Girls using the first floor bathroom last week were in for a surprise when their rear ends were greeted by a steam bath. In a seemingly unprovoked fit of rebellion, the toilets near the commons had started flushing and filling with hot water. The heat could be felt up to a foot above the seats. Confusion ensued.

“At first I thought my pee was really warm,” one student said.

Luckily, the issue was plumbing-based and did not involve urine temperature.

“They’ve got the wrong line hooked up to the toilets,” Smith, a Garfield custodian, said. “They hooked the hot to the cold and the cold to the hot.”

Plumbers across the city echoed Smith’s diagnosis.

“The hot water line would have to be connected to the cold water supply,” Al, of Top Gun Plumbing, said over the phone. “I don’t know why that would happen, though. That would be pretty unlikely.”

Nick, a plumber with Beacon Plumbing and Heating Mechanical Inc., called the mix-up a “cross connection.” He explained that, with most water heaters, a cold water line leads into the heater and a hot water line leads out. The lines could get crossed or connected in the wrong place, causing building-wide problems – in this case, condensation on the outside of the toilet bowls.

Possibly due to his employment by a company that urges unruly toilet owners to “Stop Freakin’… Call Beacon,” Nick was able to quickly identify the cross-connection’s benefits.

“Might be comfortable for your butt,” he said, laughing. “It would be a really good prank.”

It turns out that the cross-connection wasn’t a mistake or a prank, but a solution to an entirely different problem involving an entirely different set of toilets. According to the project manager for the new Garfield, hot water was routed to the first-floor bathroom to temporarily boost water pressure on the third floor. After less than a week, the school’s acquisition of a booster pump returned the pressure to normal, leaving the first-floor toilets free to return to their chosen flushing temperature of approximately sixty-five degrees Fahrenheit.