As the last autumn leaves fall, the nights get colder and the rain begins to drench Portland, one thing is certain: winter is coming.
For UP students, winter approaching can mean exciting things, like Thanksgiving, Christmas and possibly a snowfall or two if we’re really lucky.
But when temperatures plummet and the sun sets earlier, off-campus students have to deal with the less enticing aspects of winter and how it can affect their rental houses. The summer problems of rising house temperatures and buzzing fruit flies evolve into a new host of winter-related problems, like heating issues, insect invasions and risks of flooding.
In order to combat potential problems, Fay Beeler, assistant director of Physical Plant, advises all off-campus students to let Physical Plant or their individual landlords know as soon as a problem becomes apparent before it can escalate into a larger issue.
“The most important thing is to let us know,” Beeler said. “We can’t fix it if we don’t know about it.”
Whether it’s an ant invasion, heating problems or a damp basement, off-campus students have become creative in figuring out ways to prevent winter from getting the best of their humble abodes.
Insect Invasion
When winter sets in, off-campus students may find some new creepy-crawly boarders in their houses. As the weather gets colder, insects look for a warm environment to survive which they find in students’ cozy houses.
“It’s getting cold outside and they’re making their way into a warmer area,” Beeler said. “It’s normal, it’s just part of the process here.”
Lately, Beeler has seen an increased number of stink bugs and ladybugs both on and off campus, but believes as the weather gets colder, they will soon die out and won’t be a concern anymore.
UP isn’t the only place in Oregon crawling with stink bugs. As it turns out, this year the brown marmorated stink bug has spread all over Oregon up through the Columbia River Gorge and into Washington State, according to researchers at Oregon State University.
While senior Kay Bodmer, who lives in a University-owned rental house, has seen these stink bugs lurking around her house, her kitchen recently faced a large invasion of ants. They came in under the kitchen sink and quickly made their way to the sugar and flour cabinet.
“They were all over the back of the cabinet and there was this constant line zig-zagging along the cabinet because they were all following the same path,” she said.
Bodmer and her housemates received ant traps from Physical Plant, but when these proved unsuccessful they were driven to other methods to rid their house of the unwelcome visitors. They took their food out of the cabinet and now keep it in sealed plastic bags. After unsuccessfully creating a line of salt to deter the ants, they ended up buying their own ant traps which vanquished them.
As with all insects, Beeler believes the decreasing temperatures in the next few weeks will offer a more permanent solution to bug problems, despite requests to exterminate bugs at off-campus houses.
“It’s annoying, but we won’t extinguish them,” she said. “It will stop when we have more consistent cold weather.”
Heating Woes
Keeping houses warm in the winter is important to many off-campus students. But heating a house can be expensive, and the desire to have a warm house can conflict with the need to save money on a heating bill.
“A lot of times, students aren’t used to having to pay for these kinds of things so it’s a shock,” Beeler said. “Heating bills can be fairly significant at times.”
To maintain a level of comfort, Beeler advises students to keep their heat on low during the day when they are in classes and then turn it up at night. She also recommends keeping thermostats at about 68 degrees Fahrenheit on average to keep costs down.
“That does feel cold, so you need to wear socks and sweatpants and that kind of stuff,” she said.
Sometimes, even a newer house can present heating challenges. Senior Emily Reynolds’ off-campus house, while it was built within the last decade, tends to distribute more heat upstairs and leave the downstairs very cold.
But she and her housemates have found different ways to be comfortable whether they are upstairs or downstairs.
“We keep a lot of blankets downstairs and upstairs we have a window cracked usually because the heater just gets super hot upstairs,” Reynolds said. “We keep the oven open a lot after we’ve been cooking to keep the downstairs warm, so we’ve just found little things that have worked, but it was definitely annoying in the beginning.”
Facing off against Floods
Constant rain in Portland can be irritating for many people, but for those students with basements, significant rain poses a risk of flooding through the basement foundations.
“We take the roof drains and we take them away from the house, but we really run into trouble when we have a big downpour and there’s no place for the water to go so it sits, it goes down into the ground and then water will always find some little way into a house,” Beeler said.
Senior Katie Bauer encountered this problem last month when Portland experienced a major storm that knocked down trees and cut power to much of the area, including many houses in the UP neighborhood. Her basement bedroom closet in her UP-owned rental house flooded, causing her shoes to mold.
Living in the basement can mean damp conditions. But Bauer helps alleviate this problem by keeping jars of water around different parts of her room to collect water.
“It’s just the dampness, I think we all can feel it,” she said.
Other problems - according to Beeler
- Keeping the heat on to at least 61 degrees during Thanksgiving and winter breaks to prevent water freezing which can lead to exploding pipes.
- Houses that are heated with oil tanks need to keep an eye on their oil levels, otherwise low levels can lead to sediments being picked up and ruining the heat filters.
- Raccoons, mice and other critters can burrow underneath houses and destroy a house’s insulation.
- Contact Physical Plant phone number: 943-7306
