New building has woes in frigid January weather

Despite a fire alarm, a bro­ken pipe and water leak­ing into the library at the Belle­vue Ele­men­tary School late Tues­day after­noon, Belle­vue City Schools Super­in­ten­dent Kim Schu­bert said she planned to have chil­dren in school today — bar­ring another win­ter problem.

At 4:25 p.m. Tues­day, the Belle­vue Fire Depart­ment was sum­moned to the ele­men­tary school by a fire alarm at the new Castalia Street building.

Once fire­fight­ers arrived they found water flow­ing from the sprin­kler sys­tem into the library. Fire­fight­ers were able to get the water valve shut off and assisted staff with get­ting trash carts under pipes where the water was leaking.

Tues­day evening the school super­in­ten­dent explained that duct­work in the build­ing was appar­ently not prop­erly con­nected and cold air resulted in a pipe freez­ing and break­ing on the third floor.

“It was all water,” she said about the dam­age in the build­ing. “I’m glad all the con­trac­tors were avail­able,” she added.

She said con­trac­tors for the sprin­kler sys­tem, HVAC and a clean­ing crew were brought in by early evening and work­ing to make repairs.

The build­ing — which just opened this past fall — is still owned by the Ohio Schools Facil­ity Com­mis­sion and Schu­bert said staff is still going through punch lists to make sure every­thing is fin­ished and in work­ing order.

The super­in­ten­dent said the dis­trict will not be ready to sign off on the new build­ing until June.

In the mean­time, she is con­fi­dent every­thing will be ready for class Wednes­day morning.

Posted by Becky Brooks on Jan 23 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.