Inspecting the roofs
February 14, 2008
I watched the city council meeting and heard a good deal about the roof at the Tilton School.
I wanted to see for myself, so I spent a good deal of the day at the Tilton School inspecting the roof. I went with our maintenance people, climbed up on the flat roof that appears to be the source of difficulty, and went into the classrooms. I am certainly not an expert of roofs, but here is what I saw.
I saw that during the rainstorm, the vast majority of the school was dry.
From what I saw, the hallways, entrance ways, library, and offices were all dry. 27 of the 29 classrooms were completely dry. One classroom, discussed at length at the council meeting, had been leaking but the maintenance staff seemed to have fixed it, at least temporarily.
One classroom had water leaking in around a window, and one classroom had a bucket in the corner. The maintenance staff said they expected to fix those problems in a day or so. Neither of them appeard to be serious, and they certainly did not appear to present any danger to the children or staff.
We have a maintenance staff, and a city roofing company. They worked on shoveling snow off the flat roof– and that appeared to alleviate part of the problem.
They still have to check the slate roof. It is not safe to put workers on slate roofs when it is icy or wet so we have to wait until it is dry to do this.
As soon as they can do so, they will inspect the slate roof and let me know. From what we know now, it appears to be a manageable and solve-able problem.
