School Board Awards Bid to Reconstruct Wall at High School
Huntington School Board members have awarded a bid in the amount of $278,750 to Minhas General Contracting Co. of 1037 39th Street in Brooklyn to perform general construction work related to the reconstruction of a deteriorating exterior masonry wall behind Huntington High School.
The problem involves movement of an exterior wall away from the east side of the building. The situation was first identified last summer during an annual structural inspection and subsequent testing and examination determined the area needed extensive repairs. Bids were received from seven companies with the high bid coming in at $765,000.
“The work needs to be done to keep the building in tip-top shape and to prevent a potentially devastating collapse of the wall,” Superintendent John J. Finello said.
Protective scaffolding was erected last fall over several sets of doorways in the area at the behest of the district’s architectural firm, Burton, Behrendt and Smith, to prevent pedestrians in the area from being injured should a brick break loose and fall.
To determine the extent of the problem, a two-day invasive investigation was performed at a cost of $10,800. It involved inserting a number of probes into the cafeteria area wall and the exterior facade. After the results were analyzed, it was recommended the wall be reconstructed within one year.
“The original wall system consists of a 12” masonry ‘Larsen” wall, which bears partly on the first floor slab and partly on a continuous lintel hung from the first floor framing,” BBS wrote in a Nov. 2 letter to the district. “Above this wall and extending to the lintel above are 21 aluminum sliding window units, as well as several steel study and masonry infill panels, which were added during renovations done about fifteen years ago.”
The wall has moved due to a lack of expansion joints that could have absorbed such movement, the absence of masonry ties and reinforcement that could have restricted any movement and the curved design and “unrestrained nature” of the wall, according to engineers.
During a visual inspection of the building last summer, district officials noticed substantial cracking, which was attributed to thermal expansion under normal seasonal freeze/thaw cycles. While the movement is thought to have been a fact since the building was constructed decades ago, it has recently sharply accelerated.
To fix the problem the wall system from the top of the lower level windows to the top of the first floor windows will be removed and rebuilt from the north end of the faculty room to the south end of the cafeteria. The reconstructed wall will contain the necessary features that are now missing.
The repair is costly since it involves the removal and reinstallation of the existing windows, removal and reconstruction of the masonry wall system, replacement of six existing mechanical louvers, application of interior paint, base and ceiling finishes, an electrical allowance and thousand of dollars set aside for contingencies, escalation in prices/expenses and soft costs. Architectural engineering fees are set at seven percent of the project’s cost.
The project will be funded with monies set aside in the district’s capital reserve fund. In May, voters approved use of these monies to cover the cost of the wall reconstruction.
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