Despite the date on the calendar, Mother Nature has been treating us like we’re much further from spring than just two weeks from today. This week saw several more inches of snow fall and yet another snow day school closure.
But a day off from school for students and teachers due to snow actually isn’t a day off for one group of school employees: the maintenance and custodial staff.
“Custodians are the one group who come in regardless of weather. They’re expected to do snow removal and clean,” explains John Murphy, district maintenance supervisor for Wilton Public Schools. They’ve got to be here–we need everybody.”
One reason is that snow is of particular concern when it comes to keeping the schools safe and working well.
“We’ve had some very heavy [snow] drifts, particularly at Miller-Driscoll, which is a major concern. Fortunately, around the time that I said we need to start thinking about what we’d do about the roof loads, we got those really heavy winds and it blew a lot of the snow off the roofs. We’ve been very fortunate because of the exposure of our buildings, a lot of it has blown off. And of course there’s always some melting going on because you’re getting heat loss through the roof,” explains Murphy.
But of course too much water on a roof isn’t a good thing, as anyone who has experienced ice damming recently can explain. It’s a problem too for the schools, either from a too fast melt off or rain.
“We had to deal with a leak today, in the gym at Cider Mill. As we get in the warmer temperatures, you get leaks where you’ve never seen them. Our worst case scenario is if we get rain on top of the snow pack on a roof, even if it’s just 8 or 10-inches, it can get into places it would otherwise never find. So we hope for a nice slow, gentle melt off, which it looks like next week is going to cooperate,” Murphy says.
One of the things Murphy says he can’t do is shovel snow off the roof. “It depends on the type of roof but a lot of our roofs are EPDM roofs, which is a rubber roof. Somebody on a rubber roof with a shovel can do much, much more damage than snow or ice can.”
He’s very aware of the weight of the snow on top of the buildings. “Since we’ve had a lot of melt off, I look up at the rooftops and there are not 4- or 5-foot drifts up there. It’s an acceptable snow load at this point. I think we’ve been very fortunate, considering the conditions. But it’s something that we monitor and are aware of, and if it continued to accumulate without any melt off or blowing off, we probably would have had to start to take some proactive measures. We’re fortunate we haven’t had to do that yet. But we keep an eye on it.”
Murphy says, like everyone, he’s noticed an uptick in the amount of snow that has fallen on Wilton over the last several winter. “It seems to be the norm, not the exception anymore. Nobody remembered what a roof rake was until just a few weeks ago,” he says.
But what about snow removal from other parts of the school grounds, such as that on walkways and parking lots? The labor falls mostly on school maintenance staff, who are responsible for those walkways and lots, while Town employees from Parks and Rec clear any public sidewalks.
It’s all hands on deck and everyone pitches in when it snows, as no one want anyone to slip and fall. Even still, there’s been so much snow that it’s difficult to keep up. Murphy says that they’ve had to outsource some of the work to an outside vendor, who has been using a bobcat at night to remove some of the snow from the parking lots.
“If the town can help us, they will, but they’re as slammed as we are. We reach a point that if the town is too backed up, and they can’t send somebody over here with a loader, a week ago we had to pay a contractor to come here and remove snow for us,” he says.
Murphy is hoping to get more gear that would help his crews tackle snow better.
“Because of this increasing severity of these winters, I’m talking to [school CFO] Ken Post about how we can equip better as a district. It’s very labor intensive so I think we need to equip better so we can work a little more efficiently than what we do now,” he says.
While the maintenance crews will do everything they can to remove the snow, Murphy does hope that people who come to the schools are careful and do their part to stay safe. “People still have to wear appropriate footwear and watch where they’re going. Just because the parking lot’s been plowed or the sidewalk’s been shoveled does not mean every square inch is clear. Our guys put in their best effort, but…”
Just like so many of us, he’s also looking forward to spring. “Let’s hope we’re out of the woods, and that Thursday’s storm will be the last one.”