Water Leak Damages La Grange Hospital

Folks may have noticed a lot of increased action in and around the closed St. Mark’s Medical Center in La Grange over the past few days.

But the action was not indicative of a reopening.

A control valve in the air conditioning system at St, Mark’s failed causing a hot water leak in the building.

“As counter-intuitive as using hot water in an air conditioning system for a building may sound, the control valve is instrumental in setting the temperature for each room without affecting the temperature in any other room. As you can imagine there are hundreds of these valves in the facility. As a precaution all hot water HVAC loops have been disabled to prevent similar failures in the future,” St. Mark’s board chair Dudley Piland said.

“After conferring with St. Mark’s insurance carrier, SERVPRO was engaged to perform the remediation work. They have removed damaged materials (flooring, sheetrock, cabinets, furniture, etc.) and have dehumidified the area impacted. An air quality test was conducted Monday to determine if the humidity and air quality meet acceptable standards. Once the air quality test is passed that will conclude this phase of the project.

“Bids from qualified and approved contractors are being solicited for the second phase of the project for the reconstruction of the impacted areas. In that phase the intent is for the facility to be returned to the same or substantially similar condition as prior to the incident.

“An insurance claim has been filed for both the remediation of the damage and the subsequent reconstruction under St. Mark’s insurance policy for the facility.”