Friday, November 28, 2008

Happy Thanksgiving: The EcoCenter Foundation has Been Poured the Tanks have Been Delivered!

Greetings friends, it is only appropriate that on the dawn of Thanksgiving I write you all to let you know how much we have to be thankful for this year. A Lease, A (near) healthy capital budget, and, ta da, a Building Permit and a Permit to install our WastWater Treatment System.

Its been a while, almost a year since I last "blogged" in, I hope someone in cyberspace forgives me. I have been pulled in many directions and am just now coming down to earth---if you will. I know you have all been dying to find out about the next regulatory challenge or mile of redtape we have had to move through to get our precious center on line.

So let me bring you all up to speed!

I am happy to report that truly, we are well on our way to finalizing the building!
We received our building permit in August--eight months after applying for the permit--in good time. With permit in hand, we worked with Ryan Engineering, a San Francsico based soils excavation firm, to do all of our soils work including all the excavation, import, and compaction. They were extremely generous--we owe them a great deal!

Last week we finished the foundation pour, using a specially batched mix thanks to Bode Concrete which boasts of 75% slag and 100% recycled aggregate. If anyone has any connections to a concrete trade mag, please let me know, we need to get an article out asap! The foundation is already testing 4000psi--1000 more than mandated by our structural engineer. Bode concrete was very generous and worked with our team very closely to adapt a really sustainable mix for us that we can boast for our foundation to the structure. The pour went really smoothly, with very few bumps, the aggregate was a bit chunky at first, but it smoothy out quickly. The foundation has 12 tons of rebar in it and it magnificently floats over the site.

Alltold, it took three months to complete all of our survey work, soils work, site preperation, and foundation slab.

Stay Tuned, our waste treatment system install is coming up!