January 28 - Inside and Outside Work

The Electrician Comes and Goes -

The electrician comes when no one else is in sight. I only know he was here because he leaves tracks. Tracks in the floor, tracks in the walls and pipes sticking up from the dirt. The photo on the right portrays the electrician’s work. What had been a perfectly good, solid piece of foam now has a fracture and a patch. On beyond the foam, a mostly buried pipe is seen. The buried pipe runs from the electrical panel towards the back of the building.  

Adjacent to the main panel is a series of pipes. These run through the dirt to various places in the building. I don’t know where all they run, but I hope the electrician remembers.

I asked Bob some time ago about wiring in a building with foam walls. I know with stud walls, the wiring is roughed in before the drywall is attached. Since the drywall will be attached directly on top of the foam blocks, and there was no provision for wiring in the concrete filling of the blocks, how does the building get wired, I wondered. I did not see it happen but again the electrician left tracks behind. Flexible metal cable is tucked into a trench in the foam, running down to an electrical box. So, how did the trench get cut into the wall? I am told that a hot wire did the trick. I did not see it happen but I think of a toaster and the red hot wire that toasts the bread. A device that heats a loop of metal wire gets inserted into the foam and melts its way down the wall to the spot where the box need to be. Maybe one of these days I wll sneak up on him when he is not looking and catch him in the act of making these electrical ‘foot prints’ that now adorn the floors and walls.





In Floor Heat - 

I got the story on the in floor heat tubing that was started last Saturday. The first noteworthy thing I learned is that there is a plan for laying the bright orange tubing. The vendor that sells the tubing, the manifolds and associated supplies also designs the layout.

The diagram shows how the whole building will be laid out. There are four manifolds denoted by the blue squares with a line to its location in the building. Each of the four manifolds has a number of tubing runs coming out of it. For example, the manifold on the lower left side of the diagram, physically located in the kitchen, has ten runs. Hot water comes to the manifold from the boiler at 140 degrees and is distributed out through the ten valves. Each run has a maximum of 450 feet of tubing. So the tubing for a given run must go out and back using less than 450 feet. So the only challenge is to figure out the number of manifolds needed, position them, they must be inside of walls, and lay out the tubing runs so the entire floor gets properly heated. The engineer figures this stuff all out and sends along this maze with the corresponding amount of tubing.  

The tubing comes in size large coils as shown stacked up in the corner. In total there will be about 12,500 feet of pretty orange tubing buried in the concrete floor.

Glen made up this handy dandy spool thingy to facilitate pulling tubing for positioning.

Plastic staples hold the tubing in place.

The maze of tubing will all be encased in concrete when the floor is poured. That is too bad. I think this maze would be a much greater challenge for the rodents than the wimpy rat runs in the trusses.



Pressure Testing the System - 

When all the runs for a given manifold are complete the system is tested. Glen hooks up a compressor and fills the tubes with 50 lbs of air pressure. Glen claims that if it does not leak air it will not leak water. Seems reasonable to me.

















Fifty pounds of pressure is approximately one and one half times the operating pressure when filled with water, so it is tested with a good margin of safety. For the final test it needs to hold the air pressure for 24 hours.








Planning the Next Steps -

Thursday evening the crew chiefs and their assistants met at the building to plot the next steps. Nate, Mark, Brent, Phil, Brian and Ken (behind Brian) gathered around the prints.

The result of the meeting is the chart now hanging on the wall.

























Immediately under the very legible chart is this diagram, which possibly encapsulates all of the chart information into one simple picture. It is also possible that it does not.
















Outside Work -
Saturday was warm enough that outside work could be done if one dressed warmly enough. And many workers dressed accordingly and labored out in the fresh air. No concern for excessive carbon monoxide levels on this day.

Aaron cuts soffit cover material.

Bill and Aare ascend the lift to hang the soffit covers.















Ed and Justin put up strips for
hanging siding.

I saw these benches stacked up outside the building. I am not certain how they are intended to be used. I could not help but wonder if after eight years of sitting on school cafeteria benches for services, is the building committee considering just using these for the church pews? I think it is not likely, but I have been surprised by so many things on this project already that I am just not sure of anything.