-by electric water heaters. The pools will not be heated.

 Other locations will lose domestic and lab hot water service for the duration.

 The hot water outage impacts the comfort level of the air conditioning system. Building temperature and humidity controls will be closely monitored throughout the shutdown.

- May 23–24 – System shutdown and staged cooldown process.

- May 28–June 7 – Infrastructure work including heat exchanger and valve replacements.

- June 7–9 – System refill, pressure testing, and final restoration.

The second floor glasswasher which had been an "Error 90 door fault" has been repaired via consult with the manufacturer. I apologize for the length the unit has been out of service, however once the manufacturer was made aware of the cost of a diagnostic visit to troubleshoot, not repair the issue, they became much more receptive to walking me through the potential problems. 

When using any of the glasswashers, please let the machine run entirely through it's cycle. The issue we had here was a contact on the wrong side of the locking mechanism. 

Once again, I appreciate everyone's patience. 

We are missing a vacuum pump from the second floor, room 207B. You you have seen this or perhaps have borrowed this, please return it to Dr Alicea.

Thank you!

The university had an aborted software upgrade late last week for the card reader system where some folks lost access.

I'm in a meeting until 10 this morning. I'll be able to check everyone's status when I get back into the office. Please let me know if anyone in your lab or you yourself have lost card access to the building labs or elevators. 

Thank you!

The stand alone autoclave on the third floor is once again operational. Please familiarize yourself with the use of this equipment. There is no foot pedal to open and close the machine. You will need to open and close the door manually, so thermal gloves are a must. 

This will be the only operational autoclave in the building for roughly 3 weeks at the end of this semester, so please let me know if you run into any problems with it. 

Thank you for your attention. 

The University will be having their critical, annual High temperature hot water outage from May 23rd, when the water will be turned off to cool and drain until June 9th when all systems should be up and optimally running again.  

During this time we will have cool temperatures in all buildings on campus. Supplemental heat will be provided  to the varium by am electric boiler. We will not have steam on campus due to the outage, humidifiers will provide humidity to the vivarium and the building will be down to a single stand alone autoclave on the third floor. The Lancer glass washers in the building will not be affected by the outage as they use building tap water. 

Supplemental heaters if necessary will be available and provided by the physical plant for tropical fish rooms and the second floor environmental room if needed. Please spread the word about this outage through your labs. There are close to a dozen individual projects on campus which will occur during this outage. The start date is set in stone and ideally, the end date is equally reliable. 

Thank you for your attention.

In the future, please notify me of any of the autoclaves not behaving properly.

Thank you!