The topic for this week picked itself, the blog is going to delve into the murky world of fire alarm installation, written from the perspective of a novice - one blissfully ignorant of the slings and arrows that comes with fire alarm installation (in my wildest dreams I never thought I would ever write “slings and arrows” and “fire alarm” in the same sentence!). To give this tale justice I need to go back 12 months, for it was about a year ago when we heard the distance rumblings of disquiet from the fire alarm world.
Our plan was very simple, we have a working, and to-date, approved fire alarm for the existing buildings, so all we had to do to accommodate the new construction was slap a new alarm in the new areas and, as they say, “Robert’s your father’s brother!”* But not so fast. Early in the summer of 2020, rumors started to spread that the Fire Marshall was not too tickled with our proposed way ahead. By way of defense let me clarify that statement “our proposed,” simply put, and sad but nevertheless true, the Fire Marshall made it clear the proposal, delivered to us by a sub-contractor, did not present an acceptable design so it was, quite literally, a case of going back to the drawing board. There is nothing like 20:20 hindsight so benefiting from that wisdom to look back it’s quite easy to understand the Fire Marshall’s perspective. By any standards, the existing system was on the downhill slope of obsolescence, no doubt a fine system in its day, but by now very much an analogue system in a digital world that lacked a great number of features provided as a matter of course (and as is it happens also a matter of fire code) by new systems. Let me highlight a couple of functions you get with a modern system. First there is the automated exit instructions so if there is a fire the alarm tells folks in the building which route they are to follow to exit the building safely. Then there is the notification to the fire department that allows the fire fighters to know exactly where the fire is as they rush to the scene. All very clever stuff, and with a day school and a building with a much increased occupancy capacity all very worthwhile, if not a little more expensive than we originally thought (that’s one of those understatements we English are famous for). We were faced with a simple choice of either fitting out the old and the new buildings with a modern fire alarm system or never getting a certificate to occupy the new buildings, it was obviously time to accept the inevitable and a new system it was to be. Now my dear blog-readers, (actually I believe the correct term is” blog-followers” but that I find to be a bit presumptuous) I, myself, and quite possibly most of you, have missed a lucrative career as fire alarm system integrators. This is how it works, at least to me; architect gets a consultant to develop a fire alarm design that seems to be kept between the consultant and Fire Marshall. The Fire Marshall rejects the design, at this point mostly unseen by the customer (that is us), but no great loss because as you now know it was not “up to code.” There then follows a, slightly less than frenetic, re-design effort that results in an assurance the Fire Marshall will accept the design and a bottom-line cost for a shed load of equipment without any explanation. Customer queries the cost and equipment schedule and gets snowed under with “fire-system” speak justifying the design, the equipment schedules, labor hours and, quite possibly, winning lottery numbers as well as the final score in the Euro-Soccer Championship match between England and Germany next Tuesday night (England will probably loose on penalties because that’s what always happens when we play Germany!). I’m sorry I digress, back to the fire alarm. So, believing we have all the clarity we are ever going to get, and being aware the construction clock is ticking, the design is accepted, then the fun really begins. Fire Alarm cabling is brought to your Church buildings by IT’s Electric, Fire Alarm control station (the brain of the system) by SNS, Fire Alarm “addressable sensors” by a sub-contractor to IT’s Electric, programming the master computer by SNS and, because there does not seem to be anyone else, de facto force driving this forward is, of course, Scott Crumley! So, what do you call a bunch of contractors all working “fire alarm”? I have no idea, so I’ve christened them a “plethora” of contractors and trades. A “plethora,” the meshing together like the cogs in a slightly “unforgiving” gearbox (must be an MGB), that over the course of the past 3 or 4 months has ground out the installation of a fire alarm system……or so I thought. It was still early May when the email arrived, forwarded to me by our intrepid General Contractor (a.k.a. Scott), and originating from the depths of the “plethora.” An instruction, or maybe even a demand, that we the customer provide certain information with alacrity. Scott, a man with years of experience in the business, knows when he smells a rat of a task and so here I am trying to respond to the plethora’s siren call. Demand number 1: two 50v land telephone lines (contacted Verizon two lines installed, check). Demand number 2: fire alarm monitoring service (discuss whether we use our existing service provider, time to re-compete, run solicitation select new service provider, check). Demand number 3: plan of the old and new building that identifies rooms by number or name…..you have got to be kidding me! As you may know we have no such plan, just a couple of incidental room names! Somewhere at the beginning of this blog, I described how intelligent the a fire alarm system is, well it turns out much of that intelligence is based on being able to identify the location of a fire sensor by the nearest room number!! So, my fellow “Old Donationians,” when you walk around the new, and old, buildings and perhaps glance up at a lentil over a door and see a “number” and perhaps wonder why it seems such a haphazard scheme please, take it from one who really knows, there is a logic to the apparent madness!!! Before I sign-off from this week’s blog I’d like to report the visit to the new building of Betsy Morris, a stalwart of the new building planning program who moved away from Virginia Beach shortly before groundbreaking. Betsy was back in the area for a short visit, and it was a delight for Scott and me to have the opportunity to show her around the buildings last Friday and to see, and hear, her delight at how the plans and renderings she is so familiar with have been transformed into reality. I think she was “right chuffed*.” Stay safe and stay healthy, David Beach “Robert’s your father’s brother”: Abridged version of “Bob’s your uncle” – "Bob's your uncle" is a phrase commonly used in the United Kingdom that means "and there it is" or "and there you have it" or "It's done". Typically, someone says it to conclude a set of simple instructions or when a result is reached. The phrase originated in 1887 when the then British Prime Minister Robert Gascoyne-Cecil appointed his nephew Arthur James Balfour as a Government Minister. The phrase 'Bob's your uncle' was coined when Arthur referred to the Prime Minister as 'Uncle Bob'. Apparently, it's very simple to become a Minister of State when Bob's your uncle! “Right chuffed”: Colloquial phrase in common use in the English County of Yorkshire meaning extremely pleased.
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In some weeks it is easy to focus my blogging efforts on a key event, whilst in others many topics jostle for blogging space and it becomes a challenge to choose what to write about. This week it’s a mix of both with some very big milestones achieved throughout the Great Hall and Narthex. So, let’s dive right on in! Ever since the Great Hall was declared “dry” (basically means it has a roof) we have grown accustomed to the “Yuletide” like strings of yellow construction lights that festooned the rafters throughout the building. In this past week the yellow strings of lights have gone out all over the building and it is our hope we will never see their likes again (with apologies to Sir Winston Churchill) …. because it’s “switch on time” for the installed lighting! It is hard to believe, but I am told throughout the new and existing buildings It’s Electric has laid over 50 kilometers of cabling of one sort or another, much of it by the hand of Brandon who, in the past, has mostly appeared in photographs as a pair of legs atop a scissor lift, but in this blog I can feature the other half of him and face on! As they say on marketing shows, “there is more.” Last Saturday, a mere 5 days ago as I write this blog, I was helping our construction powerhouse, Scott Crumley, clean the Great Hall floor. My particular prowess has become the 24” broom with which I’m getting quite handy whilst the heavy lifting was, as always, done by Scott on the rotary floor polisher. Now here’s an interesting aside, have you ever tried to operate one of those commercial rotary floor cleaners? Can’t be too hard, I thought. How wrong could I have been! There’s a knack to this, a lever for forward, and another for back and the trick is to strike a fine balance between the two. If you are successful then the machine acts like a well-trained Labrador on a leash, get it wrong and, my friends, it’s the floor polishing equivalent of trying to ride one of those mechanical bulls when it’s set at “rodeo expert” level. So, sheepishly handing the controls back to Scott, I took up my brush and swept on! Moving forward a day, it’s now Sunday and parishioners are taking up the call to write a prayer, poem or thought for the day on the Great Hall’s concrete floor. I will forgive the parishioner I overheard, as I passed through the Hall, saying “this floor isn’t very clean …. I wish they’d cleaned the floor.” No really, you are forgiven. Unsealed concrete needs no encouragement to generate dust especially when it’s been under a building site for the past 6 months, and it is a trifle tricky to buff it to a high gloss when you only have 4 hours on a Saturday morning to get the job done. Moving forward another day, it is now Monday, and Cherry Carpet and Tiles have just arrived on site to start to lay the floor covering. Let me paint a picture, hopefully with well less than 1000 words! Scott has removed the clutter of building materials, tools, ladders, empty plastic water bottles, discarded food containers, and general debris, but the floor, even after our exhaustive sweeping, is far from “carpet tile ready.” For one thing the dust is back, maybe it never actually went away, and the blotches of hardened filler dropped from the trowels of the ladies as they patched the sheet rock must be laboriously scrapped off. Then the whole area is given the once over with a couple of commercial vacuum cleaners, putting our efforts with the broom to shame, and then the meeting between floor and wall must be chipped clean. After the scraping and cleaning it’s time to fill the expansion joints between each concrete floor section with some type of mastic that doesn’t mind getting squeezed as the concrete expands, or conversely expanding when the concrete contracts (clever stuff this mastic…but don’t get it on you’re the sole of your shoe because by comparison it makes your worst “stepping in bubble gum” experience seem like merely having to wipe water off a glass surface with an absorbent towel). Then it is time to glue, square yard by square yard of glue that’s dried off with heaters until it’s tacky and whilst that’s happening the tiling crew take the opportunity to pop down the plastic tiles in the rooms that are off the Great Hall. Just two days later and it is as if the concrete itself sprouted carpet tiles over night! The entrances are carpeted, the Great Hall is carpeted, the corridor and new library are carpeted, and the Narthex is nearly finished, including the complicated “swirl” feature where two different patterns join to make carpet harmony. Good grief this crew really know how to lay carpet! Whilst the “carpeteers” plied their trade, the main entrance to the Narthex, that is, the one facing the Church where the Great Hall and existing building meet, has been getting ceramic floor tiles, and it certainly is an interesting result. The space is like an elongated hexagon with dark tiles surrounding an inset of patterned tiles that together, with the yet to be installed light fitting, will give the Narthex main entrance its architecturally dramatic look. Before I end this “blog-a-thon” it would be remiss of me if I were not to mention the return, like swallows in summer, of the “Men’s Wednesday Breakfast” crew. There they were, tucked away in the rear wing and holding their first in person meeting since March 2020, albeit with a “bring-your-own” mandate but gathered once again in comradeship, and ready to end their meeting with a quick tour of the new building. As I wandered with them through the building, I was very much struck by the thought that I was in the company of some of the parishioners that made what we were looking at possible when they started the process all those years ago. Thank you. Stay Safe and stay healthy,
David Beach It is just before 1000 a.m. on Friday morning, and I am sitting in Tucker Hall’s temporary, open-plan office area. My plan was to come to the Church early, take photographs of the newly planted exterior, and then write a fully illustrated blog for this week. As the great Scottish bard "Rabbie" Burns wrote long ago “The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men, Gang aft agley, An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,”* and so now I’m sitting here typing whilst outside it’s raining cats and dogs* making photography impossible (okay in truth photography is possible but I’m dressed smartly for a later appointment and have no intention of getting another drenching). On the downside, no pictures of the planting but on the upside (and it is a big up) although we have had 2 to 3 days of heavy rain the campus hasn’t flooded and one useful spin off is the new trees have had a great start at getting watered in!! Let me try and describe what has been going on.
The first thing you would note on arriving at the campus is we now have a new carpark and drive through that connects N. Witchduck Rd to the Bell Tower, as well as a pull through that allows vehicles to swing off N. Witchduck Rd, drop passengers off at the Narthex entrance and then follow the loop back to the road. Carpark and drive through have a glistening covering of asphalt – which has also benefited from the cooling by heavy rainfall – and now, after so very many months, the day school drop off and collection traffic flow doesn’t have to do a “U” turn back the way they came but can now continue past the west end of the Great Hall and back to the road. Next week, weather permitting, the new carpark and road marking will be added so a great opportunity for someone to drive, or walk, through the wet, white paint and leave an indelible mark of their passing! And there’s more. Asphalt aside, the main highlight of this week must be the landscape contractor arriving on site to plant the various shrubs, bushes and trees that are part of the site plan. Most of this planting is along N. Witchduck Rd, with bushes and young trees along the curb, and two flower beds either side of the Narthex entrance that, on the right side, joins a line of “needle point” bushes planted along the Great Hall wall. If I were in the least bit botanical I would, at this point, reel off the full list of new flora, but although a Brit my gardening knowledge and talent is more in the field of heavy lifting and digging whilst under close supervision. There’s also been some plant changes between plan and reality to better reflect the locality but even so, from the construction plan I believe the trees are a mix of oak, hackberry, dogwood and pine. Anyone with even a hint of “green thumb” knows the importance of watering in new plants even when they are native to the area. This has posed a small challenge; we don’t have too many external watering points around Tucker and the one at the end of the Great Hall will not go live for a few more weeks. However, we are blessed with a commercial water faucet on the outside of Tucker Hall and after a quick user trial to confirm water availability I developed an irrigation plan based on timers, soak hoses and water sprinklers. Setting up the irrigation was not quite as I had imagined (there goes that “The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men” again) because the commercial water faucet had given of its best to my user trial and now stubbornly refused to gush forth water! (a recent visit by the plumber has confirmed the need to demolish some of the wall to facilitate a repair……and that won’t be happening anytime soon). It is a very long hose-lay from Alfriend House to N. Witchduck Road and, I have to confess, a somewhat frustrating, and at times soaking, task to connect enough of ODEC’s stock of aging hoses and cracked connectors to cover the distance. But persistence prevailed, also driven by the thought of being responsible for killing off all of the new planting by week’s end if I failed to get water to where it was most needed (after an afternoon hose hauling in the sun the water was most needed down the throat of your blogging correspondent). Happy to announce the timed watering system is now fully operational and just in time to welcome the deluge of rain we’ve had for the past 3 days. I’m afraid my ripping yarn from the “do-it-yourself” handbook of irrigation is not quite done. There are 8 new trees that need much care and attention until they get established, which will apparently take about 6 weeks. Four of the trees are planted at the corners of the new car park and another four are tastefully arranged along N. Witchduck road, they are all well-spaced out making any automatic watering system impractical. Happily, for the trees, there is a water faucet behind the Historic Church and now it’s connected to another lengthy hose between Church and Witchduck Road, where it feeds another 100 feet of hose so a gang of volunteers can give the 8 adolescent trees their daily drink. It takes about 10 minutes to give each tree its watering due - nearly an hour and a half everyday for the next two weeks then every other day for another two, great thanks to the Building and Grounds commission for stepping in to lighten the watering load!!!! There’s more to report from the inside of the Narthex and Great Hall but I think I have rabbited on for quite long enough for this edition so we’ll save that for another blog and I thank you for indulging me! Would you Adam and Eve it!* Now it’s stopped raining so there goes that “The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men” thing again. There shall be pictures after all but, my friends, the blog stays as written!!!! Stay safe and stay healthy, David Beach “The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men, Gang aft agley, An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain”: from the poem “To a Mouse” by the Robert Burns (1785). Rough, although I’m sure unnecessary, translation is: “The best-laid schemes of mice and men, Go oft awry, And leave us nothing but grief and pain.” “Raining cats and dogs”: The English idiom "it is raining cats and dogs", used to describe particularly heavy rain, is of unknown etymology and is not necessarily related to the raining animals phenomenon. “Adam and Eve it”: London Cockney rhyming slang for “believe it” (Cockney is a native from the East End of London, traditionally refers to a baby born within the hearing/sound of Bow Bells). (Bow Bells are the bells of St Mary-le-Bow Church, Cheapside, London EC2V 6AU, United Kingdom – rebuilt in 1666 after the original building was destroyed in the Great Fire of London. |
AuthorDavid Beach is our Building Project Manager, and has been an active part of our parish family for more than a decade. He is retired from NATO and the British Army and is a joy and blessing to all of us. Archives
July 2021
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