During practice on the night of September 23, a few volleyball players noticed a large mound protruding from beneath the gym floor.
When asked what caused this odd occurrence, Maintenance and Custodial Director Chad Gassman said, “The buckling was weather-related because of the heat wave we have been enduring.”
With the higher levels of humidity, parts of the old wooden floor began to buckle. Although the large gym is air-conditioned, it lacks a dehumidification process, which contributed to this odd situation.
Junior Maddy Moore was the first to discover the mound in the floor.
“I was carrying a volleyball pole into the gym, tripped over something on the floor, and didn’t think much of it,” Moore said “[I] kept walking, until I turned around and realized there was a bubble in the floor.”
The bubble was located near the middle of the gym, so it did not disrupt the practice too badly.
“It only disrupted our practice a little. I almost tripped over it while chasing after a ball,” sophomore Amber Quine said. “After we placed a box on it, it became a little more of a problem. That box was now in the way as well, and it didn’t allow us to chase down a ball going in that direction.”
The following day, on September 24, students and staff of Durand school could see numerous heavy weights stacked on top of the mound. This did not resolve the issue, so the home volleyball game against Lena was rescheduled for later in the season, and the junior high eighth-grade volleyball night was relocated to the cafeteria.
A couple of days later, the company that annually seals the floor came to repair the buckling wood.
“They had to drill holes in the wood a quarter inch in and then run screws through those holes and into the concrete underneath the wood floor. They then covered those holes with wood putty and resealed that area,” Gassman said.
While this might have been a strange occurrence for those in school, it’s actually quite common.
“This is very common for old wood floors during humid times of the year,” Gassman said.
