Three county offices were affected — and the Butler County Commissioners regular meeting room soaked — as the result of a construction-related broken sprinkler head during the weekend.

Commissioner Chairman Leslie Osche said the incident, which occurred at about 1:30 p.m. Saturday when a broken sprinkler head dampened the meeting room on the first floor of the county Government Center, was related to the ongoing facade replacement occurring at the building.

“Obviously there were some issues related to the construction — not a direct result, but related to,” she said.

Osche said as part of the construction some of the outer wall of the building had been removed, allowing cold air to filter into the building. She said the contractor, Uhl Construction, was made aware of this before the Saturday incident.

“We indicated to them that the cold was getting into there and could be an issue, two different times,” Osche said.

The cold then froze the sprinkler head, and with thawing temperatures Saturday, broke, she said.

Two to three inches of water saturated the room, seeping into the floor and damaging parts of the ceilings of the Recorder of Deeds office, the Public Defender's Office and a small portion of the Facilities and Operations office, Osche said. She said those ceiling tiles have since been replaced.

The sprinkler alarm call came in while three workers from Uhl poured and finished the new concrete immediately outside the building's front door. The crew decided to pour the concrete on a Saturday because there would normally be no activity at the government center. Because of the wet concrete, firefighters had to access the building via a back door on West Vogely Street near the Tier Parking Garage.

Commissioner Kevin Boozel said because of the incident, Wednesday's commissioners meeting is expected to take place in the commissioners conference room on the fifth floor.

Boozel said the water damage was “mitigated by the internal maintenance staff” which responded quickly and worked through the weekend to clean up the mess.

“A lot of it was cleaned up in house,” Boozel said, but the facilities staff are still evaluating whether to bring in a restoration company.

He said maintenance crews rented dehumidifiers following the incident and ran them through the weekend.

Osche said the space is “fairly well dried out and could be used at this point,” but no damage estimate has yet been made.

“We are still working to determine what the total cost of the damage is going to be,” she said, estimating that damage report wouldn't be ready for another week or two.

However, she said the contracting company is expected to bear the liability for the damage.

“Our hope, our expectation, is that the contractor will likely be assuming those charges,” Osche said.