Water supply restored to Hammersmith buildings after two-week outage

Running water was restored to two buildings on Imperial’s Hammersmith campus on Tuesday, after a two-week outage forced the buildings to close.

The fracture of an external mains water pipe meant that the Commonwealth Building and Wolfson Education Centre had been without water since 16th January.

‘I am very grateful for everyone’s patience and understanding during this unfortunate incident,’ said Dr Chris Watkins, apologising for the disruption.

He thanked the College, Imperial NHS Estates, and contractors, ‘who have worked extremely hard to resolve problems, often during inhospitable hours.’

Meanwhile COO Robert Kerse issued a second apology to all College members over the ongoing issues with the heating system on Imperial’s South Kensington campus.

The campus is updating its heating network to achieve net-zero targets, but its temporary system has failed to meet demand, causing low indoor temperatures.

In the Sir Ernst Chain Building, temperatures have fallen below 10°C, causing illness and disrupting experimental work.

‘Thank you for your patience while we address these issues,’ said Kerst, urging people to report low temperatures to the Customer Services Centre.