Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Schools

School's cracked floor needs a fix, lab finds

A report states that a depression in the soil under the cafeteria floor at Homosassa Elementary requires a complex engineering solution.

By BARBARA BEHRENDT
Published April 26, 2006

HOMOSASSA - There is no sinkhole beneath the cafeteria at Homosassa Elementary School, but a naturally occurring depression in the soil beneath the building slab will require the school district to stabilize the foundation.

That is the recommendation of Central Testing Laboratories, the firm hired to figure out why a crack opened up near a column in the eastern portion of the newly constructed cafeteria.

In a report released Tuesday, the lab reports that the depression appears to be in an isolated area outside the foundation of a building column near where the crack has surfaced and deepened.

Central Testing officials recommend a process called "underpinning," in which the foundation is exposed and poles are driven down into the ground until they hit limerock, which was found about 12 feet below the surface. One portion of the slab is slightly jacked up so the level of the floor evens out at the point of the crack, said Mike Mullen, the district's executive director of school support services.

The report recommends that the district hire a structural engineer to evaluate the foundation and determine the location of the pins and the connection between the pins and the foundation.

"All of this is telling us that we don't have a safety problem right now so we can take the steps to fix it correctly," Mullen said.

The report will now go to the engineer the district hired when the crack was first noticed. The engineer will determine whether the lab's report has outlined the correct fix for the problem, he said.

School officials have known about the crack for months. The flaw was noticed in July, when school officials walked through the building with the project engineer, Ted Williamson.

At the time, they determined that the crack was not a problem but they would monitor it. Then in January, project manager Clyde Douglass saw the crack was getting larger. He observed a fraction of an inch height difference had appeared between one side of the floor and the other.

In February school officials spoke publicly about the crack. They said given the history of the botched construction of the cafeteria and media center additions at Homosassa Elementary, they wanted to be sure they shared the development with the community.

The district consulted with Edward Czarnecki of Engineered Structure Services Inc.

Concerned the crack could be an indication that a sinkhole had formed under the foundation, Czarnecki recommended that the district hire a geotechnical engineer to do a more detailed study of the soil under the cafeteria and around the foundation.

At that time, school officials hired Central Testing to do the detailed study at a cost of approximately $10,000. It also was given the responsibility of monitoring the crack, which has not gotten bigger since then, Mullen said.

The soil borings and other study was done during spring break.

What the fix will cost and who will pay is not yet known. School officials have said it is not unusual to go back to a building contractor to seek reimbursement for serious problems, but contractor R.E. Graham left the repair job of the flawed buildings undone.

In fact, when the district filed suit earlier this month over the larger botched job in building both the cafeteria and the media center, it sued not Graham but the bonding company that insured the project, Atlantic Mutual Insurance.

[Last modified April 26, 2006, 01:22:18]