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Old Saybrook Police Station Warranty Work Not Yet Done

When you move into a new house, you expect some things won’t be perfect—perhaps a floor finish area needs repair or a door or drawer hinge needs adjusting. But more than seven months after you move in, you would expect the floors to be like new, the air conditioning system able to remove humidity, and that there would not be any leaks in walls to short-out an electric plug. Unfortunately for the Old Saybrook Police Department, those expectations still have not been met in its new home at 36 Lynde Street nearly eight months after the department moved in.

Bigger than a punch list, the list of the new police station’s action items—now labeled warranty work—was more substantial than expected. Even now, though some corrective work has been done or is underway, other key tasks, like fixing the failing epoxy floor in the detention and processing wing, are not even scheduled.

The project’s overall design-build contractor, Downes Construction, is responsible for getting it right, along with the trade contractors with which it worked.

By last week, some of the open items had been addressed. The parking lot pavement that did not meet specifications had been repaired and the line stripings that had failed had been re-applied. The failed sub-floor in the police station’s office areas had been removed and in some rooms, new floors had been installed.

Flooring failure was a problem in two different parts of the station building. In the main office and work areas of the building, the sub-floor under carpet and tile had heaved and buckled. This left creases in the carpet and raised areas of the flooring. These areas include the main hallway, office areas, employee kitchen, and dispatcher’s eating area. Last week, the flooring contractor for this area had returned to the site and was removing the original sub-floor that had failed.

The epoxy floor failure in the station building addition where detention, processing, evidence processing, and evidence storage areas are, was a different character. In this area, the surface oozed a yellow substance through the areas covered by epoxy floor coatings. First appearing as blisters on the floor, the spots then broke open, revealing the yellow substance and leaving behind a surface crack.

At press time, Downes Construction and the subcontractors were still disputing fault and the cause of the floor failure, so no timetable had been established for removing the existing surface and re-applying it.

Due to the nature of the epoxy flooring removal and replacement task, Police Chief Micheal Spera was told that the department will have to vacate areas with those floors while the remedial work is underway.

“I’ve been told it could take two to four weeks for the warranty work on the detention area floors,” said Spera.

Spera has contacted the landlord of the Police Department’s former Custom Drive facility to see if the department could temporarily relocate detention operations there during the floor work period. He found the landlord was open to the idea, but without a firm work plan or schedule, such a move is uncertain.

Police Department staff were also frustrated this past summer by a heating, ventilation, and cooling system that did not seem able to adequately remove humidity from the interior spaces. For example, ceiling tiles in the men’s locker room already show moisture damage after just one summer.

Another issue is outside the building. Two man-holes located about four feet from the employee entrance collect water, leading to a puddle after a rain. In the winter months, Spera is concerned the puddle will freeze and the ice patch become a hazard for employees entering the building from the lot.

Spera said that while the first landscaping contractor’s plantings and lawn died when the contractor failed to fulfill his obligation to water them, the replacement plantings and sod installed by a second contractor appears to be strong and in good condition.

Spera, who praised the design and flow of the new building, is hopeful that these problems with the building’s finishes can be fixed by the subcontractors in the next two months.