NORTH COUNTY - To school custodians across North County, the holiday break is time to get things done.

While students sleep late and teachers rejuvenate for the spring semester, custodians take advantage of empty campuses to do some deep cleaning and tackle bigger maintenance projects.

From scraping up gum in Vista and installing heating systems in Carlsbad to refinishing gym floors in Escondido, crews are busy this week across North County.

During the break, custodians are able to dig into jobs they may not have had time to do over the year, said John Castro, custodian at Vista High School. His projects included removing gum from sidewalks, cleaning lunch tables and waxing the gymnasium floor.

"This is our chance to get caught up inside the campus while students and faculty are off so they are not disturbed," said Greg Stewart, a groundskeeper at Carlsbad High, as he took a break from his lawn mower on Wednesday. Stewart said he will also tidy up planter boxes around the campus this week.

Not only is the work less disruptive, but it provides time for projects that would be too noisy or dangerous to do with students around.

"When you don't have 3,200 kids to work against, it's just so much easier," said Tony Engebrits, a groundskeeper at Vista High School.

Also, Engebrits said, he's glad to be around to keep an eye on things on the campus.

Crews at Carlsbad High School were busy Wednesday refinishing wood floors, cleaning carpets, painting steps and cutting the grass.

Dale Kaikas, a custodian at the school, said his focus during the break was to clean carpets in the library and nurse's station. Custodians were also painting steps around the campus with "caution-yellow" paint. And if time permits, he and his crew will put a fresh coat of paint on the bathroom walls to cover the patchwork of colors used to hide graffiti over the last semester.

Across the campus, a two-man crew with Johnson Flooring, of El Cajon, laid down a coat of polyurethane on the wood floor of the new gym. A member of that crew, Dillon O'Brien, said the company is scheduled to recoat gym floors at four schools in Escondido this week, too.

A few blocks away at Carlsbad Village Academy, electrical contractors were installing two new heating/air-conditioning units on the roof as part of an $8 million energy management project.

At nearby Magnolia Elementary, Todd Steinbrugge, a technician with Siemens Building Technologies, tested a new thermostat in one of the campus's 18 portable classrooms. Steinbrugge's project is part of the districtwide electrical retrofit that officials say will pay for itself in energy savings over the next 20 years.

The projects large and small help keep the schools running with minimal disruption. Winter breaks may be a busy time for custodians, said Allen Sanders, lead custodian at Oceanside High School, but keeping the campus clean is a yearlong job.

"It's a never-ending story," he said.

- Contact Philip K. Ireland at (760) 901-4043 or online at pireland@nctimes.com.