GRUNDY CENTER – The bubbling on the surface of the new tennis courts at the George E. Wilhelm Sports Complex came up once again at the Grundy Center City Council meeting this past Monday, Nov. 8.
Back in the Sept. 12 city council meeting, concerns were raised by the council and parties involved in the construction of the tennis courts about bubbles on the tennis court surfaces causing the courts to become unusable.
The courts were resurfaced following the meeting and were scheduled to be completed before the winter.
However, as Luke Kjormoe from Boulder Contracting explained to the council, bubbles have once again formed on the surface of the court despite their repairs, which has left the contractor with even fewer options to fix the surface.
“Our hope is that the tennis court reacts like it did before, and the fact that it will do its thing, and then it will stop,” he said. “When we talked to Pro Track and Tennis, they told us that by cutting out the holes and repairing those, and then putting new surfacing on that, we would be adding layers to that permeable surface or porous surface. By doing that, we make it just a little bit less porous, and there would be more bubbles that would potentially show it by doing that. So that was a risk that we went in with hoping that we were going to avoid all of that, but we obviously did not.”
As Kjormoe further elaborated, their actions for repair and construction of the courts has been entirely in line with the plans they were provided as a contractor, and their course of action, short of ripping the entire project out of the ground, now may rely upon patch fixing each bubble.
“Our goal then would be to poke these bubbles, essentially, per the ASBA [American Sports Builders Association] guidelines, and then be able to inject adhesive in there and get these to lay down,” Kjormoe said. “Obviously, not the best case scenario by any stretch of the imagination, but that's essentially what I'm left with as a contractor to try and get this situation taken care of. We abided by the spec, we did everything per the plans and specifications. So I'm grasping at straws to try and make this a situation that everybody can live with.”
Many of the parties involved in the discussion posited a theory that the bubbles were formed by moisture trapped in, beneath, or on the surface of the asphalt.
Mark Kuiper from Ritland Kuiper Landscape, one of the lead engineers on the project, came before the board and provided some clarity on the possibility of water corrupting the surfaces. Kuiper was similarly perplexed by the continuing formation of bubbles on the courts.
“We had the fracture where it needed to be. We took care of the site drainage, there's no contributing water that we can imagine would be in the system,” he said. “The only thing that we could come up with, at this point, the only source of water that we can consider that would be in the asphalt would be that which may have been trapped in when they did the first application… Their first crew that did the initial application was not invited back to do the repair work, and that was noteworthy to me.”
Kuiper continued by tapering down the possibility of moisture coming from underneath the asphalt block.
“There was a significant amount of time where we had compacted subgrade and then compacted gravel before we got asphalt down,” Kuiper said. “ We all watched the wheels of the truck go across that and not deform the gravel. I mean, it was just a very good, solid surface. So, we had a lot of confidence that this is going to be a great asphalt finish.”
Despite the many theories passed around the meeting about the origins of, and potential remedies for, the bubbling of the surface on the tennis courts, uncertainty remains for future repairs and the status of the courts.
“I've talked to a lot of people, I've talked to the ASBA. I've talked to two other coating installers. I've talked to asphalt guys. There's no way of knowing that without doing some in-depth investigation. And even when you do the in-depth investigation, you may still not find the source,” Kjormoe said about possible moisture in, on, or under the courts. “So the truth of the matter is, I've done everything that the plan, and specifications have told me to do. So this is the situation we're in… I think I've done absolutely everything that I can do. Now I'm gonna go out there and I'm going to try and glue these things down, and these bubbles are by no way anything that we did. So, I'll continue to try and get it so that everybody can be happy.”
“I think Luke’s gone above and beyond and I don't know if we can ask a whole lot more from him. I appreciate what he's doing,” Councilman Rick Smith said. “So I think we need to give it some time and see how it works out.”
In other business, the Grundy Center City Council;
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Held a public hearing and passed the first reading for Ordinance 567, an ordinance recodifying the Grundy Center Code of Ordinances;
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Held a public hearing and passed the first reading of Ordinance 568 amending ATV/UTV vehicles for hours of operation, use of vehicles, and penalties for violations;
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Passed the third reading of Ordinance 565 amending registration requirements, rules of operations and fines for violations for golf carts;
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Passed the third reading of Ordinance 566 amending Community Building Board members from seven to five;
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Voted down a resolution awarding a BIG Grant to Jill Krausman from The Landmark Bistro due to late submission;
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Passed a resolution approving a change order for the water improvement project with Summers’ Enterprise reducing the total bid price;
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Held discussion with Nathan Kappel about a potential new fire truck purchase;
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Passed a resolution to approve the contract for services for health insurance coverage with Wellmark for 2023.
