Friday, July 13, 2007

Concrete slab finished, steel grid installation begins.























The Bathtub

Now that the base slab is complete, hopefully the tangent piles will be secure. Finishing this aspect of the foundation's design without additional delays was a major concern of the Department of Buildings. They were worried that the site was vulnerable in it's bottomless condition, having lifted the stop work order and allowing additional weekend work for this reason.
The building's basement design calls for the fabrication of an extensive grid of steel I-beam boxes. How these many supports will work inside a parking garage remains to be seen. The more obstacles in the way the less usable space for parking cars. I suspect that they will work double duty keeping the bathtub's exterior walls in place over time as well as holding up two cellar floors of the parking garage and 5 more stories of building above ground.

























The brown rusty pipes running on diagonals through the grid are temporary bracing that will eventually be removed.




No comments: