Wall crumbles to the touch at Clarksville church

CLARKSVILLE Water has long been a problem in the basement of Clarksville Christian Church, but parishioners did not realize how big a problem until they brought in a contractor to assess the situation.

We started having a lot of water in the basement after a heavy rain, said church elder Bob Dobbins. The church brought in a couple of contractors at different times over the years but until you dug down, there was no way to know how bad things were.

When Whipkey Construction of Carmichaels began to dig and assess where the water was coming from, there was no turning back. The small congregation quickly faced a charge of about $47,000 to take care of the problem.

We thought we could seal the foundation to stop the water leak but the block was just breaking apart in your hands like putty. It left us with no other choice but to replace the wall, Dobbins said.

He credits the generosity of members through the years, along with the support of the community at church dinners for contributing to a reserve fund that will help pay for the project.

Well be totally broke by the time this work is over with, Dobbins said. We are going to start to have dinners more often. Since this wasnt weather-related or catastrophic, we couldnt collect anything from our insurance.

It is going to take a lot of church dinners to build the churchs reserve fund to a healthy level again. Hopefully, it wont face any other issues with facilities, or the need to replace another wall anytime soon.

It was something that had to be done, Dobbins said, especially after the situation turned scary.

The wall being replaced runs the length of the front of the church. When construction workers removed the earth that faced it, the wall began to buckle, Dobbins said.

We were lucky the walls didnt cave in on us. It was the whole front wall that we had to contend with and then we were afraid the front steps were going to cave in, too, Dobbins said. We found out there was no footer.

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Wall crumbles to the touch at Clarksville church