A major leak in the lobby of the theatre turned out to be badly leaking cast iron pipes in the ceiling for the utility room that sits above the lobby. This became very apparent when I ran the air conditioner in the lobby for a show and when I came back the next morning, two tiles had ballooned and filled with water and another water soaked tile split in half and dropped to the floor. The condensation for the front AC empties into a floor drain in the utility room and the pipes connected to the drain were leaking.
Â
After the two shows we had in November (Los Braceros and Tierra) as well as the Youth Theatre Shrek the Musical Jr. show in December, there was enough money to purchased some inexpensive ceiling tiles made out of PVC that are water proof and meet fire codes.
Â
Of course, the first thing that had to be done was replace the corroded cast iron pipe (it’s a recurring theme with the theatre!) Also in need of replacement where the six lighting fixtures in the lobby. The junction boxes for these fixtures weigh about 2lbs each and were just sitting on top of the acoustic tiles. Every place a junction box was sitting, the acoustic tile was drooping. So in addition to replacing the ceiling tiles, we needed to replace the lights with lightweight LED light fixtures.
The new ceiling tiles are all 2ft by 2ft. That meant that the new tiles sagged because there is no support in the ceiling tile grid at the 2ft mark. The previous 2ft by 4ft acoustic tiles didn’t need it. 2ft grid bars were not readily available (unless I bought a package bundled with a bunch of other lengths I didn’t need) so the solution was to glue the new tiles to the old ones wherever there was more than 2ft in length needed. Every glued tile took 24 hours to cure.
Â
Luckily, when the CBS show S.W.A.T. shot a scene in the theatre in March of 2022, they replaced a bunch of damaged tiles and left unused new ones behind, donating them to the theatre. That meant that I had just enough acoustic tiles in new condition to use as non-bubbled bases for the new ceiling tiles.
This whole process took about 5 days! The new tiles are more in keeping with the vintage time period, the new LED ceiling lights are much more power efficient and, most importantly, the new ABS drain pipes don’t leak!
Â
