What's With All the Construction!?

Have you been wondering about the construction activity around the church?

This summer has proven to be filled with surprises all around our church campus!

In mid-July, we discovered that the entire row of classrooms in the front of campus (near Los Alamitos Blvd.) had been flooded. After investigating, we learned that the cause of the flood was a nearby ficus tree. The tree’s roots were in search of water and they thought our sewer line was a good place to find it! The roots broke through the joints of the sewer line piping and took over enough to cause a severe backup and consequently a damaging flood.

The sewer line was fixed that same day. A clean out was installed using plastic pipe and the tree roots were bored out of the line. Once the line was cleared, it was repaired and sealed using an internal plastic fabric liner that will not allow the roots to penetrate through the sewer line in the future.

Now, to repair the flooding damage!! We had the experts on site the day the damaged occurred. We needed emergency water extraction, drying & dehumidification, and proper testing to ensure no detection of mold or mildew. We are now currently in the repair and rebuild process. The carpets were completely removed down to the concrete foundation; we are installing new flooring. The lower portions in the walls were removed down to the studs; we are dry walling, patching and painting all the walls. The cabinetry had significant water damage; we are building new cabinetry taking into consideration any specializations consistent with our current needs.

In addition, the following Sunday, we learned of some clogging in the sewer line leading to the back of the church (towards Pine Ave.). This was discovered after some flooding in the bathrooms during church services. We had plumbers come out to fix the immediate problem and ensure we had working restrooms for VBS the following week.

So why was there a hole in the parking lot for so long? It was because in the process of clearing the second sewer line, we had several plumbers giving us their opinions of our old cast iron piping that runs underneath our parking lot. We finally came to a conclusion for the repair and now have our parking lot back! We feel confident we have cleared the sewer lines and are planning to follow a preventative maintenance schedule to hopefully prevent these untimely plumbing issues in the future.

I truly appreciate everyone’s offers of help during this process. We had plenty of positive and exciting attitudes toward all the necessary adjustments that we needed to make in order to host over 290 children on our campus during the week of VBS! Everyone was supportive and understanding that VBS will go on and God will show up. Well, VBS did happen and God was there! It was amazing to work through these trials together with grace and love for one another.

Thea Walker
Director of Administration

562/493.2553 x103