The Van Buren County Jail is getting new skylights, replacements that will be properly rated for high winds to prevent any further leakage.
Contractor Mickey Bajun told County Commissioners he will be removing the old faulty skylights and installing thirty-one new ones. Bajun said he will also be replacing any drywall damaged by the leaking skylights and repainting the interior portion.
“That quote includes your insides being patched and painted as long as there’s no structural damage behind the drywall, which I don’t think there is,” Bajun said. “And the reason I don’t think there is is because where everything in those holes going up is so vertical, I assume most of your water came down over the last few years. I don’t think it’s been camping up there very much.”
The work will cost the county some $88,000. County Commissioner Tabitha Denney said she was shocked to see how cheap the bid came in compared to what the county saw in its research.
“We expected in the two hundreds,” Denney said. “Thirty-one (skylights), and what we looked up online, they were nine thousand (dollars) each.”
Bajun said it should take about six weeks for the skylights to arrive and another week to install. Bajun said it will take more time after that for him to complete the interior repairs while working around the jail’s staff.
“We could have you guys sealed up within two months pretty easy,” Bajun said. “Maybe faster, I just don’t like promising super, until I get a date that says they’re coming I don’t want to tell you guys for sure we can be here on this day. But then I can deal with any one of you guys that you appoint to be my contact and we’ll be on the same page.”
Bajun said the skylights have a lifetime warranty for any manufacturing defects. Bajun said that does not cover if something like a branch hit any of the windows, but he will also provide a labor warranty for a certain period of time.
“Any type of window or glass, they have to cover the glass itself for basically ever on manufacture defects,” Bajun said. “So as long as your glass doesn’t fail over time, those things really don’t tend to leak. It’s actually kind of an oddity that those ones did. Most of the places that I spoke with (said) those ones were actually, other than the wind rating, those were decent units.”
The jail’s current skylights are only rated for fifty miles-per-hour winds, but the requirement for that facility is one hundred twenty miles-per-hour. County Attorney Howard Upchurch said the county is exploring mediation with the contractor who installed those skylights in the first place.
“We had to have a price bid out and the work started before we can do anything as far as trying to get those funds back,” Denney said.
