Macon County Board of Education members and staff did not mince words when receiving an update Monday night on what has caused a long-time odor at Macon Middle School.
MCS Personnel Director Todd Gibbs gave the update, saying when he was a football coach in the 1970s and 1980s, there was “a methane odor” back then, which he thought was just football clothes.
“During the [recent] renovation there was a cursory attempt to figure out where that smell is coming from, no success during the renovation,” Gibbs explained.
Gibbs continued, saying that H&M Constructors recently came out and “smoked” the sewer system in the gym and locker rooms. The “smoking” was done from a long-forgotten manhole cover that was buried in dirt.
The result was smoke coming out of the cracks in the mortar in multiple locations. H&M installed vent pipe covers and backflow gas preventers in the manhole, but Gibbs said that it has not completely solved the problem.
“To totally solve the problem, you have to go into these walls and cap these vents,” Gibbs told the board.
Superintendent Chris Baldwin said that when the gym was built, the walls were double-bricked, meaning that the pipes are between the two layers of brick.
“What they found is when they did the smoke test, they actually ran a camera down the vent pipe, obviously was between the bricks rather than in the vent pipe,” Baldwin explained. “They discovered that the vent pipe was probably never connected. He said they think that during the construction, the plumbers or the brick layers may have dislodged the vent pipe, or the plumbers never installed it correctly.
“And that’s the reason for the odor for the last 50 years,” Baldwin said. He later added that it appears the joints of the pipe were never connected.
“What took place over there is criminal,” Chairman Jim Breedlove said after hearing about the lack of joints in the pipe, later adding, “Those pictures are very disturbing, let’s put it that way.”
Gibbs said the odor is not dangerous to the health of the kids, but “very unpleasant.” Baldwin said the odor is strongest after lunch when the dishwashers are running, because the water rushing through the pipes