Stratford school board gives consent to three-phase plan for repairs
By Kris Leonhardt
Editor
STRATFORD — During the Oct. 10 meeting of the School District of Stratford board of education, board members approved a three-phase plan for addressing the existing issue with deteriorated floor joists below the Stratford High School/Middle School locker room showers.
On Friday, Sept. 16, structural engineers discovered damage to the metal joists while renovating the High School/Middle School locker rooms.
“The affected area basically is from the bathrooms down all of the way through the girls shower areas, other than the handicap showers in the girls’ locker room, and the other part of it is Mr. (Joe) Schwabe’s office and the laundry room,” said Stratford School Superintendent Scott Winch.
At the meeting contractor Miron Construction presented board members with a plan to address the rusted joists.
“We can do the minimal fix right now,” said Tim Andrew, vice president of northern operations for Miron Construction. “Then to put you back in service is going to take a bunch of temporary work to put it back together so you can use it.
“With the timing of everything, how it is laying out right now, the work we can do in multiple phases, … we can actually keep you with two locker rooms through this work. Again, they will not have showers in them, but we can give you two locker rooms the entire duration, and we can actually flip it to get you functioning locker rooms, so you can start utilizing the locker rooms in a permanent situation in a much quicker fashion and less cost on a temporary standpoint.
“With us opening up the floors and repairing some of the floor work, it actually allows us to get underneath there and get the plumbing done before closing the floors back up, so we can kind of expedite that process and get that done a little bit quicker.”
The work on the locker rooms was not scheduled until next summer, but the opening of the floors will provide easier access to subcontractors, allowing them to preempt some of the repair work.
In the three-phase operational plan, two areas will be opened for use as girls and boys locker rooms while the third area is being repaired. Once the first area is finished, it will become the girls’ locker room, and the second area will be repaired and so on until all three areas are completed.
“So what I would end up doing is getting you three fully functioning locker rooms with showers and toilets and everything before your school year is up,” explained Andrew. “Everything you see here, with the exception of cutting the (two floors) out and putting in the new structure and pouring the slab, … was part of the referendum regardless.”
“There might be some savings in labor because it won’t be a confined space for labor,” said Winch.
Andrew added, “Because I can’t 100 percent quantify it, to the best of our ability we’ve determined what we believe is the extent of the (damage is) down there, but until we pull it out, we might find another two joists that need to be repaired and more concrete that needs to be pulled out.”
The plan recommended by Andrew involved the replacement of the deteriorated joists with I-beams.
Following the presentation by Miron Construction, the school gave consent on the proposed action to address the decaying floor.
“This will also eliminate next August,” said Winch, referring to the scheduled repairs occurring during the start of football season. “The locker rooms will be done. The lockers will be ready to go by Aug. 1, (2017).”
Work is scheduled to begin in the locker room area on Nov. 1.
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