Newport Head Start

Project: Newport Head Start

Location: Newport, Oregon

Architect: Arbuckle Costic Architects, Inc.

363 State Street

Salem, Oregon 97301-3533

General Contractor: Greenberry Construction.

Square footage: 4,050 sq. ft.

Status: Completed 2009

An old mechanical repair shop that was converted to a Head Start building. The original building was constructed with CMU (concrete masonry units) on three sides and the front had concrete frames. We were able to secure the 1953 existing drawings for this building and the 1995 remodel so we could evaluate the building for current code standards.

May 28th was the grand opening for the center and was awarded for its "green" use.

The existing concrete structure appeared to be adequate for new lateral loads as did the masonry walls. However, there was no account for out-of-plane loading to the walls. They were already furring out the inside of the wall, so we opted to run the metal studs up to the underside of the existing roof diaphragm. These studs were fastened to the masonry walls with metal clips every 24 inches and screwed into the roof sheathing. New plywood was added to the roof of the existing structure to give it better diaphragm capabilities.

The new portion of the facility was standard wood framed construction consisting of press-plat trusses tying into the existing roof where applicable. The walls were 2x wood studs with plywood sheathing and lateral connections for wind/seismic forces. On the east side, a covered area was added which housed new mechanical units. It was framed with 2x rafters, glulam beams and wood I-joist. Lateral resistance was taken out by HSS columns embedded in nonconstrained footings on the outer perimeter.

NCSD Administration Building

Project: NCSD Administration Building

Location: North Clackamas School District

Architect: Barrentine Bates Lee, AIA

                    200 North State Street

                    Lake Oswego, Oregon 97034

General Contractor: NA

Square footage: 22,500 sq. ft.

Status: Cancelled 2008.

This project was at the 95% complete level at the time it was cancelled. Some of the cancellation was budgetary matters and neighborhood input.

This project was a 2-story office building for the school district's administration department. It was a steel construction roof and composite floor along with 12 inch thick tilt-up panels to resist lateral loads. The layout was, for the most part, symmetrical, which made the design fairly straight forward. For the floor, steel-concrete composite girders ran in the east-west direction and smaller steel-concrete composite joist in the north-south direction. The roof had steel joist and girders which matched the oreintaion of the floor framing. On the roof, on either side of the entry core, were mechanical units for the building. They sat on concrete pads to help reduce noise levels.

The shape of the building was rectangular with the entry on the east side of the longitudinal face. It was partially open to the roof above providing a spacious entry. They wanted to avoid moment frames, to keep the cost down so concrete tilt-up panels were designed to act as a resisting element. The architect wanted the corners exposed, meaning they wanted glass store fronts at every corner. They also did not want columns to be seen. So the steel beams cantilevered from the inside face of the tilt-up panels. These 12" thick panels were attached to the steel framing and the steel framing acted as a drag strut. The most difficult portion of this building was the connection of the panels to the steel framing.

Lebanon Fire Station 34

Project: Lebanon Fire Station 34

Location: Lebanon, Oregon

Architect: Peck Smiley Ettlin Architects

4412 SW Corbett

Portland, Oregon 97239

General Contractor: NA

Square footage: 9,700 sq. ft.

Status: Completed 2008.

This fire station had two different lives. The first life it lived was as a rigid frame metal building with wood modifications. The larger spanning rigid frames are over the apparatus bay and the smaller frames in the kitchen/dorm/meeting area. Shed frames cover the utility areas. The down side with this design was the specialty framing around the meeting room. Having worked for a metal building company years ago, there is major complications when modifications are made to the standard structure.

Once the contractor was awarded the project, they suggested making the station out of wood framing. There was a major cost savings with this new design. Therefore we revised our calculations to accommodate the changes. We had 80 foot long press plate trusses spanning over the apparatus bay and living area. In hind sight, 80 foot long trusses tend to be more difficult to erect, but after consulting the contractor, we proceeded forward with these trusses.

Overall, this was a straight forward wood construction building.

NCSD Linwood Elementary School Remodel

Project: Linwood Elementary School Remodel

Location: North Clackamas School District

Architect: Barrentine Bates Lee, AIA

200 North State Street

Lake Oswego, Oregon 97034

General Contractor : P & C Construction

Square footage: 19,000 sq. ft.

Status: Completed 2009.

This was an existing elementary school that added a new classroom section, a new media area, new gymnasium and expanded office and entry. It also included some hall and covered play shelter modifications.

The new media center was added to the northwest end of the classroom wing, providing a 4800 square foot area to work with. Most of the framing was wood web joist supported on bearing walls, with the exception of the middle section. Because of the diagonal exterior wall, steel wide flange beams were used to support joist. The detail through the steel beam calls for flange width nailers attached to the top. On one of the beams, a 4x member was fastened down but not cut to width. This meant that the nailer was overhanging and is not widely accepted. Because the overhang was just under 1/2", no modifications were made.

The gymnasium went through two designs on our part. The first was to create square columns at the corners and at each girder location. Then a spandrel was to be installed between at the roof level, then a window and 7.25" panels below the window. The end walls were just 7.25" tilt-up panels. When bid time came and the project was awarded to a contractor, they proposed some cost savings to the school district. It was to eliminate the cost construction for conventional tilt-up walls. Although I was proud of some of the connections on the spandrels, I had always wondered how they might build this gymnasium with all the required pieces. On the east end of the building, the roof line dropped with the exception of the middle mechanical room. This was my first concrete tilt-up project ever, so there was a little learning curve. I also used a program to design the walls rather than by hand, so that I might get a better handle of the design process. It was a module within the RAM Advanse program.

The entry was enlarged and added covered entries. Because the entire addition was all storefront, this provided no lateral resistance. Around the perimeter they had 18" square columns, that were used to resist lateral loads. Glue laminated beams were used as drag struts and fastened to the concrete columns. Some modifications were also provided to the existing structure to make it a little more laterally secure.

Some minor modifications were done in the covered play area in the north wing. One of the columns in the southeast corner had severely rusted out at the base and we replaced it with a new section of steel tube.

The final addition was in the north wing as well. It was going to be an alternate, but in the end it became part of the project. It mimicked the existing classroom floor plan that it was attaching to, so the design was fairly simple. It had 8 foot cantilever roof joist that created some special detailing. Overall it was a fairly simple addition design wise.

Broadway Town Square

Project: Broadway Town Square

Location: Salem, Oregon

Architect: Arbuckle Costic Architects, Inc.

363 State Street

Salem, Oregon 97301-3533

General Contractor: Sharpcor, Inc.

Square footage: 200,000,000 sq. ft.

Status: Completed 2009.

My fourth project that I worked on with Chris. It was a 4-story apartment complex with retail on the ground floor and a movie cinema on the north end, which Chris worked on. The cinema is a tilt-up and steel construction and the apartments is a steel construction on the first floor and wood construction to the roof.

The first floor framing consist of open web floor joist with wide flange girders with a concrete on metal decking. It was not designed as a composite floor system. The east and west side had moment frames only because of the store front system. The lateral system in the other direction was braced frames. Above that, the framing system was wood floor joist with plywood shear walls. Brick veneer covered the face of the building up to the third floor. The apartment decks were a concrete slab that cantilevered off a pair of HSS beams. The cinema was tied to the apartments with a bridge at the third floor.

Early on in the project, it was discovered that a large tank was buried under the soil while preparing the foundations. This was located just south of the elevator. Several options were suggested by the soils engineer, but in the end they settled on helical anchors under all the footings within a 56 foot wide area. At the other end, combination footings were utilized due to property line issues which ended up working well.

Crooked River Fire Station

Project: Crooked River Ranch Fire Station

Location: Terrebonne, Oregon

Architect: Ivars Lazdins

              3004 SW Bennington Drive

              Portland, Oregon 97205

General Contractor: NA

Square footage: approx. 9000 sq. ft.

Status: Completed 2008

My second project and it was all wood construction with the exception of a CMU wall at the end of the apparatus bay. The apparatus bay was nearly 80 feet wide and used press plate trusses to frame the roof. We broke up the span by a line of glulam beams and some columns to break up the spans. Trying to use press plate trusses with 80 foot spans can be difficult to erect. As can be seen in the picture, solar panels were added to the roof and according to the architect, this worked out really well.

The lateral system was mostly plywood shear walls with the exception of CMU in the front and back of the apparatus room. As mentioned, the exterior end wall was also CMU up to the plate line.

We had to work through the detail of the seismic joint between the main building and the apparatus building. The maximum gap ended up being 3 1/2 inches at the roof peak. They also installed heating coils in the floor slab which was heated by the solar panels above.

Salem Senior Center

Project: Salem Senior Center

Location: Salem, Oregon

Architect: Peck Smiley Ettlin Architects

4412 SW Corbett

Portland, Oregon

97239

General Contractor: Todd Construction

Square footage: 32,000 sq. ft.

Status: Completed 2008.

The Salem Senior Center was my third project I worked on since I joined Lewis and Van Vleet. It was new a 2-story senior center located near downtown Salem, to the north.

The building is constructed primarily of steel. The roof originally was constructed with open-web wood chord/metal web joist with plywood sheathing. But after some number crunching by the architect and developer, they opted to use open-web steel joist with metal roof decking. Centered in the roof is a clerestory to provide light below.

The second floor was framed with a series of wide flange beams framing into wide flange girders with a composite floor diaphragm. The configuration of the building was such that the upper floor plan was square in nature and the lower floor more rectangular, in that a portion extended out beyond. This provide a location for mechanical units and the same sort of framing was extended to that area. It allowed to surface to be concrete as well, providing some damping below.

On the first floor plan, they had a great hall, but the wall from the second floor rest about in the center of the hall. The architect and owner did not want a column in the center of the hall, so we designed a plate girder to span the length of the hall, nearly 64 feet. The flange width needed to be 10 inches maximum 2 1/2 inches thick. The depth was kept at 60 inches with a 1/2 inch thick web, to avoid interference with the window system. At one point, we suggested a truss fabricated of HSS sections, but it was too difficult to coordinate windows around web openings.

The lateral system was a series of moment frames with two braced frames. In the end, it turned out to be all moment frames because of openings and such required by the architect/owner. They were designed as special moment frames in accordance to AISC standards and utilized the "dog bone" style connection.

Initially I started the design using RAM Structural System. I had never used this program so it was a learning experience for me. I did not have enough time to really assuage the troubles I was having with designing the moment frames within this program. After discussing it with Lance, I opted to use RAM Structural System to design only the composite gravity loads and then did the moment frames in RISA 3D. This worked well in the end.

The building turned out to be a real nice addition to the community. I had stopped by one Sunday when they were having a wood carving fair. I engaged one of the men there about the place and told him I was the structural engineer on the project. He then informed me, the only real complaint was that the janitorial room was 3/4's smaller than over at the other building.