Rubb Fabric Building News

Rubb AS has supplied a Type FX Thermohall aircraft hangar to Røros Flyservice AS. This hangar measures 30m wide x 30m long with 6m sidewall. The building is located in one of the coldest areas of Southern Norway and it has dual purpose. Firstly, to carry out service on smaller aircraft with a wing span up to 25m. The secondary purpose is to park aircraft indoors at night to reducing icing / freezing before use the next day. For this purpose the Rubb Thermohall insulation system provided an ideal solution for the customer. Rubb AS also supplied the fabric doors that go the full width of the building.

Røros Flyservice AS is a company that has over 500 employees and they offer a varied service to the aviation industry. They offer charter of aeroplanes, food supply, cleaning services for airlines, and a variety of ground service tasks. Rubb is proud to supply such a valued customer with the patented Thermohall system.

Phase 1 of the hangar construction for Bristow Helicopters is now complete. The hangar is 35m span x 40m long BVE complete with a large manual sliding door 20m wide x 6m high.

The hangar is from the Rubb BVE range, The BVE truss design originated in Britain and has a vertical sidewall very much like the Rubb NV. The major difference is an additional facet at the top of the leg truss that lowers the angle of the roof truss. This allows for more interior clearance over the full width of the building, useful for breakbulk and warehousing applications. The BVE can be designed with a single or multiple roof pitches per span. Several spans can also be linked together.

The BVE is a very versatile product and can be customized in a variety of ways. The leg height can be extended for additional interior clearance, and the entire building can be placed on rollers for mobility.

The finished hangar will be complete with an inner-skin and insulation package and full high specification lighting and electrical installation, and will be used by the client to service, maintain and store their fleet of commercial helicopters.

When L-3 Communications needed additional modification hangar space at their Waco, Texas location, they turned to Rubb to again design a structure specifically and cost effectively suited to their needs.

Rubb designed a four (4) bay structure which is 660′ (201m) wide by 140′ (42.7m) deep.

The aircraft hangar has an Alamo Hangar Door System and was completed in August 2009.

This is the fourth hangar that Rubb, Inc. has designed, built and erected for L-3 Communications.

Rubb Building Systems is preparing up to ship a 180′ x 367′ BVE Range Aircraft Hangar to Surabaya, Indonesia. The structure has 30′ sidewalls and one open gable end.

Lion Air, Rubb’s customer, is Indonesia’s largest privately-owned airline. Once erected, the new facility will be used to facilitate maintenance of its fleet of aircraft. Lion Air’s fleet consists of Boeing Aircraft models; MD-90, B737-300, B737-400 and the B737-900.

Lion Air is headquartered in Jakarta and the new maintenance facility will be located in Indonesia’s second largest city, Surabaya.

The Tulsa World newspaper has just published an article about the City of Tulsa’s new hangar, which is being leased to American Airlines for fleet maintenance.  Rubb manufactured the 220′ x 366′ structure and shipped it to Tulsa, where it was assembled by local contractor The Ross Group.  The full article describes the work to be performed in the hangar as well as how the project was funded.  Click here to go to the Tulsa World site and read the article.

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Rubb Building Systems and Cocoon recently collaborated in the installation of a fixed-base maintenance aircraft hangar for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Based at the Bagram Airfield base in Afghanistan, the hangar is designed to accommodate a C-130 aircraft and has a clear span width of 174’ with a 153’ wide by 46’ high door.

The hangar will fulfill critical maintenance activities not currently available in Afghanistan and is designed to meet specific clear space, environmental, and load conditions, including: support for suspended equipment, full internal fire protection systems, fuels maintenance systems, supporting utilities, and the ability to withstand 90MPH wind gusts. The project also meets all continental U.S. code requirements for potential re-use and re-location within the continental United States.

The Rubb aircraft hangar that was built for AirTran Airways in Atlanta, Georgia appeared on the NBC Today Show in a feature describing the installation of WiFi equipment in all of AirTran’s aircraft.

AirTran Airways will be the first airline to completely equip all its aircraft with this capability and the work will be accomplished in the Rubb hangar at AirTran’s Maintenance Facility at Hartsfield International Airport in Atlanta, Georgia

Rubb Buildings and Protec, Inc. recently completed another shipboard project – This helicopter hangar was installed on the USNS Comfort, an 894′ Military Sealift Command hospital ship. The two companies manufactured and erected a 40′w x 56′ BVE range structure with 19.7′ sidewalls that will hangar two (2) Blackhawk helicopters. Rubb’s design included an I-beam foundation, cargo and personnel doors, and provisions for lifting by crane.

The Comfort is based out of Baltimore and has been in service since its commissioning in 1987. These aircraft recently supported a 4 month humanitarian mission to Latin America and the Caribbean Nations. For more information regarding the Mercy and its vital role, check out its website at www.comfort.navy.mil All of us at Rubb Buildings and Protec, Inc. are proud to support this fine ship and her wonderful crew.

One of the major advantages of a Rubb aircraft hangar over time is their low-cost of maintenance. Our steel frames are hot-dipped galvanized after fabrication and easily last for 35+ years with little to no maintenance, and our PVC-coated polyester membranes easily will last for 25 or more years. We were reminded of this fact this week when we read about a small town in Iowa being forced to choose between several expensive options to replace the steel roof of an aging air craft hangar.

The roof of the structure in question dates from World War, and while that’s not a bad lifespan, the enormous expense of replacing the roof now points to the challenges owners of conventional structures face. The options they had?

• The structural standing seam metal panel roof, also called the steel roof, would be installed on the existing slope of the roof with a 20-year warranty against leaks. Cost: $457,047.

• The screwed metal panel (exposed fasteners) roof would require an increase to the roof’s slope. Also, no warranty against leaks is available and the roof would require continued maintenance. Cost: $431,172.

• Roof membrane options include a single-ply rubber membrane with a 20-year warranty. The membrane has a 20-year warranty but won’t have the life of a steel roof. Cost: $439,770.

• MOD BIT, similar to the existing roof, will also have a 20-year warranty but won’t have the life of a steel roof. Cost: $462,306.

Source: Ottumwa Courier

Clearly, the options are a good portion of the cost for replacing the entire structure, and presented the building owners with a difficult decision. Ultimately, the Ottumwa town council approved the $457,047 replacement of the steel roof, which will provide many years of longevity but inevitably will require a similar difficult decision to made some years from now.

The factor that most distinguishes Rubb structures from competing conventional products is their relocatability. Across our entire product line, our products are designed for straight-forward disassembly and easy transport using standard ISO containers, flatbed trucks, or air freight. From the simplest of our shelters to multi-span port buildings, our products are entirely relocatable and versatile, giving the owner huge flexibility regarding site location, intended use, and resale.

Take, for example, the story of an aircraft hangar originally bought by United Airlines. Back in 1992, United Airlines purchased one of our buildings for line-maintenance of Boeing 757′s at Logan Airport in Boston. This building was completed less than a year later and immediately began servicing these aircraft.

In 2000, United approached us about replacing this facility with a larger structure that could service Boeing 777 aircraft. This structure, which at the time would be our largest aircraft hangar (at a span of 255 feet), had the additional complication that it needed to be built on the same site as the existing building while minimizing downtime of their maintenance capability. To accommodate this, we began foundation work for the new building while still disassembling the existing building, and designed the building schedule such that United could use the facility while internal systems work was still being completed by subcontractors.

United’s original plan for the 757 maintenance facility was to move it to the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, where the building would be used for line maintenance of Boeing 757 aircraft used in the Far East. However, an issue with height clearance put the project on hold and the facility stayed in storage at our facility in Sanford, Maine.

Some years later, United sold the structure to Pan Am Airlines, who intended to use the structure for line maintenance at the Orlando Sanford International Airport, but that project, too, ended up on hold, and Pan Am resold the structure themselves.

What makes this story interesting is that the value of any other kind of structure would long have been extinguished before it was resold in the way this Rubb hangar was. While United could have sold a 757 aircraft hangar at the Logan Airport, should they have decided to expand a conventional facility, the expense would have been considerably greater and they never would’ve had the asset of the existing facility. And for Pan Am, having a structure that was site relocatable was much more valuable than that of a fixed facility.

Everyone buys a Rubb structure for a reason, and anyone who needs to sell one has a reason, too. While many of our customers use our structures for decades, the extreme site flexibility allows owners to be confident that should they ever need to sell our facility, they have the greatest number of options and value in the structure they own.