There are leaks at Wake Forest Town Hall again, and once again it is water, not information.
Thankfully, there are only two leaks compared to the several immediately after the building was completed and occupied in 2010.
“One is a repeat offender,” Deputy Town Manager Roe O’Donnell said, “and it looks like a warrantee issue.” That leak is in the ceiling of the staircase that curls around the building from the ground floor on South Taylor Street to the main lobby on Brooks Street.
O’Donnell said the town would call Exterior Diagnostic Services of Apex back to examine and repair the leak. “It was definitely an area that was worked on” when EDS undertook the major repairs in 2013 and 2014, replacing every window and repairing damage to brickwork and interior walls.
The second leak has only occurred once because, O’Donnell said, it needs “a particular kind of rain.” Somehow, probably because of a mistake made by the building contractor, Heaton Construction, water comes in through a seam in the roof line, runs down through the flashing and the along a beam into the second-floor conference room where the town board holds its closed session and spreads out into three windows.
“It took them [engineers] a long time to replicate that,” O’Donnell said, adding that the town has already awarded a $6,000 contract to an unnamed company to repair the problem.
When it was completed in 2010 the Platinum LEED building, which is environmentally friendly, quickly proved did not face the elements well. Almost as soon as town staff moved into the building, they started finding leaks everywhere – windows, foundation, roof – in a somewhat random manner depending on the amount of rain and the wind speed and direction.
After informing Heaton of the problem, the town hired Stafford Consulting Engineers from Charlotte to investigate the cause of the leaks, and the firm immediately found a great number. The subcontractor which installed the windows did not put flashing around them and also failed to install deflector dams to channel water away from the building’s interior.
Heaton had used more than 30 subcontractors during the construction, which originally had a completion date in late 2009. Opening the town hall was planned as the final gala event of the town’s centennial.
Heaton sued the town, saying it had not paid for work performed and that it was owed for early completion. The town countersued.
A settlement was reached in mid-September 2014 under which the town netted $507,767.75, just enough to cover the cost, about $506,000, for the repairs. It does not cover the fee paid to Stafford Consulting not the attorney fees incurred because of the suit Heaton filed and the drawn-out negotiations. A fuller account can be found in the Sept. 17, 2014, issue of the Gazette. Search by “suit.”
