Resources
Maintenance & Internet
We pride ourselves in providing quality and timely service to our residents. If you need support regarding maintenance or the provided high-speed Wi-Fi, please let us know. All maintenance requests must be submitted through the StarPortal system. We work to complete maintenance requests as soon as possible. Once submitted, make sure to log in to StarPortal to check the status of your request.
How to submit a maintenance request
- Login with your UTORid and password
- Click on “Maintenance” in the top menu bar. If you don’t see it, then check the menu dropdown (click on the 3 white lines in the menu bar).
- On the maintenance page, scroll down and click the ‘New Job’ button
- Under Room Category, select if you are reporting a maintenance request for your room or a shared space, and click the room number to highlight it
- Select your maintenance report category and item
- In the Description box, describe the nature of your issue
- Confirm whether you agree to allow a staff member into your room/suite by clicking the checkbox
- Lastly, to submit your request, click ‘Save Request’
- Afterwards, you can view your saved maintenance requests on the Maintenance page
Have a Specific Issue?
A thermostat on the wall inside the living room area controls the temperature in your suite. Simply adjust the thermostat to a temperature agreeable to everyone in the suite (understanding that this may require some negotiation, and may form part of your Suitemate Agreement). Do not set the thermostat to extreme temperatures as this will not make your suite cooler or warmer any more quickly.
The red dial controls heating and will only work during the winter. The blue dial controls cooling and will only work during the summer.During the seasonal transition period (approx. May & Oct.), the building will be on neutral mode and neither heating nor cooling will be available for a limited period of time. The fans will continue to move air, but the thermostat reading will not be accurate.
Fans and heaters can be borrowed at the Residence Services Desk. If there are problems with temperature control, please fill out an Online Maintenance.
Dispose of food waste and excess hair in the garbage and not down any drain. Do not put anything other than toilet paper in the toilets since they clog easily. Dispose of feminine hygiene products, Q-tips, dental floss, food, and paper towels in the garbage.
Residents are responsible for providing their own shower curtains. Make sure that you install a long enough shower curtain, keep it closed when you are showering, and dry the floor after you have finished. Residents will be held responsible for the cost of repairing water damage on the bathroom walls that will result if you are not careful.
Vacuum cleaner bags can be obtained free of charge from the Service Desk; simply fill out an Online Maintenance Request. Check your vacuum bag periodically since the vacuum works more efficiently if you change the bag before it gets full. Also, remember that your vacuum is not a wet vac and can only be used for dry dirt and dust.
For emergencies, please immediately notify the front desk (416-946-8881) or the RA on Call (416-800-6068) if it is after hours. Examples of emergencies include:
- Flooding
- Power outages
- All elevators out of order
- Hate-motivated or gang-related tags or graffiti
If any of your overhead lights or lamps need replacing, just fill out an Online Maintenance Request.
If your mop head is in need of replacement, please fill out a Maintenance Request for a new one.
Report any use of fire extinguishers to the Graduate House Office via an Online Maintenance Request. If you are missing a fire extinguisher in the kitchen area of your suite, please let us know. Tampering with the fire extinguishers is prohibited. Such tampering may set off the fire alarm and will result in sanctions. Only use a fire extinguisher in the event of a fire.
At Graduate House, we take pride in offering well-maintained spaces that are regularly cleaned. That being said, we are a communal living space and pest issues may occur from time to time. A successful pest prevention program is a joint effort involving building management, maintenance and residents. Some key parts of the program are prevention and communication, and this starts with cleanliness of the suites and having a conversation with your suitemates about preventative measures.
The most common problem areas are:
- under the sink
- backs of cupboards
- other food storage areas
- behind the refrigerator and stove
- behind the toilet and around the bathtub
- bedrooms – the mattress
If you have observed pests in your suite:
You will need to complete a maintenance report via StarRez. Our Facilities team will assess your suite and will have a pest control contractor treat your unit. Please feel free to submit multiple maintenance requests, so we can track and follow-up appropriately. Graduate House pest control contractors use environmentally friendly solutions mandated by the Government of Ontario. At this step, residents will not be required to vacate their suite and we will be providing notice via direct email correspondence.
Best Practices to prevent pests
- Frequent sweeping/vacuuming & mopping of all floor surfaces including around and under cupboards and appliances
- Frequent cleaning of bathroom/kitchen countertops and under cabinet enclosures
- Encase food items e.g. dry goods such as breakfast cereals, chips, rice, flour and crackers in reusable sealable containers.
- Maintain stove tops clean and free of food scraps.
- Rinse food and beverage containers before discarding or recycling.
- Clean your garbage and recycling bins frequently.
- Dispose of compost bags daily regardless how full the bag is in the appropriate Compost bin in the recycling rooms
- Do not leave garbage bags on the floor of the Garbage room. Place garbage bags in the garbage chute
- Keep spaces decluttered – clothing, laundry, and bedding should not be kept on the floor or stored in baskets for a long period of time.
Pest control measures that may be used at Graduate House
- Exclusion Work | Working closely with pest control specialists, areas of entry are identified and sealed, or mesh is installed to prevent the entry of pests. This is an essential step in keeping mice from entering the building in the first place.
- Baiting | Bait boxes hold poison and are a relatively disruption-free way to treat pests. Our pest control technicians inspect these boxes on their scheduled visits. They can see how much bait has been taken, and thereby, identify which areas have the most activity. Bait boxes use a poison that works over time. Our pest control strategy uses both immediate and long-term approaches to combat pests.
- Electronic Devices | These devices emit ultrasonic noise, which temporarily will keep mice at bay. Mice become accustomed to the sounds after a relatively short period of time, so this is a temporary measure to deter a mouse from specific areas.
- Snap Traps | Mice are lured to the traps by a small amount of natural seed and nut paste. Once the mouse steps on the trigger, the tap suddenly closes. This device provides immediate and permanent results. Traps need to be monitored and emptied after each use. Our team can assist with this. Devices are typically placed in areas of known activity.
If you would like snap traps placed in, or removed from your suites, please email maintenance.gradhouse@utoronto.ca and someone will be happy to assist you.
We need your help!
Pest control measures are most effective when everyone ensures their spaces are not attracting pests. Also:
- If you see something say something | if you see a mouse gain entry from an exterior location, please let our team know so we can evaluate if exclusion work is a possible solution.
- Timeliness is important so we can ensure immediate follow-up.
- Communicate with your suitemates so that any measures used are done in collaboration with all occupants of the suite.
- Ensure your suite isn’t a mouse paradise. Mice love soft places to nest, and they need food and water to survive so please make sure to consider these factors as you maintain your suite. Ensuring counters are scrubbed clean and food scraps are swept up is important.
- Review the details under “Best practices to prevent pests” and take this opportunity to go over suitemate cleaning duties.
Recycling & Compost
At Grad House, we’re committed to reducing our environmental footprint by diverting waste through our recycling and composting program. Look for the signs in our recycling and compost rooms to help you with sorting your recyclables into the correct bins. For more information about can recycled and composted, view the informational poster below.
At Grad House, each suite is provided with two recycling bins. Paper should go into the blue bin and recyclable containers should go into the grey bin. Then, you can bring your bins to the recycling and composting room on your floor and empty them out into the corresponding, larger bins. We have signs above each bin to help you identify what goes where.
A container is anything that has held food, or other solids, liquids, or gases, such as soaps or hair spray. For example, egg cartons and milk bags are considered containers and should be placed in the blue bin labelled “Containers” in the recycling room.
Taking a moment to give your recyclables a rinse will ensure that they end up being processed and recycled. If you put un-rinsed containers into the recycling bin, any food residue can contaminate other clean recyclables in the prevent the entire load of recyclables from being processed.
No, black plastics are non-recyclable. Put any black plastics, such as cutlery and food containers, in the garbage.
Flatten cardboard boxes and place them beside the recycling bins in the recycling/compost rooms. Don’t place cardboard inside the bins, as they are recycled separately from other items.
Any electronic waste or other hazardous waste can be disposed of at one of the city’s Drop-Off Depots. Please do not place these items in the garbage or recycling, as they may contain hazardous materials that shouldn’t be placed in landfills. You can also bring any items that are in good condition to the Swap Shop. Batteries can be recycled on campus at the following locations.
- Composting Program
- In 2018, we introduced a building-wide composting program. While the Green Bin is widely used by residential households, many apartments and condos don’t offer composting. With our new composting program, we hope to help lead the way towards a zero waste future.
- Improved Sorting of Recycling
- With our dual stream recycling system, our goal is to improve the separation between different types of recyclables and lower the contamination rates of recyclable waste. Oftentimes, contaminated recycling isn’t processed and is disposed in landfills instead. Our aim is to provide our recycling processors with contaminant-free recyclables, so that they can be processed into high quality materials that have a higher chance of being recycled into new products.
- Donating Gently Used Items
- In partnership with Diabetes Canada, we’ve made it easier for residents to donate their gently used items through our donation program. There’s a permanent donation bin in our first floor recycling and compost room. During our major move-out days, we have donation bins set out on each floor. With your help, we can ensure textiles, household items, and other usable goods are diverted from landfills.
- What’s next?
- You tell us! How would you like to see Grad House become greener? We’d love to hear from you, so email us at information.gradhouse@utoronto.ca
Internet
Residents at Graduate House are provided with secure wireless internet, through the UofT Internet Network. Residents also have access to an Ethernet Port for a wired connection. Please note that the use of personal routers is prohibited.
Graduate House uses the same Wi-Fi as the rest of the University, so if you’ve accessed UofT Wi-Fi before your should already be set up to use it.
If not, while we can’t give detailed instructions for every type of device here, if you can access the web using cellular data or some other means such instructions are available for most popular devices at https://wireless.utoronto.ca/connect.
Failing that, the SSID (or network name) that you want to connect to is “UofT”. You’ll need to use WPA2 Enterprise security. Authentication (EAP) is PEAPv0, also known as PEAP with MSCHAPv2. Your login name will be your UTORid and your password will be your UTORid password. You may need to accept a certificate from “radius.wireless.utoronto.ca”.
Every bedroom in Graduate House has an ethernet jack that you can use to connect your computer or other wired device. If there’s a wireless access point (“WAP”) in your room – a small white box on the wall near the floor with “Aruba” written on it – you want to use one of the jacks on the bottom of the WAP. If not, there should be a jack in the wall of your room marked with blue plastic. Note that the ethernet and phone jacks at Graduate House are the same size, so make sure you’re using the right one! The phone jack is generally marked with red plastic.
If you’re connecting to a WAP, you’ll need to use authenticated ethernet. Most modern operating systems support that, but some (most notably Windows) don’t have it turned on by default. If you need help activating authorized ethernet, e-mail network.gradhouse@utoronto.ca. Once it’s activated, you should be able to connect with your UTORid and password.
Conversely, if you’re connecting directly to a port in the wall, once you’ve plugged in, start your web browser and try to go to any website – you should be redirected to http://resnet.utoronto.ca/ . (If the redirection doesn’t work for you, try manually entering that URL and see if that works – some computers detect the redirect as somebody trying to hijack your connection and block it.) Until then, it’s normal for your computer to report that it has no internet access or “limited” internet access. At that page, you’ll be asked to enter your UTORid and password (you’ll only need to do this once per device). You’ll then be asked to restart your computer. Do so, and you should then have full internet access.
In both cases your computer should be set to get its IP address and its DNS information automatically through DHCP.
If your device has an ethernet port but can’t do authenticated ethernet (such as a game console or many network printers), e-mail network.gradhouse@utoronto.ca with the device’s wired MAC address, your UTORid, and your room number and we’ll register the device for you. This may take a couple of days.
If your device neither has an ethernet port nor can authenticate via WPA2 Enterprise, then we’re afraid you won’t be able to use that device at Graduate House. Unfortunately, this includes many popular home devices such as Chromecasts, some network printers, etc.
We don’t provide detailed instructions for every operating system, but what’s important is that your computer be set to get its IP address and its DNS information automatically through DHCP. Once you’ve done that and connected your computer to the blue jack, fire up your web browser and try to go to any website – you should be redirected to http://resnet.utoronto.ca/. (If the redirection doesn’t work for you, try manually entering that URL and see if that works.) Until then, it’s normal for your computer to report that it has no internet access or “limited” internet access. At that page, you’ll be asked to enter your UTORid and password (you’ll only need to do this once per device). You’ll then be asked to restart your computer. Do so, and you should then have full internet access.
At Graduate House, you can access the UofT Wi-Fi signal throughout the entire building. Each bedroom also has access to an Ethernet Port for a wired connection (If your bedroom has a white WAP box, you should use the Yellow colored port for a wired connection- otherwise, you can connect directly to the Ethernet Port on the wall).
All devices that are connected to the UofT network will have to be authenticated before use. to do this, use your device to visit any webpage and you should be redirected to http://resnet.utoronto.ca – try typing that in if the redirect doesn’t work. Once you’ve registered at that page with your UTORid and password, you’ll be asked to restart your computer, you should only need to do so once – You will then be able to access the Internet. Please note that the use of personal routers is prohibited.
Trouble?
If you’ve tried these instructions but still can’t get connected, help is available.
The Resnet IT Specialist is typically available between 10am – 6pm Monday to Friday, and can be reached by e-mail at network.gradhouse@utoronto.ca. For problems accessing the Wi-Fi, you can also contact Robarts Library’s Information Commons Help Desk at 416-978-HELP (4357) or help.desk@utoronto.ca
