Lucas Oil has faulty pipes, sign issues

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) - The home of the Colts is a little like your home — it needs repairs. Unfortunately, the building is just a little over two years old. So, a couple of the problems are frustrating for the man in charge of the building.

John Klipsch, the executive director of the Indiana Stadium and Convention Building Authority, gave reporters a tour of the building Wednesday to show a plumbing problem that will be addressed from now into May.

In one upstairs concourse, he pointed to an 8-inch pipe suspended by big red rings. Klipsch said that pipe and others like it must come down. It’s made of galvanized steel and, in some places, the pipes are corroding from the inside.

“It’s unusual,” he said. “That’s why we are digging into it, trying to fix it so aggressively, as opposed to waiting ‘til when a leak occurs.”

Klipsch says, while his experts aren’t sure what’s going wrong, the problem is not necessarily a fault of the galvanized metal. He said other buildings use it without a problem. He said it met specifications and building codes. So, you “can’t fault the contractor entirely. Other contractors would have bid galvanized also.”

Klipsch concedes that galvanized steel is a less-expensive option.

"I think it's a typical scenario when you're trying to win a low-bid project,” he said. “You figure out the best and most effective way and that's what happened on this job."

Stainless steel is replacing the original metal. Workers will remove 8,400 feet of it. That represents 5 to 6 percent of what runs through the building.

But, with the changes, he wanted to also make something clear.

"We want to dispel the notion that stadium costs are going up — because they're not," Klipsch said. “It doesn’t add any cost to the project. We are really confident that we'll be able to recover our expenditures on this through the insurance company, the contractor's bond, or various measures that will come out during the settlement process."

And, the pipes aren’t all that's keeping contractors busy. They've also been working on the signs outside. There are hundreds of little parts that were not properly installed and had to be repaired. The contractor who put them in is out of business.

Klipsch said the same thing happened to the plumbing contractor who installed the galvanized pipe.