Week 31, Part 1- Operations Building

The week between Christmas and New Year’s saw the roof structure come together at the Operations building. A two-man crew installed fascia while the truss hardware was installed from the inside. Contractors Northwest performed all of this work-








We had some nice clouds mid-week-



Then the plywood arrived for decking over the trusses-





That took a couple days including pauses to sweep off fresh snow-



Here’s the inside of Operations as the decking was near completion, looking at the east end towards the static screens, known as the “headworks”-



A close up view of one static screen on the left and the Receiving Pig Port in blue on the right. (I’ll explain the “Pig Port” concept in a later post!) The Static Screen has a hollow compartment that fills up through the black stub of pipe in the center. Once full, it spills to the back side where a diagonally mounted screen removes solids larger than about 1/8”. The screened water enters a lower compartment and exits via the down-turned pipe at the bottom and heads to the Treatment building.



Towards the end of the week the roofing contractor came on site to install the “ice shield” and roofing felt on the plywood decking. This was a half-day job-




And now Operations is ready for interior work. The metal roof is on order and will arrive in a few weeks. But we have plenty of electrical, plumbing and mechanical work to do in the meantime!

Week 30, Part 2- Snow and Operations roof

The snow was a nice change, given the other option (mud). Challenger continued to work in the Blower Room tent. This conduit sweep assembly is the beginnings of the Motor Control Center-





Owens backfilled the interior of the Mechanical building-





Back at the Operations building the truss installation was finished in two days-



Next on the 4-day week agenda- glue-lams!







That concludes Week 30 and brings us to Christmas weekend. The week between Christmas and New Year’s and the first full week in January are close behind. That will bring us up to the current week. Things have been quite busy on the interior of Operations and the CMU walls are going up at Mechanical so I look forward to sharing the most up-to-date pictures here soon!

Week 30 Part 1- Rain, rain go away...

The theme on Monday of this week was- “Wet”! There was so much water over the weekend that all Owens could do was dig a trench for water diversion and call it a day-





Everything is complicated by too much rain. Even things you take for granted-



Challenger Electric tented up their work zone; the Blower Room in the east end of the Mechanical building-



The trusses arrived for the Operations building-



First a little maintenance to create a safer work environment-





And the roof begins-



Then, if you complain too much about the mud, you arrive the next morning to a new ground covering-

Week 28 Part 2- Operations & Piping

We'll jump right into Operations building progress- the CMU (cinder block) walls were finished this week. The temperature was better but under a tent you don't notice anyway!

Here are two views showing early stage of final lift then the finished height. The first two look northeast. The east end will house the Headworks Screening room.






The second two pictures look southwest. The west half will have a laboratory, office, restroom and mechanical room (hot water heater and furnace/AC).







Owens worked this week to connect one of the main process pipes-
Bypass Line E. This allows water from the Treatment Building to be diverted around the Phosphorous Removal and UV Disinfection stages if they are temporarily offline-




The Bypass line was deep enough that we reached the top of our basalt layer again so a little "hammer time" was needed-



At the Treatment Building activity continued inside and out. Bolt-ups for more Aero Mod equipment took place on the north side-




And on the south side the drain piping system was waiting patiently for Owens to finish the Bypass line-





When Owens got back to the Treatment building they bolted up the manifold and dug deeper to work on the Effluent line which runs parallel to the south wall of the Treatment building. Ice-breaking and dewatering was a morning routine for a couple days-






On good days dewatering was the only task. This picture brings to mind a certain movie title- "A River Runs Through It"



We'll finish with a wide view looking east from on top the gravel pile west of the site. This was the day of concrete pour for stem walls. The Operations building is under the white tent, the Treatment building with catwalk system immediately to the right. The short, gray square buildign in front the Operations tent is the Phosphorous Removal building. Keep in mind the walls for that structure are 24 feet vertical so most of it is below ground! And finally on the lower right is the Mechanical building with wood forms and blankets-



That's all for the 28th week of the project!

Week 28 (really!) Part 1- Mechanical and Treatment Bldg progress

(This represents the first full week of December, 2009. In the blog it is out of sequence, see the previous post for explanation.)

So this was our coldest week of the job so far- and our first burn barrel!



The cold weather forced us to use "Thawzall" units to heat the concrete forms. CNI had been building forms for Stem Walls on the Mechanical building last week. One pour occurred last week but three additional segments of the building still needed concrete-



The hose is running under the blankets on the ground then back and forth over the forms, which you cannot see because...they are covered with blankets!




The concrete pour went ahead as scheduled and then the wall forms were covered with blankets again for the rest of the week-





Here you see the stem walls around the UV Disinfection room from the previous week. The rebar dowels are sticking out waiting for the next phase- CMU or cinder block walls which will rise 12 feet above these stem walls-



So how cold was it this week? So cold that AIR actually froze in some exposed pipes!



OK, maybe the moisture in the air had something to do with it but it looks pretty cool anyway!



And for the first time in this blog you get to see the inspector, because you can't see my whole face anyway. I'm wearing 3 layers under my coat and a head/face cover under the hard hat- standing in front of the Operations building tent-



Meanwhile Pikachu doesn't care about the cold, he's just catchin' some rays on the Wacker! (I know that's out of the blue because you haven't seen Pikachu before. He's been hanging out on the jobsite for months. Not a real hard worker but he's always smiling so we keep him around!)



Back to real business- over at the Treatment building more progress is made installing Aero Mod equipment. Here's a wide view-



Just to show we didn't bend the equipment too much here's a standard view- yes, everything runs in straight lines!



Week 28 Part 2 will follow later today...

Week 28 missed!

Due to a momentary lack of focus- the Blog Editor skipped right passed the real "Week 28" a couple weeks ago and posted pictures from Week 29 under the guise of Week 28. Week 28 was a particularly cold one so we don't want you to miss out on the experience of single digits in Plummer, Idaho! (First full week in December.)

The true Week 28 will be covered in a post immediately following this one and we'll get back on the regular schedule with Week 30 post-haste!