Housing

Say hello to Kaust housing.  I have.  And I can't wait to say goodbye.

I know.  It looks nice.  But it isn't.

Any discussion about Kaust would be hopelessly incomplete without a substantial essay on housing and its staggering list of headaches.  The array of problems with the accommodations affect almost everyone on campus and they affect them deeply.  At minimum, housing complaints account for a plurality of the diatribes that I've heard from colleagues.  And it makes sense, after all these are our homes.  We live in them, we eat in them, we work in them, we sleep in them.  We expect a measure of comfort and security in order to sustain our health and morale.  Because our living space is such an integral part of our lives, their shortcomings are especially bothersome.

My own apartment's history ranks among the most plagued with problems.  It is by no means the worst, but it has an extensive sample of the housing faults that have been reported by students and faculty.  As such, my apartment is the perfect case study for a Kaust housing discussion.  The volume of commentary required to faithfully capture the state of housing requires a floor-by-floor critique, but first a few words about the apartment as a whole.

The design is impractical.  I have three small floors stacked one on top of the other so that all of my living space is arranged vertically.  I have to go up or down stairs anytime I want to change rooms.  This is silly.  And think about all the stairs in all of the apartments.  In one building there are about ten apartments.  Each apartment has two or three flights of stairs.  That's a lot of unnecessary stairs.  This means wasted space and wasted material.  If they had built apartments of the same square footage but oriented them horizontally, they could have avoided building all those stairs, made better use of space, and had a more convenient floor plan for the residents.  It also would have made the building's plumbing a lot simpler.

Another apartment wide problem is the pervasive use of gypsum board.  It is constantly absorbing atmospheric moisture and playing host to extensive mold colonies.  Every knowledgeable construction person who has come to inspect my apartment has shaken his head at this.  It is a problem.  It will continue to be a problem.  I have recently had all the gypsum board in my apartment replaced.  No more than a month later, the paint covering the seams between the boards began to crack as the underlying boards swelled and shifted.

The last issue we'll collectively identify as 'water problems'.  The causes are many, but they all result in water showing up in places that it shouldn't be.  At one point, it was "raining" on all three floors of my apartment.  On the third floor it was because hot air that seeped in through holes in the mortar was condensing on uninsulated air ducts.  On the second floor it was because the air conditioner drainage pan was placed in the wrong position.  On the first floor, it was because the pipes on the second floor weren't properly sealed, so every time I took a shower on the second floor a monsoon occurred below.  You can imagine that all of this water caused a lot of damage.  There were piles of ruined gypsum board, soggy blobs of insulation, and ubiquitous mold, not to mention my own disgust with Kaust housing and maintenance.  All of this eventually led to a full-scale overhaul of my apartment.  More on that later.

This ceiling collapsed from water saturation.

The general craftsmanship of this place is sad.  I can't tell you how many times maintenance workers have lamented the senseless mess of pipes and wires hidden by the walls and ceilings, or how many finishing touches were left undone.  It is abundantly clear that the people who constructed this place did so hastily and without much regard for quality.

Par for the course.

Next up, we begin with the first floor.