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.