West Hartford
The leak was discovered in August 2015, according to West Hartford Library Trustee Chairman Tom Hazen, and has been present off and on ever since. He said library staff had used pans to catch dripping water falling from the ceiling.
The town owns and has responsibility for the maintenance and upkeep of the building, but West Hartford Library Trustee John Newton said the town has been slow to respond to notifications of the leak, which he said has damaged a 6-foot section of the ceiling, and some wallboard.
“With all the changes in personnel, from the town manager on down, it’s difficult sometimes to get things done,” Newton said. “It just takes a while. You have to do a lot of yelling.”
The building was severely damaged by Tropical Storm Irene in 2011, and it became the subject of a restoration project that moved the building onto a new, watertight foundation and added a 1,300-square-foot addition.
The project was plagued by complications that ranged from Federal Emergency Management Agency concerns about contaminants on an adjacent lot to significant cost overruns that simultaneously caused details of the project to be scaled back, even as the costs ballooned from an initial $750,000 estimate to $903,000.
In June 2013, while asking the Hartford Selectboard to approve additional funding, then-Town Manager Hunter Rieseberg warned that it had been scaled back as much as possible.
“If we really take any more out of this, we’re going to gut the project,” he said.
The lack of one creature comfort — air conditioning — has been a source of complaints, and has led library trustees to explore installing central air, at an estimated cost of $11,000.
Though the project was initially scheduled to be completed in January 2014, it didn’t receive an occupancy permit until December 2014, when it opened to the public for the first time since before Irene.
Robin Adair Logan, who sits on the Hartford Historical Preservation Commission and has a professional background in structural engineering and architecture, said she began urging town officials to take action on the leak in February.
“I said, ‘Don’t let the taxpayers of Hartford pay for this. They’ve already paid for this,’ ” she said.
Logan said the industry standard is for contractors to warranty buildings for one year. She said she believes the 12-month mark has either just passed, or is just about to pass.
The leak, which seems to be associated with the building’s chimney, is complicated by other problems with the building’s design, according to both Logan and Newton.
In order to investigate the leak, a worker would need to go into the attic crawlspace underneath the roof, but no one can do that because the crawlspace lacks access.“When they did the renovations, they took out the crawlspace access,” Logan said. “That’s a fairly ridiculous thing to do.”
Efforts to reach David Laurin, the architect who presented the rehabilitation plans to the public and town officials, were unsuccessful on Friday. A worker who answered the phone at Barre, Vt.-based E.F. Wall and Associates Inc., the contractor for the project, referred all questions to a spokesman, who was unavailable.
Newton said E.F. Wall had a list of items that needed to be fixed after completion of the project, but the leak, which was discovered months after the building’s completion, was not on the punch list. The only item left on the list is a faulty button that’s meant to open the door automatically for patrons with disabilities.
According to Logan and Newton, the attic also lacks ventilation, which means the water that enters the attic is less likely to evaporate, giving it further opportunity to damage the joists, insulation and rafters.
“I’m very concerned that the attic isn’t vented because if there’s moisture up there from the leak, there’s going to be mold eventually,” Logan said.
Interim Town Manager Pat MacQueen said there may not be significant damage.
“Until someone can get into the attic to inspect, it is all speculation,” he said. “(Parks and Recreation Director Tad Nunez) is working on getting a cutout in the ceiling so an inspection can occur.”
Newton said that a carpenter hired by the town was supposed to come to install an access panel. Newton said he thought the work would be done several weeks ago, but he’s heard of no concrete timetable to fix it yet.
Joseph Benard, deputy director of the Division of Fire Safety in the Vermont Department of Public Safety, said he had no specific knowledge of the West Hartford Library, but that all public buildings with attics of at least 30 inches in height are required to have an access panel of at least 20 by 30 inches, under the 2012 International Building Code.
“There’s no exceptions,” he said. “Any building has to have attic access.”
It’s an important safety feature, he said, because firefighters need to be able to access attic spaces to investigate and fight fires.
He referred specific questions about the library to Hartford Fire Marshal Mike Bedard, but Bedard was out of town and unavailable.
Matt Hongoltz-Hetling can be reached at mhonghet@vnews.com or 603-727-3211.
Correction
Parts of the West Hartford Library attic that could be damaged by a leaking roof include insulation, rafters and joists. An earlier version of this article misidentified one of those elements. Also, Robin Adair Logan’s full quote should have read “When they did the renovations, they took out the crawlspace access. That’s a fairly ridiculous thing to do.” A word was inadvertently omitted.