{"id":143053,"date":"2021-12-01T09:00:31","date_gmt":"2021-12-01T14:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/?p=143053"},"modified":"2026-02-19T09:33:22","modified_gmt":"2026-02-19T14:33:22","slug":"campus-construction-update-dec-2-2021","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2021\/12\/01\/campus-construction-update-dec-2-2021\/","title":{"rendered":"Campus Construction Update: Dec. 2, 2021"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Before dawn on Monday, unseen by most members of the campus community, mechanized forces executed something like a military pincers movement at Bates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Objective: Dana Chemistry Hall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But this was no invasion. (It\u2019s just that we\u2019ve always wanted to write military history.) Instead, the occasion was the delivery and installation of new HVAC machinery that will heat, ventilate, and air-condition Dana for the foreseeable future. The operation was a major advance in an in-depth transformation of the building<\/a> that began in July and will continue through next spring.<\/p>\n\n\n

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A hydraulic crane belonging to The Cote Corporation of Auburn approached Dana via Campus Avenue and the service road that crosses the Library Quad. Meanwhile, three flatbed tractor-trailers took the direct route, from College Street down Alumni Walk, where they parked inside the construction-site fence to keep truck activity separate from foot traffic (and skateboarders, cyclists, etc.).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two flatbeds carried the seven major components of the HVAC machine, aka air handler (including the somewhat miraculous enthalpy wheel<\/a> that we described last month). The third conveyed the equipment that Cote staff needed to hoist and place the boxy, bare-metal HVAC pieces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The early start accommodated a few hours of prep for the big lift. The mobile crane, a Grove product sold by Milwaukee\u2019s Manitowoc Co., needed to be leveled and blocked for stability. This was even more important than usual because the crane was sited partially on the slope descending from the Historic Quad to Alumni Walk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition, trucks and individual air-handler parts had to be shifted around so that the parts could be placed into the building in the correct order.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\"Cote

Cote Corp.’s mobile crane was ready for action at Dana Chem early on Nov. 29. (Doug Hubley\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>

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\"Tight

Tight quarters inside the site fence for a tractor-trailer carrying Dana Chem HVAC components. (Doug Hubley\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>

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\"A

A Cote Corp. employee is shown on a flatbed bearing components of the Dana Chemistry Hall air handler around 8:30 a.m. Nov. 29. (Doug Hubley\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>

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\"The

The enthalpy wheel and its housing sit with other HVAC machinery on a flatbed awaiting loading into Dana Chemistry Hall on Nov. 29. (Doug Hubley\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>

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\"Bates

Bates Project Manager Chris Streifel watches progress three stories down as a Cote Corp. rigging crew prepares to start hoisting HVAC machinery to Dana Chemistry Hall’s attic on Nov. 29. (Doug Hubley\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>

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\"A

A crane hoists one part of the new HVAC machine into Dana Chemistry Hall on Nov. 29, 2021. The machine has seven parts that were hoisted into the attic during the day. (H. Jay Burns\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>

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\"Workers

Workers watch as a crane floats an air-handler component (center) toward the attic of Dana Chemistry Hall. (Jacob Kendall\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>

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\"A

A piece of the new HVAC machine nears the opening in the Dana Chemistry Hall attic. (H. Jay Burns\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>

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\"At

At left, a Cote Corp. rigger operates a pair of winches while a colleague keeps an eye on the HVAC component that’s being pulled into the Dana Chemistry Hall attic. (Jacob Kendall\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>

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\"A

A Cote Corp. rigger wields a jack as the HVAC unit\u2019s enthalpy wheel is tugged into the attic of Dana Chemistry Hall. (Jacob Kendall\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>

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\"One

One of the largest components of the Dana Chem HVAC system is winched into the attic around 11:30 on Nov. 29. (Chris Streifel\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>

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\"The

The Dana Chem air handler installation is nearly complete in this image taken around 2 p.m. on Nov. 29. (Jacob Kendall\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>

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In the jargon of rigging and heavy lifting, it\u2019s called \u201cpicking\u201d when a given load is attached to the crane and lifted. So the picking (and hopefully grinning) commenced around 10:30 a.m. and continued into early afternoon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to Cote and Bates personnel, people on the scene came from Warren Mechanical, the Maine firm that will actually assemble the air-handler and get it running; and Consigli Construction, which is managing the Dana project for Bates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The air-handler takes up about half of the attic, east of the elevator shaft. The pieces came in through a big hole facing Hedge Hall that was made even bigger for this operation. (The hole, Dana\u2019s once and future HVAC air intake, will be smallified later.) The installation process, in brief, was that first, the crane would float a given part up to the hole while workers on the ground handled lines to steady the load.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"Workers
Workers tend to a just-installed section of Dana Chemistry Hall\u2019s new air handler. The concrete blocks shown above left of center enclose the building’s elevator shaft. (Jacob Kendall\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Then riggers would fasten cables to the piece and winch it into place on a frame of steel beams. Metal rods were used as rollers under the HVAC components.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was a tight fit for a few units, including the one containing the enthalpy wheel, notes Bates Project Manager Chris Streifel. \u201cThere was just an inch and a half\u201d of clearance for the biggest pieces. One of them rubbed on the ceiling as it came in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey had to go to a smaller rod,\u201d he says. \u201cThey had three-quarter-inch rods that they were rolling it along on, and they had to go down to three-eighths of an inch just to give themselves that little bit of extra room to clear the ceiling and get it all the way down to the end.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The load-in was finished by 2 p.m. or so. \u201cThen the next thing will be to start connecting all of the different ducts and pipes and wires and controls, and everything else that goes to it. That’ll be the story the next several months,\u201d Streifel says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\"Wallboard

Wallboard placement around the tops of walls has begun. These so-called firetops come first in the wallboarding schedule because, as shown here, utility connections can’t be installed until the tops are in place. (Doug Hubley\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>

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\"New

New water heaters in the basement of Dana Chemistry Hall. (Doug Hubley\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>

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\"Masonry

Masonry toothing in progress. Two bricks have been removed from this doorway, forming “tooths” \u2014 not teeth. Others have been drilled preparatory to chiseling them out. (Doug Hubley\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>

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\"An

An example of masonry toothing, with new concrete blocks filling out the toothed edge of a newly cut doorway. (Doug Hubley\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>

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\"There's

You rung? There’s no shortage of ladders in Dana Chem’s Room 119. (Doug Hubley\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>

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\"Metal

Metal wall studs delineate the new restrooms on Dana’s first floor. With the elevator at the approximate center of the space behind the studs, handicapped facilities will be built to the left and general-use facilities to the right. (Doug Hubley\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>

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\"Flooring

Flooring installers touch up a patch of self-leveling compound in a second-story Dana Chem classroom. (Doug Hubley\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>

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\"Stacked

Stacked on a pallet in a second-floor classroom and swathed in plastic to keep dust out of their innards, these fan-coil units will make it possible to tailor air temperatures to specific areas in Dana Chem. (Doug Hubley\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>

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Some tooths<\/strong>: On other fronts (once you get started, these military metaphors are hard to avoid), \u201cwe\u2019re at that steady-state portion of the job, where things are going to look the same for a while. All the same things happening on all floors,\u201d says Streifel. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of progress, but it’s a little bit hard to see it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The second floor remains the exemplar, as work is furthest advanced there. For example, that\u2019s where the hanging of wallboard has begun \u2014 albeit just at the tops of metal wall studs thus far. Called \u201cfiretops\u201d because their use is embrangled with municipal fire codes, these board sections share space with utility runs and therefore tend to be placed just prior to those runs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey like to do them first,\u201d Streifel explains, because it’s easier to cut openings in wallboard for pipes and wires than \u201cto try to fit pieces around them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Speaking of things mechanical, electrical, and plumbical \u2014 sorry, plumbing-related \u2014 we were touring Dana\u2019s ground floor with construction administrator Jacob Kendall when we spotted cryptic markings on the concrete under foot. Kendall explained that the lines, letters, and numbers indicated where MEP fittings would be placed\u2026on the ceiling above.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"A
A laser pointer placed on these marks will guide workers as they install utility hardware on the ceiling. The boot belongs to Bates construction administrator Jacob Kendall. (Doug Hubley\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

A self-leveling laser pointer set upright on a floor mark, he said, would light up the spot overhead where the fitting would go. And this speaks to one of the differences between constructing a new building and revamping an existing one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a new building, it\u2019s more expedient to place fittings while the floors are being fabricated. And you work from the floor above: That is, if you want to hang a pipe from a second-story ceiling, you initiate that attachment on the third-story floor decking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Dana or any other old building, though (not that Dana is just any old building!), it\u2019s just more practical \u2014 thanks to the laser pointers \u2014 to use the second-floor floor, if you will, as a template for implanting MEP installations into the second-floor ceiling.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"Just
Just a small sample of new utility connections in the basement of Dana Chem. (Doug Hubley\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

More practical, but not more agreeable. \u201cYou\u2019ve got to cut the holes, you\u2019ve got to drill everything out of the way, as opposed to just having it cast in place\u201d when a new building\u2019s concrete floor slab is poured. \u201cIt\u2019s more time-consuming. It’s more challenging. It’s dirtier,\u201d says Streifel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThen there are the nuances of dimensional differences. It gets a little bit harder to be as precise in an older building during renovation just because accuracy is more challenging to maintain. You can look and say, \u2018I\u2019ve got 9-foot-6-inch ceilings here,\u2019 but in reality, it varies everywhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou have to make certain assumptions when you’re doing the design and those don’t always hold true. You\u2019ve got to be flexible to be able to adapt to that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In both new and old, anyhoo, the process for pinpointing MEP locations is the same, and somewhat amazing. As we\u2019ve written elsewhere<\/a>, those locations are first determined during the creation of a 3D digital model of the building. Then that model, combined with GPS and wireless communication technology, is used to guide someone in the physical building as they use surveying equipment to find and mark all the MEP points.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other differences between renovating existing construction and building anew? In certain trades, renovations demand a certain amount of blending new with old, and making it all look new. For instance, a technique called \u201ctoothing\u201d is conspicuous among the masonry work in Dana. This is where you bust out alternating blocks around an opening. (The result looks like teeth, but in masonry jargon they are tooths.)<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"An
An example of masonry toothing, with new concrete blocks filling out the toothed edge of a newly cut doorway. (Doug Hubley\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

So if you are filling an existing opening, you tooth around the opening so you can fit new blocks into the prevailing masonry pattern. If you\u2019ve cut a new opening, toothing makes it easier to create a clean and consistent edge around it as you cut new blocks to fill the, er, cavities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere\u2019s lots of construction [techniques] that involve the same concept as masonry toothing,\u201d Streifel adds. A similar process will apply when the big hole in the Dana attic gable is shrunk and carpenters need to blend new wooden siding in with the old.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You even encounter it when new asphalt is laid next to old. \u201cYou don’t just butt them up together,\u201d Streifel says. (That explains a lot about our driveway.) \u201cOn the old pavement, you grind it down and make almost a very thin set of stairs so that the new pavement butts and then overlaps and overlaps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat creates a joint that’s, first, more waterproof, and second, just stronger.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Can we talk?<\/strong> Campus Construction Update loves to hear from you. Please send your questions, comments, and reminiscences about construction at Bates College to dhubley@bates.edu<\/em><\/a>, with \u201cCampus Construction\u201d or \u201cDoes Homer Simpson know you’re stealing his material?\u201d in the subject line.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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