Rubb Fabric Building News

Gordon Collins and Jim Chadbourne of Rubb, Inc. will be exhibiting at PPI Transport Symposium 19 Amsterdam, The Netherlands on October 11-14, 2011. Please stop by and visit them at booth #104. 

PPI Transport Symposium is the longest running conference and exhibition dedicated to the global forest products logistics industry. Organized by RISI, in association with the International Forest Products Transport Association (IFPTA), the event focuses on the issues surrounding the worldwide transport, materials handling, and distribution of forest products.

In Spring 2010 Rubb, Inc. will move into its expanded U.S. steel fabrication facility in Sanford, Maine.  This expansion will effectively triple the usable area for steel fabrication at the Rubb plant thereby significantly increasing production capacity.

This project utilizes a 110′ span Rubb BVE range structure engineered to code standards for the high 70 pound per square foot snow loads present in Maine.  This expansion includes significant improvements to Rubb’s 16 acre site with paved storage and handling areas increased to 4 acres.  The new facility is fully insulated and equipped with radiant in-floor heating and a state of the art air filtration system that will clean and recycle heated air, generating substantial energy savings.  The facility has an architectural masonry and glass front and is provided with offices and mechanical rooms, an employee breakroom, a training room, locker rooms and a 5,000 square foot mezzanine.

Company President David Nickerson commented that, “The cooperation of local and state officials and the excellent work of local subcontractors and Rubb’s own staff have resulted in a very successful project.  This facility will provide a better and more productive work environment for our employees and will enable us to better serve our customer requirements for the large span structures that form an important part of our growing business.”

Hosted by the Port of New Orleans, Rubb Buildings will be an exhibitor (booth 437) at the 19^th Annual Breakbulk Transportation Conference and Exhibition in New Orleans October 14-16, 2008. This conference is the oldest and largest gathering of breakbulk transportation executives. It brings together shippers, carriers, forwarders, logistic providers, ports, attorneys and government officials for three days of networking and discussions of the latest trends in the breakbulk industry.

With the fabric sheets laced together, the next step is to heat seal the PVC over the seams. This effectively turns the building membrane into a continuous, watertight shell enclosing the entire structure. This week’s video shows the crew working up and down the seams, sealing them shut with a hot-air gun. They also start sealing the flap down the ridge of the building.

At this point, the bulk of the work is taking place inside the structure, as they prepare the floor for the radiant heat pipes and install the steel in the gable ends. With the membrane in place, we won’t be able to see much activity on the time-lapse camera for a while. I will still post weekly updates as construction progresses.
 
 
 

Now that all the main sheets have been pulled down over the framework, the next step is to lace the sheets together. There are two seams that connect two adjacent sheets together; one on the inside and one on the outside. Working from the top of the building down, the rope is threaded through the inside seam in a zig-zag pattern, and then pulled tight. Slack is pulled out of the rope in short sections, again working from the peak of the building down to the base. When the inside seam is tight, the process is repeated with the outside seam.

In Friday’s video, you can see Chris, Justin & Al working their way up and down the seams pulling them tight. Mid-afternoon a passing shower cuts work short.

The bulk of the PVC sheets were unrolled and pulled over the framework this week. As of Friday, only one sheet remained to be installed. This puts the building 90% under cover, and once the sheets have been laced and heat-sealed together they can work inside installing the concrete floor and mezzanine.

In Thursday’s time-lapse video, two sheets are unrolled on the north side of the building and one on the south side in the morning. I went up on the roof for the south sheet to videotape the operation. Later that afternoon another sheet was hoisted up and placed on the roof to be unrolled on Friday.

This week the construction crew dropped five sheets of the building’s PVC membrane cladding. The process is fairly straightforward, although not for those with fear of heights! First, the rolls of PVC are unrolled down the length of the building, then attached with hardware to a tube that runs along the ridge. This secures the sheet in place at the top. A tube is inserted in a pocket at the base of the sheet, and ropes are run down the outside of the structure and pulled with a forklift from below. This pulls the sheet down over the outside of the building in one quick operation. The base of the sheet is then attached to the foundation with tensioning hardware and pulled tight.

In Tuesday’s video, you can see that two sheets on the far side of the building are already in place from Monday. An additional sheet is pulled down on the far side in the morning, and two more on the near side are tensioned in the afternoon. The camera lens is also visited by a bee in the middle of the day. Later on we see a passing shower after work hours, and finally a sunset finishes the day.

Work on the building this week was minimal as only a skeleton crew was assigned to construction. In Thursday’s time-lapse video (to the right), the camera was reset to its default position from a thunderstorm the night before, and then repositioned mid-morning. You can see the gable endwall steelwork being fitted into place until late morning, and a few passing showers in the afternoon.

This was another slow construction week as some crews resumed normal shop and site duties.  More roof purlins were added and the bracing cables were tightened.  Most importantly, a few rolls of the PVC fabric were hoisted up and placed on the roof of the building, as shown in the video.  When the remaining rolls are fabricated and placed, they will be pulled down over the framework to form a watertight covering.

It has also been a wet week, with a thunderstorm nearly every day, playing havoc with the camera’s electronics from time to time.  Today, you can see the morning fog burn off and the puddle on the shop floor evaporate in the sun through the day.
 
 
 

The new building really took shape this week with the majority of the roof purlins filled in and the final spans lifted into place and braced off.  This means that the crane is no longer necessary and the remaining work can be done using the telescoping forklift and manlifts. In this week’s time-lapse video you can see a few roof purlins being added here and there before the crane arrives.