2-16-08 Construction Update

Well, no moisture this past week, just bitter cold. But, all in all, it was a productive week on both sides of the city.

Out at CAB, progress continued on the Cauldron seating, although not quite as effortlessly as hoped. Because concrete cannot be poured unless the daily high temperature is projected to rise above 32 degrees, schedules changed daily. But yes in spite of how it felt, that did occur. And when it did JE Dunn went full speed ahead.

In the photos below you can see the first pour taking place with the large orange boom used to place the concrete all the way down into row 1. In the second image, the forms have been stripped off from the first pour and the rebar outline of lower treads is clearly visible.

Also as scheduled, the sports lighting poles began to be lifted into place. A reader asked why additional lighting was needed considering CAB already has 8 light poles. The answer is these three new poles are necessary to first improve the light levels and second to balance the light across the playing field. A couple of interesting facts, a baseball infield is lit with higher foot-candles than the outfield. Conversely, to broadcast soccer, the television cameras require the field to have a consistent lighting level from end to end and side to side. So the sports lighting design was actually one of the more complicated tasks we faced. The end result being two existing light poles, the ones behind third base and behind right field cannot be used for our games as they shine directly into the soccer glare zone – meaning they shine directly into the goalkeeper’s eyes. The new poles we are installing make up for this and are also aimed to more evenly distribute the light that will be required by the TV cameras.

Out at Swope, field 3 was finally dry, or at least frozen solid enough to allow for a great week of work. The fences posts are now in on three sides with the north about to be installed, and the main drainage collector that rings the filed has been installed. The concrete perimeter curb to which the FieldTurf will be attached is in place on the west and south sides. And the east side was poured today…Just in time before the rains started.

When we built the training center, we installed empty conduit from the building to the edge of the fields, knowing we would eventually want to light one of the fields. The photo below shows the conduit as it is now connected to the new light poles.

One of the other features we are installing is an irrigation system, which will allow us to lower the temperature of the turf during our hottest summer days. Here you see the trench from the main water line on site leading to the field.

In the photo below, our partners from FIE-LDS are hard at work on a bitter Friday morning, getting the formwork in place for the perimeter curb pour. Notice the blue covering on field 2 – our bluegrass field - this is our grow-tarp that Jerad is using to accelerate grass growth and get the field into playing shape for when the guys return from Florida.







More next week.

Go Wizards!
DF