Four major events on the construction site this week; 1) Isaias wandered past 2) walls appearing on the rear wing, 3) the entrance to Tucker Hall got a makeover 4) it rained (again). So let’s start with the weather! Well it’s been a damp old week (English art of the understatement) but apart from littering the Campus with tree debris and flooding the car park area everything on the construction site seems to have ridden out the tempests. Nothing was blown down, washed away or left sticking out of a wall or window, all-in-all “a bit of a result!”* Once again, our fledgling storm water management system proved its worth and when it’s extended around the old car park we should see an end to flooding in that area as well. Meanwhile between the patches of inclement weather the wheels of construction quite literally continued to turn. The framing out of the rear wing is nearly complete and so the focus has been on attaching the sheeting that provides a water barrier behind the outside walls, as you may recall from the architect’s renderings the rear wing will be finished in brick. Now this sheeting is not to be trifled with, it’s yellow about an inch thick and, as I discovered when I tried to pick up an off cut, is deceptively heavy!! Whilst seeing the rear wing start to take shape the big story of the week must be “demolition” and I think we are now “past the point of no return!” A couple of blogs ago I mentioned our intention to accelerate the building work in the front and as we well know you have to break down before you can build up and that’s manifestly obvious with the removal of the entrance to Tucker Hall. Plants, bushes, small trees, asphalt, paving, columns and the porch are all gone and now the only way into the building is through the Day School entrance. So what can we look forward to in the coming weeks? Work will continue on the rear wing with the walls soon to be followed by the roof construction. At the front Higgerson will complete the storm water management system, albeit leaving the middle storm-water retention tank until after the main construction on the Great Hall is completed, and once that is done work will begin on preparing the front area for the footings and, eventually, pouring the concrete floor so we can look forward to the return of concrete trucks, concrete pumps and, of course, the concrete team! Stay safe and stay healthy, David Beach “a bit of a result”: a good outcome
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Mal Higgins
8/13/2020 05:08:05 am
Well, now, yes it was a bit of a damp old week! If one ever wanted to understand why the City of Virginia Beach enforces a proper drainage plan for stormwater runoff from heavy rain, a visit to the parking lot of ODEC after the heavy afternoon rain of August 11 tells why. It was a shallow lake from the driveway nearest the Parish Hall all the way to close to the bell tower. Higgerson had not been able to connect a critical pipe to the drain system before the rains, Could have been an ice skating rink in the winter!
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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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