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A 20-year-old blueprint and mislabeled water shut-off valve have added $10k in additional costs to the ongoing buildout of an additional courtroom at the Troup County Government Center.

In April, the Troup County Board of Commissioners approved a bid from Principal Construction to complete the build-out of Courtroom 3C for $565,400.

Construction has begun on the new courtroom, but not without a hiccup. Damages caused by a water leak necessitated a change order to the contract with Principal.

Assistant County Manager Jay Anderson stated that the water was not properly shut off to the bathroom during construction, causing water damage.

“Courtroom 3C has a bathroom. It’s a half bath, a sink and a toilet, and that plumbing had to be relocated to the new handicap layout. It all had to be relocated a little bit to comply with being a handicap compliant bathroom,” Anderson explained. “We located what we thought was the cut-off valve that fed that bathroom for the water line on the blueprints.”

“The 20-year-old blueprints from when this building was constructed said the cut-off valve for the future Bathroom is in the ceiling in the hallway,” Anderson said. “They moved the ceiling tile and looked up. Sure enough, there’s a cut-off valve up there, and everything looked like it matched.”

“They turned that cut-off valve and started to do the work. And evidently, that was not the proper shut-off valve, so we had a water leak, and we had to turn off water to the whole building,” Anderson said.

When the contractor began to cut what was expected to be an empty water line, a torrent of water began to flow out of the cut pipe.

“It’s an inch and a half copper water line. That’s a lot of water,” Anderson said.

The total cost to remedy the water leak and bring in dehumidifiers and fans and extract the water, including cleanup costs from the mislabeled valve, was around $10,000, Anderson said.