De-Construction Part1 - History

NOTE: Part of our Vision Statement is to be a Respected Company in the Community. That comes through communication regarding our activities. A portion of our property that is in high profile to the community is undergoing some changes. This communication series is to communicate what is happening.

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See this blog link to information regarding these racks available for sale

Normally, our company is involved with the construction of a new building, specifically the facade skin that protects the occupants from the elements. Soffits, Coping, Curtain-wall, Parapet, Column Covers, etc - all go into constructing the building "envelope". A photo-stream appears to the right on our blog page showing samples of such work.

Sometimes that construction is part of a remodeling of an existing structure. This is the first of several blog entries which will discuss how we addressed a part of our own facility in a "green" manner to recycle the content, rather than just conducting a "demolition", and be an example for others to consider.

First a little history.

Our facility has several components that have been around for some time. It's location utilized water power to turn machinery and manufacture cannons at one time. The Ousatonic Dam is just to our north, and the canal that brought water with it's potential energy is still along side our property. Some buildings are riveted steel construction from that time of the "US Rapid Fire Munitions Company". Here's a picture of the factory when it was operated by the "US Rapid Fire Gun & Power Company" with (22) 6" PDR Semi Automatic Guns, and (1) 15" PDR Rapid Fire Gun.

There were several textile operations over the years, such as "Victory Textile". In the 1980's, the last occupant before us was the "Hull Dye and Print Works", a fabric dye and print factory. They were one of the largest employers in Derby. Unfortunately, they had a fire in the mid 1980's, and the operations ceased. The State of Ct, and then the City of Derby took over control of the property and did remediation of contamination from years of industrial use, rehabilitated the parcel as an Industrial Park, and marketed it as such. That's when we came into ownership.

They Hull Dye company would print fabric in a design according to customer specifications, and in many cases store the bolts of fabric for on-demand delivery to the customer as a warehouse type service. One of the structures on our property housed these bolts of fabric, what we refer to internally as the "rack storage" area. It is the large brown structure that faces the canal and Roosevelt Drive.

This manufactured rack storage structure was from The Steelox Company, a subsidiary company of the Armco Steel Corporation. They had numerous structure types that were quickly and cheaply constructed, and thus popular during WW2 and subsequent years. You can learn a little bit about the company via this link to a history brochure.

http://www.steelox.com/history.htm

The structure is actually very minimalist in design, commonly referred to as "pre-engineered". What is surprising to many is that there are no columns, no beams, no framing other than the storage racks that exist within the sheathing. The racks support the siding and the roof. There are also no stairs, elevator, or access to the floor area after the renovation that was done by the City of Derby. It could solely be accessed by climbing an old conveyor belt. With the racks being the structure of support for the siding and the roof, these racks couldn't be removed to create a clear-span of work space within the walls. It has been over 1 million cubic feet of unusable storage space since the property was purchased in 1987.

Over the years, the structure became compromised, and despite some repair work, reached a state where a decision had to be made for it's removal. Desiring to illustrate a "green" construction method, we focused on how it could be dismantled rather than demolished.

Look for further blog entries that will illustrate how this was accomplished. (Use the blog label "Green Construction" to filter entries for this subject).

Link to Part 2

Housatonic River 2011 Spring Floods

Our property is located along the Housatonic River in Derby. From our location one can access Long Island Sound and beyond with vessel, but just north of us is the Ousatonic Dam (sometimes called the Derby Dam). This is what created the canals on both the Shelton and Derby sides of the river that provided water power for factories such as the building we occupy (once a munitions factory, then a textile print/dye factory, now a solar powered building products manufacturing company)

Being so close to the river, the spring thaws from upstream snow annually cause quite a rush of water over the dam with a roaring sound to draw the onlookers. This year, it was particularly impressive. Cars floating down the river, docks being torn away, and numerous homes under water. Our local online newspaper covered the flood story and this video shows the dam from the Shelton side of the river (our facility is just out of view further downstream on the Derby side) with the fury of the river at it's 5th highest level ever.

Our property has some low lying frontage on the shore that gets covered in such spring storms and quickly dries out as the waters recede. Below is some video that shows the aftermath. Taken on Thu Mar10, 2011.

This next video begins at the most downstream corner of our property, and walks upstream to show why the under-story vegetation along a river bank is so important to maintain it's integrity and keep from being scoured away. In fact, the event left behind a layer of silt at least 6" deep.

And although it looks like the water was close to our building, this particular parcel's structure was constructed after the 1955 flood (which was several feet about this 2011 event), and the foundation was not impacted, as you can see by this last video.

Accolades and Recognition

Having done numerous projects in New York, it's fun to pick out our work on buildings in movie scenes. Recognizing our own work is nice, but it's nicer to be recognized by others for what we do.

Alcoa is the supplier of the main material we utilize "Reynobond" which is an aluminum composite sheet material. They have recognized us in 2010 for Outstanding Achievement. This is the 5th time we have been recognized by Alcoa for our "exceptional accomplishments".

They also produce an annual calendar to highlight projects where their Reynobond material is used in architecture around the world. It's considered an honor to have one of your projects featured in their calendar, and it is distributed widely to architects and fabricators. We are honored to have a project featured in the 2011 June page. It is 100 Park Avenue in New York City.

And the next time you are watching a movie filmed in NYC, you might see some of our work. This same 100 Park Avenue Building was captured in a pivotal scene of Will Smith's "I am Legend". See it on the right of this photo with the sidewalk scaffolding in place.

Imagery from the 2007 Movie, copyright Warner Bros.

Winter - effect of snow Part2

So the snow built up until February 7th at about noon. That was when the snow guards holding back such a mass of weight said "no more". The courtyard area has a standing seam metal roof that pitches toward it and had built up with quite a curl of snow. I estimate that it was 4ft thick of ice and dense snow and went back a good 20ft from the eave toward the ridge of the roof.

Heavy snow weights about 20lbs/cubic foot. 4ft tall drift x 60ft long gutter x 20ft from eave upward = 4800 cubic feet of snow, or 96,000 pounds. That my friends is a lot of weight. Snow guards were torn free, and it crashed into the courtyard.

We have a mini excavator handy and dug a path to see what was buried. The inverter obviously took a hit on the roof as you can see from this photo. It is made to withstand outdoor environments, but never was envisioned to be under such a blast of weight. The blue canopy shown in other photos over the inverter was a light gauge cover to shelter a technician when they would service the equipment. Needless to say, it was destroyed.

The inside corner also house the air conditioning condenser unit. We created a canopy cover to protect the unit from snow during the winter time. Little did we know it would be crushed under the impact.

So my next post will discuss the recovery from the event.

Winter - effect on solar Part1

As we entered winter, I'm often asked - how does that affect the electricity generation from solar panels? Certainly the shorter daylight hours reduce the potential for kwh, but this year the question was more often related to the snow we have had. In CT this winter, our ground has been covered by snow since the Xmas-NewYear holiday until March. More than 90days! In fact, we received some record snowfalls.

Our panels are on a pitched roof and rather tightly spaced. Thus, the snow can start to slide off as you see in these photos. Our standing seam metal roof has snow guards to limit hazard below, because as you can see, when that accumulation slides, it slams (look at snow splat on pavement below). What was unexpected was how much snow we got (2ft in one storm) over the winter with no thaw period between storms. It did get to be a problem as to where snow could be pushed, and still maintain access to the yard for materials deliver.

After several storms, buildings started collapsing. Usually barns at farms or storage shed industrial structures that were light engineered on the limit of building code allowances. Still, we weren't taking any chances and started shoveling snow off our office roof (the only flat roof area we have). You can see by this photo that it was a lot of snow, up to our shoulder as we shoveled it away. The right photo is our courtyard area where some equipment for the solar array is located. The snow on the pitched roof area has curled and built up substantially. It couldn't be simply removed, and the buildup was worrisome.

It snowed and snowed and snowed!! It was quite the winter!! Despite the snow shed from our panels as shown in the above photo , we were getting a "DC fault" code causing the inverter to cease generating any electricity. We couldn't access the roof safely to confirm what was causing the fault, but the "DC" indication confirms it was at the panels. My next post will show the effects.

Public Charging of Snowy Tesla

The company has installed a weather proof electrical outlet, which is openly available to any electric car owner who wants to charge their car with free electricity generated at our location from our solar panel array. You can actually power your electric car with clean energy from the sun generated at the location where you top-up your battery.

Today we had another visitor take advantage of the offering, this time from Tesla Motors themselves! Michael Sexton, Senior Sales Advisor for Tesla Motors in New York City stopped by to visit on his way into New Haven. I showed him our manufacturing operations, we had lunch, and then he left with a full "tank" of sun juice!

As you can see, when he left, the snow was accumulating. I'm often asked how the Tesla Roadster performs in snow. As Michael illustrates - quite fine. He has snow tires mounted, and with the car's electronic traction control, it performs quite well. In fact, the battery weight is perfectly distributed over the tires of the rear-drive car.

As the Tesla illustrates, battery operated vehicles, including delivery trucks or fleet operations, need not be worried about cold weather or slippery surfaces. It is a vehicle like any other, but simply is powered by electricity rather than petroleum.

NOTE: It wasn't that long a stay to charge up the car, it started snowing during the first photo and was coming down at a good pace by the time he left.

Sunny Statistics 2010

The PV Solar System has completed it's 2nd Electric Year (2009Dec17 thru 2010Dec19). As comparison, look to the results for the 2009 Electric Year found hear.

For the 2010 Electric Year:

• The system was in place for 368 days (29 days of which there was no production due to equipment issues, snow load prevented access to equipment repairs in Feb/Mar).
• The average system output was 330kwh/day.
• The average consumption of our operations was 295kwh/day.
• Highest daily electricity generation was May10 with 724kwh
• 112% of consumption was generated from the PV Solar System.

January, November and December (and March due to equipment shutdown) were the only months when the PV Solar System didn't generate more than our entire operations electricity consumption. Since the system was installed on 2009Mar23, enough electricity has been generated on-location to power all of the company's operations.

Recognizing the excess generation capacity, during this year, items that were powered from other sources were replaced to electricity fueled such as hot water heaters and one vehicle vehicle. A sewer pumping station that was operated separately from our company previous to 2010, but which served our property and that of 3 adjacent parcels, was connected to our infrastructure and is now powered by solar generated electricity.

With there still being an excess of power after these changes, further avenues of efficient utilization and conversions will be examined in 2011.

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