Many student and faculty were left wondering and confused at the sight of the golf cart-sized hole and yellow tape blocking off the center pathway of Tampa Prep’s front parking lot upon returning from Thanksgiving Break. Although still blocked off, the hole has now been filled and the roadway mostly restored. However, it left many questions as to what really occurred in the Tampa Prep parking lot during the week off.
“When we came back after [Thanksgiving Break] the middle of our transportation lane in the front of our building was shut down,” Robert Franz, Tampa Prep’s Head of School said.
“We [didn’t] know necessarily if it was a sinkhole, [rather] something coming up from the past of what was here before Tampa Prep was built,” Franz said on the hole’s emergence.
However, after a couple days of digging out the hole and hours spent accounting for the damage to the parking lot, Tampa Prep’s facilities team, under the head of facilities at Prep, Mike Circle, cleared up the questions regarding the hole.
“Fortunately, the damage in the driveway was not a sinkhole per se, since those are usually caused by natural water flows and the erosion of limestone bedrock. What we experienced was a wash out caused by a broken pipe that delivers well water to our geothermal pool heaters/chillers,” Circle said.
In other words, the good news is Prep faced no real danger of collapsing into the ground. The bad news is, Prep’s swimming pool is closed and will remain so until the broken pipe is contained and the “heaters/chillers” are back up afloat.
“After confirming the source of the water leak, we had the current building contractor that’s working on the new building fill the hole and prepare it for new asphalt. We’ve turned off the pool heater/chillers and the associated well pump to prevent any further damage, and we are in the process of pressure testing the water lines in order to locate where the break is located with the help of an ultrasonic leak detection company,” Circle said.
Whether it will need to be replaced or repaired is yet to be decided though Circle remains focused on making sure his team does everything possible to return things to normal for the Prep students and community, specifically those using the pool.
“Our goal is to complete the repairs as quickly as possible so everyone can get back to using the pool as normal,” he said.
Having now filled in the hole and placed new asphalt above, Circle reflects on the hole’s damage as rather minimal and unsurprising, and stating the fortune of the hole only blocking off parts of Prep’s front lot traffic.
“With any larger property, you have to be prepared for this type of thing. As far as unexpected problems are concerned, this one wasn’t too bad since we had an available path to redirect traffic through, and the repair work only interfered with a small portion of the day to day activities,” he said.
Although the segment of Prep’s front lot is still blocked off and recovering, thanks to Circle and his team’s great work, Prep has resumed normal activities this past week, albeit with slight remnants of the hole and the rumors it stirred still lingering.
