Cold Weather Slows New-School Construction

Our early winter weather is bad news on the construction sites of Central Valley School District’s two new high schools.

“You’ll find that the weather has affected construction. We’re guessing by about 10 days,” said Mike Pearson, director of secondary education for Central Valley.

Construction officials agreed, but said that delay can be made up, particularly this early in the building process.

At 32nd and Pines, the biggest thing you can see is the gymnasium of the new University High School. The block walls are up; the joists are in; and the decking of the roof is being installed.

Interior block work is finished in the gym and boys locker room. Standing inside the gym makes one feel like a pea. It’s a vast structure. The ground inside the gym is bare and frozen; windows dominate the west end of the gym.

A couple of workers are welding up by the roof - they’re working 40 feet up.

In Thursday morning’s chill, job superintendent Brad Corigliano of Lydig Construction walked through the site, talking about his crew’s cold-weather strategy.

“By getting the walls up and the roof on (the gym) now we can start the interior work. We can also get the iron in,” Corigliano said, “and we don’t have to worry about tenting and heating.”

By “iron,” he means, in part, the hundreds of steel columns that will be erected to support the main school building. Outside, Corigliano points out an array of short gray stakes, marked with orange paint. Each one is marking a concrete pad that will support a column.

Already it’s clear how those concrete pads outline pods of classrooms and hallways.

Corigliano keeps an eye on the concrete pouring crew. They’re pouring sections of wall 20 feet high, for a section of classrooms and offices.

The temperature is a concern, but the concrete will create its own heat as it cures.

“We’ll cover those walls with blankets and keep an eye on them,” he says. “Frozen concrete is no good.”

Corigliano says his crews will have to wait for warmer weather before any brick work is done, or any of the concrete floors are poured. This winter, they’ll have plenty to do with handling the steel beams, joists and columns, roughing in more exterior walls with steel studs, starting plumbing and electrical conduit work.

Over at the site of the new Central Valley High School, which is going up behind the current CV High on Sullivan, crews from general contractor Garco Construction got started a month earlier.

They’re using different strategy. Under plastic tenting and in relative comfort - heaters can get the upper reaches of the tented area up to 50 or 60 degrees - masons are finishing the block walls of the gym.

The concrete floor is in, but there’s no roof to the gym yet, though. Crews are assembling the joists for the gym roof now.

Concrete walls are being poured, and footings are in place, waiting for the steel columns.

Tent or no tent, job superintendent Jim Tortorici isn’t any happier about the cold weather than Lydig workers are.

The cold slows everything down, from moving materials to time spent clearing snow. And heat, as the headlines make clear, is costly. “We have a weather budget, and we got into it earlier than we wanted to,” Tortorici said.