Will LIPA keep date with school?
If Long Island Power Authority sticks to its commitment, the new Shelter Island School generator could be installed and working by the end of the day Wednesday.
Prior to Sandy’s East Coast visit that caught the school short without the new generator, the installation had been set for the day before Thanksgiving. But with LIPA crews still scurrying to restore power to other storm-damaged parts of Long Island, there’s no guarantee that the power company will keep its date on Shelter Island, according to John McClave of McClave Engineering.
The district’s need for its new generator is not high priority in the wake of Sandy, he told the school board Monday night. Since the storm that left the school closed for three days because of a lack of power, LIPA officials have been on and off about whether they would be on site this week, Mr. McClave said. But the last word was that they expected to be here, he said.
From the outset, because of LIPA scheduling, the school never expected to have the new generator up and running until now. That’s because connecting the generator requires turning power on and off throughout a day to connect the unit and then test it. Not wanting to close school for a day, school officials hoped the November date would be soon enough. It would have been had it not been for Sandy.
It will take about three hours to get the new generator up and running and then several hours to test it to assure it’s properly controlling various sectors in the school building, Mr. McClave said.
As for the rest of the construction that took place this summer — asbestos removal, improved ventilation, lighting, new tiling and painting, new bathrooms in the elementary school wing and work on the building’s exterior, the company is now engaged in what Mr. McClave described as the “punch code” phase, dealing with those items that have been determined to still be troublesome. He described it as “the most difficult part of the project,” but said work was progressing well.
Windows that were to be installed during the winter are being delayed until next summer because there were issues with their design and it was determined they could best be installed with the least disruption during the summer months.
And plans to clean oxidation from the exterior of the building have been abandoned because the contractors were unable to identify a product that would do the job without posing an environmental threat to the Island’s fragile groundwater system, Mr. McClave said.
For a more full account of school board actions Monday night, see the November 9 Reporter.
