He lookie There......

    More Red steel in the air!  

This is one of the first couple days they started working.  You'll notice that the big yellow crane (below) isn't here yet.  The contractor could only build the out side walls with their fork lift and buckets.  To set the peak of the building on the inside spans they had to wait for the crane 

Here is the crane lifting up one of the middle spans of steel.  The crew builds that span on the ground and then uses the crane to lift into place.  From there they bolt the piece into the side walls and then add all the cross pieces.  

That's it for now!   More pictures to come soon as well as a time lapse video of the last day with the crane.

Steel Men......

Here are some more pictures of the steel going up.  The contractors are waiting for a crane to be delivered to get up any higher then they are here.  This is only 3 days into the project for them.  We will have a building before we know it!

Wait, I thought we were done with this....

      So,  we were not quite done playing in the mud.  We had to make the foundations for the entryways.  Here you can see a couple of our crew digging holes and preping to pour cement.

  Here is our favorite way to dig hole around Michindoh.  The only problem is that we live in Central lower Michigan.  That means there are an abundance of Rocks.  You can see one just behind the auger.  That came out of this hole.  The Auger can't dig through rocks though so if we hit a big enough one,  we have to dig it out by hand.

   We wish we could say that rocks like this are rare when we are digging holes.  They are not.  We often call them 'Michindoh rocks' because we have so many of them in the ground.  That baby is heavy.  Todd here is standing up and he managed to pick it up out of the hole.

These two conduits are for a future project.  They will be empty but we ran them in the ground before we filled in the  trench in because when the time comes to use them there will be a parking lot in the way.  It may look like there are wires in them already, those are tracer wires.  When the time comes we will attach a little device to that wire and be able to find and mark the pipe under the ground.

It begins.....

The builders have arrived!  Here are some pictures.  More updates coming soon!

It's all in the Prep work

 I know what you are thinking.  "The foundation is up,  shouldn't the next blog post be pictures of the building going up?" Well,  not really.  Just like any other project,  we had to clean up our mess.  The first part being the huge 4 foot holes we dug in the ground.  Sounds simple right?  It would be,  if we were in the middle of summer.  But we're not.  To fill in the holes, or backfill, we had to thaw out the surrounding ground so the ground wouldn't settle too much once the heat starts blowing in the building.

Out come the heaters and ground roofs again.  We had stored most of the sand we dug out of the ground at the begining of this process in one of our shops.  Check this out.

This is Shop C.  If you've ever worked here you know this shop is notorious for being messy.  It's not so much messy right now,  but sandy.   This picture was taken about half way through the process of emptying the shop out.  There was alot of sand in there!  

This is a view from the top of the pile.  We had joked about making sure to change the light bulbs in the shop when we had all the sand in there.  It's not often you can walk right up to a 14 ft rafter and just stand there.










Before we back filled the foundations we had to install tile.  Not the ceramic type,  but the plastic type.  This picture gives you an idea of what I mean.  This tile runs the whole perimeter of the building and empties into  pre-dug trenches on the out skirts of the building site.

   

Here you can see we have started filling in the holes.  The little yellow thing in the back ground is our compactor.  It vibrates and runs along the sand and compacts it (go figure!).  When we filled in the holes we had to do it in two stages.  We filled the hole about half full,  packed it down,  filled it up again,  packed it down,  filled it to about 4 in from the top of the foundation and then packed it one more time.  This guarantees that the sand won't settle too much.

Another project we had to do was build a ramp so we could get our equipment in the building.  Here you can see our crew working on that.

One more thing left to do to clean things up; pack up the forms!  Here you can see our crew banding and
loading the pallets of forms on the back of the truck from the rental company.

This is just one, of many,  pallets full of forms.  This is Jerry working on banding the pallets so the truck doesn't  drop one on a car while driving down the road.

Here is the backhoe loading up the rental truck.  I think just about every single person in maintenance is glad to see those forms go.  Good job guys!

The Final Product

It's time to start the next stage of the building!  The contractors will probably be here tomorrow (2/12).  

a

A Firm foundation....

As of today,  the foundation is done!  Our maintenance crew is amazing and with out them we would have never met our deadline for the building to be up.  

As you read over this blog (or maybe just look that pictures) you may think you are having deja vu,  Don't worry you're not!   The first couple pictures are of the second half of the foundation.  We had to pour our foundation in two different stages because of the cold weather.  Here. We Go.

 This is the North west (facing the paintball field) wall. The side that has the 2x4 is considered fixed and the side opposite of that is considered floating.  Don't let the names fool you though,  they are both nailed down to the footer.

This is the same wall just looking the opposite way.  Each one of those pieces of metal that are attached to the ground and the wall are actually turn-buckles. They are used to push or pull the wall into alignment with the building measurements.  One of many of the challenges to this part of the job is getting the foundations set exactly how they are supposed to be.  If we don't have properly built or aligned foundations the building will suffer. Pastors, once again,  perfect sermon illustration. Your welcome.

Here they are pouring the wall.  I think our Maintenance director said after the foundations are up,  we will have had 14 cement trucks worth of cement into the building.  We haven't even poured the floor yet either!  

We also poured the electrical room footers when we poured the last foundation walls.  The great part about this room is that it will be accessible from the outside.  This makes it alot easier to work on because our electricians can get in with out interrupting a group that may be in the gym.

This is one of the workers for the contractor putting up the building.  He is carefully setting the anchor bolts for the pillars that will hold up the building. They offered to come over when we were pouring and set those for us.

This is the last time we will have to fill the forms with cement.  This is the electrical room from above.

This is the final product of all the work.  A Wall.  In this picture one of our maintenance guys is pulling off the 2x4 that the forms would get nailed into prior to pouring the cement.  The little pins sticking out of the cement are what held the forms at the right thickness to create a uniform wall.  They are designed to be broken off with a hammer after the cement cures.

A breath of Fresh air....

        Around the same time we had the building delivered we also had our HVAC (Heating, Ventilation  and Air conditioning) units delivered as well. Here are a few pictures of our crew unloading them from the truck.

This is 1 of 2 semi's that came to deliver the units and their accessories.  This particular semi has mostly the bases of the units (that they sit on top of ) and economizers that help control air intake into the unit from the building.  

This is the other semi with the actual units on it.  You can also see our backhoe driver getting ready to remove them from the truck.

Once we put the outside shell of the building up the plan is to use a couple of these to heat the building for the remainder of the cold season.