When Howard Brickman of Brickman Consulting in Norwell, Mass., went to do a gym job in Bermuda in the ’90s, he discovered something unexpected:
I went to Bermuda to do the flooring in this gym, and when I first got to the job site, there was a buildup of something on the bottom of the inside of three of the walls. It was maybe ½ to ¾ inch thick and tapered away from the walls maybe 4 to 5 inches. It looked like concrete. All the finishes in the tropics are sand-based mortar used as plaster, so I thought the masons must have spread that and just let all of that fall down. I told the general contractor that he would have to chip that out, and he argued with me that I had to do it, but when I gave him my price for subfloor prep, he had one of his guys do it instead. It had the hardness of concrete, but when the guy chipped it, I realized it was bird guano! When the building was open, the birds had perched on top of the walls, and what I had thought was some kind of concrete was compacted bird poo. It was as hard as concrete. The poor guy had to take it out with a chipping hammer; I think he spent two days chipping away at it and sweeping and shoveling it out of the gym while wearing a handkerchief tied over his nose.
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