The Feature Wall

The crews have framed one of the more prominent pieces in the new office design – what we call The Feature Wall.  It’s a 30 foot long wall that acts as an organizing element, reaching from the front door past reception and into our central forum area.  The wall (unfinished in this photo) will be clad in 1x15 boards that we think are, well, special.  The boards will be sawn from a supply of huge 3x15 beams that now hold up a portion of the old building’s upper floor.  We’re removing some of those beams to make an open section in the upper floor, and this is one of the ways we’re planning to reuse them.  They should be real nice to look at, as they were cut from old growth Douglas Fir back in the 40’s.  The recessed slot in the feature wall will hold a graphic timeline of important events in the firm’s nearly 24-year history.

Spaghetti in the Floor

Our central forum is designed to be a flexible space for use by our firm, by visiting students, and for community events.  We expect to share a lot of information. So, connection points for power, video, and data transmission are spread throughout the forum, requiring plenty of conduit – just take a look at these pictures.  You might ask why the conduit stretches all over the floor, and that’s a good question.  The old floor slab, still visible, sloped in all directions to provide drainage for the days when our building was a Sears Auto Center.  Soon, our contractor will use rigid insulation to level everything out and cover the conduit, and then they’ll pour a new slab on top – this one will be flat!

Warmer and Brighter Everyday

Late last week and early this week, work has been going on that has made a great change in our project.  After months of seeing wood and metal framing inside the building, everything is turning white as a result of the insulation work, and right after it, sheetrock!  Now, the upper floor – to be our design studio – is noticeably warmer and much, much brighter.

This is the second and final step of the wall insulation.  The crews stapled a fiberglass fabric – called a bibb – across all the wall framing, then blew fiberglass wool into the cavities.  Now, combined with the initial layer of sprayed-on, closed-cell polyeurethane foam, the R-30 walls are keeping the building warm – even without a true heat source and with 35 degree temperatures outside.  The super-insulated shell is working already.

Enjoy these pictures of the studio, still retaining much of its warehouse character.  There’s so much great light bouncing around the space now that the sheetrock is going up.  We can’t wait to get up there!

Steven M. Rice, LEED AP®

LEED® Design Submittal on Target

The new office project’s design submittal came back with good news from the US Green Building Council: of the 57 points we submitted, 27 are anticipated without question and – great news! – none were rejected.  We are still tracking on what we hope will be an eventual total of 88 points – far exceeding the 80 required for the goal of a Platinum rating.  Those participating in the project’s LEED® effort are doing a great job – our Administrator Shawn Dinkuhn, assisted by our firm’s LEED® guru Robbie McNamara, Greg Belding, Jeremy Southerland and the site and office staff at Tim Ryan Construction: Adam Vega and Lee Capps, in particular. Of course, we couldn’t do it without the leadership of our mechanical engineer, Shawn Oram at Ecotope in Seattle.

Here’s a photo of the newly-arrived sun screens, installed last week.  These screens play a role in our energy model, keeping unwanted heat gain out of the building in summer months.

Steve Rice, LEED AP®

Our New Office will be a Hands-on Learning Place for Mechanical Engineering Students

One of our firm’s three major goals with this project is to forge a deeper bond with our community, and one way we’re doing that is an idea brought forward by Shawn Dinkuhn, a Project Coordinator in our firm. Shawn, who is the project’s LEED® Administrator, had the idea of introducing our unique HVAC system to the engineering program at nearby Olympic College, thinking that they might be interested in what we’re doing to become the most energy efficient office building in Western Washington.  And they were indeed interested, but what we didn’t realize is that not only did we interest OC’s program, but Washington State University’s as well.  It turns out that WSU is offering a four-year BS degree in mechanical engineering taught by their full-time staff on OC’s campus here in Bremerton. 

Dr. Marvin J. Pitts, PE, WSU’s  Program Coordinator and Professor of Mechanical Engineering, is excited about having an in-town location to bring students to see firsthand how a progressive engineering solution became integral to the design of the entire office project and the achievement of our LEED® Platinum goals. WSU and OC students will be able to set up day labs in our office, monitoring and collecting data from building systems while fulfilling objectives taught in  engineering analysis and design, fluids (ME 303), heat transfer (ME 404), and thermal systems (ME 402).  Eventually, RFM will offer internships to engineering students through OC’s Program for Work-Integrated Learning. These internships will focus on collecting and analyzing energy data from software programs integral to the HVAC system, and comparing that data to the building’s pre-construction energy model.   

Rice Fergus Miller is excited about this new community connection Shawn is building for us.  Having students in the studio will be a lot of fun!

Steven Rice, LEED AP®

The Windows made an Entrance

The new windows recently arrived from Tiltco in Ontario, Canada. At approximately 500 pounds each, it was quite an effort to get the windows off the truck and into our new space. Each window is two double Tilt And Turn factory mulled units at 13 ft. wide by 6 ft. high. These windows were selected to meet the aggressive insulating value required for our super-insulated skin.

Defining Spaces

The forum space is beginning to take shape. The perimeter walls have been framed. The opening in the upper floor has not yet been cut, as the crews upstairs are using this area for staging scaffolding to install windows and drywall to the clerestory monitor above.