Week 32, Part 1

New Year’s Day weekend brought some nasty weather- rain and high winds. So we arrived on site to fund some work from last week had been undone-



The CNI crew spent an hour or so pulling the visquene tent off some collapsed scaffolding-



Dewatering efforts were resumed in some areas-



Fortunately, since the Operations roof was complete by the end of last week that work zone was open for business-



CNI began framing up a shear wall between the Screen room and the Maintenance/Storage room-



After a few hours CNI and R&R Masonry had the tent back up over Mechanical-



Block laying began in earnest-



In one day we made a lot of progress towards the first lift. One lift of CMU is six courses of 8” block; a four-foot high wall segment-





Challenger Electric still had some work to do in Mechanical. Now they simply have to share the working space with the masons! This is the same area they covered with a small tent last week. They are still under a tent but it’s about 20’ overhead!



At Operations ACI, the mechanical/HVAC sub, began ductwork installation-



CNI continued work on the shear wall frame-



And outside we got a little reminder of the season-

Week 31, Part 2- Mechanical Tent

Now that rain and snow have subsided, Challenger Electric took down their camping tent and started working in open air- at 0-dark:30 under lights-



Setting up our Motor Control Center is the most critical aspect of electrical work on the project so the crew spent quite a few hours in this small space over a couple weeks!



Eventually they started running conduit west out of the Blower Room into other areas of the Mechanical building, even as scaffolding went up around them-



Speaking of scaffolding- while the electricians were busy at ground level and roof was under construction at Operations- R&R Masonry prepped for CMU walls at the Mechanical building. The first task was setting up full-height scaffolding and covering it with a tent due to cold weather. The blocks and mortar need minimum working temps for quality construction (40F)-










Light the propane heater and pop that roof up!




Here's a view of the inside shortly before the heat forced the "roof" to inflate-



This completes a review of the week before New Year’s Day. CMU block wall construction will start first thing next week.

In the meantime, during the extended cold snap we developed an "ice cave" near the Effluent Lift Station. The dewatering hoses had a few pinholes due to rough conditions on the job site. The slight leakage created some interesting ice formations-






And finally a general view of our situation this week while the decking was still under construction at Operations and the Mechanical building tent was in place-

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-