BY ABBY FOX

Students and parents anxious to start playing on the new turf field at the high school are going to have to wait some more, now that officials have decided to test the field again in order to truly know if the sub-base underneath is up-to-par.

Town Manager Bill Sequino called a meeting last week and on Friday he and others met with GZA, the firm that reported back on the first tests several weeks ago. “We had them clarify the results from the testing,” said Jean Ann Guliano, chair of the school committee. School Superintendent Victor Mercurio attended the meeting, as well as Project Manager Ernie DiSaia.

“The issue is, when we did the testing, the infiltration rate, the rate the water goes through, was 1.9 to 3.6 inches per hour. That’s what the test showed. Based on GZA’s forensic analysis, according to them, it should be 14 to 16 inches per hour, based on the material specified,” she said.

Furthermore, the material was finer than specified, about 15 percent higher, and “what GZA was saying is this is most likely why we had a smaller infiltration rate.”

Fine materials were found at the edges, but that was due as much to the heavy rains of weeks ago as much as anything else, and now officials are asking for testing of the center of the field, not only at the edges, as another way to get at exactly what shape the field is in.

“GZA recommended we test the center of the field, because if we go by test results now, we don’t have something built to specification,” she said. If the tests at the center bring better results than earlier testing and they’re “to spec,” Guliano said, that means “it’s draining properly, we got what we paid for and we’re good to go.”

Guliano said she went to the meeting armed with some research about industry standards after contacting a couple of different organizations and asking them. “The Synthetic Turf Council recommends  a minimum of 14 inches per hour on the sub base and the American Sports Builders Association, recommends 10 to 15 inches per hour,” she said, a far cry from the 1.9 to 3.6 inches found weeks ago.

Slightly less discouraging that the test results was GZA’s grain analysis, she said, which showed an infiltration rate of between 3 to five inches per hour, but that too is still several inches below standard.

Sequino, Guliano and others were looking forward to testing the fields Monday but the contractor, Fleet Construction, “said No,” Guliano said, and officials are working with Fleet to set up a date for testing. “We have to make sure this testing is in alignment with our contract,” she said. “So we cancelled the testing and now we have to meet with Fleet.”

For now, it’s a wait-game until the results from the next round of testing comes back. “If the test shows they’re within spec, they move forward, but until we can confirm that, all we can go on is a test that shows we’re out of spec,” she said.

Two tests will be done, Guliano said: a grain-size analysis and a permeability test, or infiltration test, with a “Double Ring Infiltrometer,” and the town’s Public Works Director Joe Duarte “will pick the three locations” for testing.

“This is more than I ever wanted to know about sub-bases,” Guliano said, half-jokingly. “If they could just let us do the center test, we can move on.”

Aside from this latest news, “the punch list is fine.” But meanwhile, “A good sub-base is of the utmost importance. If what’s underneath is not going to hold up over time, we have to be concerned about that.”