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.

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.