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More mold found in Westport, CT school gym that has a spring under it. SMH hears of these occurrences often, where schools are built on wetlands, a very poor decision that leads to mold and moisture.
http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=18752806&BRD=1654&PAG=461&dept_id=12915&rfi=6
Mold found in King's Highway gym
By:Meg Learson Grosso, Staff Writer
08/27/2007
Gavin Anderson, Chairman of the Kings Highway School Maintenance committee, announced last week that moisture and mold were found on the walls of the gymnasium at King's Highway Elementary School, and more mold has been found since then. However, remediation that was planned more than a week ago, has been ongoing for the past few days.
On Tuesday night, Anderson told the Minuteman that he is hopeful that the school will still open on time. Barring any drastic new findings, he expected it would.
The outer walls of the gym are made of stone and are partially below ground level. The space between these outer walls and the inner sheet rock walls of the gym provided a space where moisture could be trapped.
"When we trap the moisture and we have nutrients (the sheet rock), that's a good condition for mold to grow," said Gil Cormier, a consultant from New Britain-based Occupational Risk Control Services. He was hired by the town this summer to investigate and remediate mold and air quality at the elementary school. At last Wednesday's meeting of the King's Highway Elementary School, Cormier, added, "It's been going on for a long time. I don't know how extensive it is. If it's not a problem now, it will be in the future."
His comment was prescient.
As a result, the inner walls, the metal studs on which they rest, and parts of the ceiling were removed, beginning on Tuesday of this week. Preparation for this removal was begun on Friday and continued on Saturday and Monday. Negative air chambers, or air locks, were set up around the gym so that mold, dust, and dirt would not escape into the school while the remediation was done. Materials were wrapped in plastic before they were taken away.
Nancy Harris, Assistant Superintendent for Business for the Westport Schools, announced at last week's meeting of the Maintenance Committee, that she had already contacted AAIS, a remediation company, to do the work, since Anderson had told her about the mold a few days before. AAIS had done the preparation for taking down the modular classroom which was removed this summer. It was attached to the back of the school and found to have mold in September of 2006.
There was to be a meeting yesterday afternoon at 5:00 p.m. at Town Hall, in which all members of the committee, parents, Health Department officials, the technical sub-committee, and school representatives, Harris and Facilities Manager Gary Martin, were to be present. Anderson said he wanted the entire committee to be comfortable with whatever recommendation they would make to the school board .
On Monday evening, Board of Education chair Mary Parmelee announced that if the Maintenance Committee recommended that the school not open, there would be a special Board of Education meeting following the Maintenance Committee meeting and the board and the administration would decide whether to follow the committee's recommendation.
If the school opens, as it seems that it will, the next question is whether the students will use the gymnasium in the near future. Because it is important to find the source of the moisture, the wall board in the gym will not be replaced immediately.
Joseph Strickland, former Facilities Manager for the Westport School System, and chair of the town Public Site and Building Committee, pointed out that if balls were thrown against the walls, plaster material would fly off the wall and into the air. "I would get rid of the studs and the plaster," said Strickland last week.
Harris spoke of leaving the decision to use the gym to the school administration and staff, who "would have to set a standard that is appropriate."
On Tuesday evening, Anderson said that he and his committee did not yet know whether the moisture was coming from the ground up or the top down.
In previous committee meetings, it has been noted that there is a spring under the gym floor. Anderson said that a check of all the downspouts found that there are some which come from the top of the auditorium and put water into the courtyard near the gym.
Strickland noted last week that when an addition had been put onto the school 13 years ago, someone discovered that some roof leaders were emptying into the sanitary sewers and there had been fears that it was overloading the town's system, so the leaders may have been rerouted. He thought that the whereabouts of the leaders' exit points should be "verified, double checked and and re-checked ... I recommend a dye test to make sure that everything is going where it's supposed to go," said Strickland.
Apparently, members of the technical committee have checked all downspouts.
©Westport Minuteman 2007
http://www.westport-news.com/ci_6749510
Westport News
Old Mold?
By Michael C. Juliano
Article Launched: 08/29/2007 11:30:17 AM EDT
During an update at a Board of Education (BOE) meeting Monday night regarding the mold situation at King's Highway Elementary School, board members inquired about a study on the school's ventilation system that was conducted in 2002.
In previous meetings, Gavin Anderson, chairman of the King's Highway Special Maintenance Study Committee, has said that a recent air-quality study has determined that the 81-year-old school, which was designed to have open windows, may have poor circulation. The air-quality study, which also discovered harmless levels of carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide, was undertaken after mold was discovered in a portable classroom and then in the gymnasium.
Asking about the availability of records, Board of Education Chairman Mary Parmelee said she has been told that five years ago, officials knew there was mold in the building and nothing was done about it, but said she has not seen a record of it.
"If there's something out there that says there's mold in that building or something else in that building five years ago, seven years ago, 10 years ago, if there's a record of it, obviously we'd like to have it," she said. "We'd like to give it to you, or if you have it, we'd like you to make us aware of
it."
Anderson said he has seen nothing in the records that have indicated that there was mold in the building five years ago.
"There's nothing that I've seen in writing at this point in time that would indicate that," he said. "Let me state that absolutely clearly."
Anderson said he had requested from school officials all records available on the building going back to 2000.
"There was no point in going back 20 years," he said, adding he chose 2000 as a round number. "As far as I'm aware, everything that was available was made available to us and we looked at it."
Going forward, Anderson said the building, which was built in the 1920s, needs to be maintained differently than the more modern schools in the district, such as Coleytown Middle School and Staples High School.
"You have all sorts of things [at the school] that you don't do today, but you have a structure that's absolutely superb," he said. "It's stood there for 70 years, but to maintain it, you have different criteria."
Brendan Reilly, a parent of two students at the school, said the board should look at the minutes of meetings held by a committee formed in 2001 to look at concerns parents had over the school's air quality.
"There were a number of meetings that were held, and I suggest the board get copies of the meeting minutes that go back to 2001," he said.
Board member James Marpe asked if the 20-member committee will include in its final report what has been done since the 2002 study.
"As you think about your final report, are you intending to look at some of the history of what we've done around various ventilation and air-quality studies?" he said.
A March 2002 engineering study on the school's ventilation system cited code violations and functional deficiencies that would require more than $200,000 to repair.
Anderson said the committee has been studying records of what has been done on the school's ventilation system since the 2002 study.
"The codes changed or the codes were not applicable in some cases, which the people who did that report seem to think they were," he said.
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