Warren school gym flooring deemed unsafe

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WARREN – The gymnasium at the new $6.25 million Warren Community School has been closed because officials say the flooring is unsafe.

At the same time, air quality problems are cropping up at the school, causing some pupils and teachers to complain of illness.

Higher than acceptable levels of formaldehyde have been detected in several rooms at the kindergarten-through-sixth-grade school on Route 131, just off Route 90.

The school opened in September. It has encountered a series of problems, starting in May when an inspection of the construction site revealed surface cracks in the gymnasium’s concrete walls. At that time, the walls were not yet enclosed and the “shrinkage cracks” were considered to be normal.

The air quality problems are believed to be caused by the water damage that resulted from pipes that froze and burst in November, Superintendent William Doughty said Friday.

Doughty confirmed that officials decided Thursday night to shut down the gymnasium “for a while.”

Sam Pennington, school board chairman, said Friday that no injuries have occurred because of the gym floor’s problems. But he said the floor has “quite a number of checks and chips and lots of other little things.”

Plans originally called for a gym floor made from a plastic material, but a fund-raising committee, which is affiliated with the Warren Recreation Committee, wanted the school to have a wooden floor.

Patrick Delahanty, a member of that committee, said the $20,000 wooden floor was installed in early December.

“It’s disappointing,” he said Friday, noting there are “significant cracks in the ends of the wood.”

Delahanty said that he was at Thursday’s construction committee meeting when members decided that it was “not a good idea to have kids playing on it.”

“We’re not talking about a sliver,” Delahanty said, referring to how the floor might splinter. “We’re talking about an inch-size piece of wood.”

American Sport Floors of Rockland, Mass., installed the Robbins Complete System floor. The manufacturer is Junckers Hardwood of Anaheim, Calif., American Sport Floors representative Tony Carbone said Friday in a telephone interview.

Carbone said that his brother, John Carbone, who is president of the company, had looked at the Warren school’s floor.

The floor has “wood checks,” Carbone said, which occur when the boards split.

“It looks ugly,” Tony Carbone said, but, “It’s not dangerous at all.”

Carbone said he understood school officials’ concerns and said that it is best to “err on the side of caution.”

“It’s a problem we’re more than well aware of,” he said.

He said the manufacturer will send someone to the school next week to examine the floor. The manufacturer will decide whether to repair or replace the floor, Carbone said.

The installation was distinctive, he said, in that it was installed over the gym floor’s radiant heat. However, he said that did not make the job more difficult. The wood flooring is made from beechwood, he said.

“We stand behind everything 150 percent,” Carbone said, noting that the company plans to make temporary repairs during school vacation next week.

Doughty said Maine Energy Inc. of Hermon, which installed the ventilation system, would be working throughout the school vacation to correct the circulation problems.

In November, the system froze during a weekend when the weather was cold. Somebody discovered that an antifreeze-type liquid had not been put into the air ventilation system, Doughty said. Water damage resulted throughout the school and the system has yet to be fully repaired.

Because the system has not been operating correctly, it is not properly moving air throughout the school, Doughty said.

There is “normal off-gassing,” which is created from furniture that contains formaldehyde, he said. Because the air handling system is not working right, the formaldehyde levels in some parts of the school are higher than they should be.

Once the system is operating on its automatic system, “that will take care of the root of the problem,” he said.

A representative of Russell Nowack Construction of Newcastle, the school’s general contractor, could not be reached for comment Friday. Stephen Blatt Architects of Portland, which designed the school, also could not be reached.

Principal Elaine Nutter said Friday that not only students have reported being ill, but teachers have, too.

Nutter confirmed that she has told the committee that she has received complaints of illness daily. But, Nutter said, it is difficult to determine what causes the illnesses.