It was a balancing act, according to the project team.

That is, when facing a decision of whether to keep a portion of Twality Middle School in Tigard and add to it, or simply demolish the entire existing facility and construct a new one, officials opted for the former. Existing concrete shell structures will be kept and renovated, and eventually connect with a new, two-story building.

“It’s almost a new building,” said Shawn Christensen, a project manager with Day CPM, the owner’s representative for Tigard-Tualatin School District. “We kept 27,000 square feet worth of the concrete boxes in the gym, which is going to stay a gym. There’s another gym that we’re converting to locker rooms. And then we’ve kept the cafeteria, and we are converting that to music rooms. Everything else got torn down.”

IBI Group designed the $46 million project, and Woodburn-based Triplett Wellman Contractors is serving as general contractor. The school will gain a new gymnasium, media center, common areas, visual arts classrooms, maker space, centralized administrative offices and a full suite of wired-for-technology classrooms.

All of it is spread over two stories, with the ground floor nestled into a hillside. This will give the impression of a daylit basement and provide convenient access across both floors.

The school’s orientation will be roughly north to south, with the existing structures situated at the site’s south end. Construction is being split into two phases; currently, the first phase is under way at the site’s north end.

“The big push right now is just the framing,” said Greg Yoder, site superintendent for Triplett Wellman Contractors. “The site contractor was here today – it’s Catworks out of Vancouver (Washington), and they’re doing all the dirt work. And then we’ve got (PDX) Electric doing our electric, and Hydro-Temp is our plumber. And they’ve got both the wet and the dry side, so plumbers have been working getting the slab-on-grade stuff in.”

The building will have slab-on-grade foundations with wood framing and glulam columns and beams for structural support over the typical long spans found in schools. A curtainwall system will bring let natural light into the building from the west side, where new parking and bus pathways will be built. Both levels of the new building’s east side will feature vertically accented metal panels and glazing.

The project is part of a two-pronged remodel of a campus that also includes Templeton Elementary School. The latter was rebuilt in a similar fashion, with a portion of the 1960s-era building retained. That project was completed this past summer, and students and staff are now using the new space.

The project team decided to take a similar approach with the Twality project, though it remains uncertain whether it’s the most cost-effective one.

“We kept the (old) gym operational during construction, so it’s been a significant challenge to keep that gym free of noise and issues,” Christensen said. “They were thinking there would be budget savings with these giant concrete boxes, but as far as we’ve gotten into the building I’m thinking we might not have saved money by keeping the boxes.”

But the move allowed officials burdened by construction at both schools to maintain gym space.

“There were definitely complications associated with that for sure,” Christensen added. “And honestly they needed the gym. They only have a small gym down there at the elementary school, so using this gym has allowed them to run PE (classes) for 1,100 students.”

Similar choices were made with the old school cafeteria, which will tie in with the new building.

“It will all be connected,” Christensen said.

The post Something old, something new appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

The Associated Builders and Contractors‘ Pacific Northwest chapter kicked off a new tradition earlier this month when it held its first Craft Championships.

The challenge, which ABC National has conducted for 19 years, is designed to highlight the HVAC and sheet metal trades.

For the local chapter competition, held at the Northwest College of Construction, third- and fourth-year apprentices in both disciplines took a written test. The top scorers then participated in a hands-on competition that was judged on the quality of final physical products, personal safety practices and safety procedures, excellence in equipment and tool use, and station cleanliness.

Sheet metal judges included Jeff Topkik and Ty Topkik of Happy Valley Air Conditioning; Bruce Kyser of Viking Sheet Metal; Luke Rappe of Reitmeier and Matt Sig of Hydro-Temp Mechanical.

Safety managers for the competition included Bob Gordon of IRS Environmental, Mike Walshe of Interstate Roofing and Paul Magrone of Yorke & Curtis.

The two top competition winners, Jarred Abbott of Gohman Mechanical and Tom Burns of American Heating, will move on to the National Craft Championships in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., in March 2016. Their trips to the competition will be paid for by the local ABC chapter.

to view a gallery of photos from the competition.

Out and About is a new feature in the 91��Ƶ designed to help companies in the building industries in Oregon and Southwest Washington share their good news with 91��Ƶ readers. Email photos and press releases about company events, employee volunteer efforts, etc., to newsroom@djcOregon.com.

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Over the past 25 years, Valerie Lee Troyer has risen through the ranks of the building industry to become CFO for a major HVAC and plumbing contractor in the Portland area.

She understands the necessity of keeping an eye on the numbers, while also maintaining an open office door as well as open lines of communication for the 50 employees who work at Hydro-Temp Mechanical. The company is a major contractor in the Portland-metro area and works on projects that include hospitals, schools, and public and commercial buildings. In her 10 years with Hydro-Temp, she has helped direct company growth, resulting in a doubling of the company’s revenue from the previous decade.

Her guidance has been a key element in keeping company executives on track, directing reinvestment in Hydro-Temp and working to improve the careers of Hydro-Temp’s employees. Her leadership also has allowed the company to remain on the cutting edge of a dynamic industry.

She regularly takes new employees under her wing. Rather than issue orders, she patiently explains tasks and operating procedures in a way that allows workers to understand the process. Encouraging questions and offering an ear to listen to concerns have allowed her to forge relationships with, and gain greater cooperation from, the company’s employees.

She also is an advocate for continued training related to certifications and qualifying ratings, and actively helps those interested in moving into management positions search out professional education opportunities and financial assistance.

The post Valerie Lee Troyer, CFO, Hydro-Temp Mechanical appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

When the 220,000-square-foot, 174-bed Oregon State Hospital opens Jan. 1, 2015 in Junction City, it will look similar to its 850,000-square-head cousin in Salem, albeit much smaller. The new hospital will have one critical difference, however – a geothermal heat exchange system made possible because of the physical makeup of the 30-acre site itself.

“There’s a river underneath there,” said Cade Lawrence, project manager for Hoffman Construction, the construction manager-general contractor for both the Junction City and Salem state hospital projects. “We were able to pull that water out from there and use it to convert the heat or cool the air.”

Hoffman first had to fill with rock existing wetlands roughly eight feet deep, down to the water table, Lawrence said. The firm began building vertically in summer 2013, after approval was issued for most of the $84 million to pay for construction.

The decision to install an open-loop geothermal system for the Junction City hospital came from the abundance of underground water and the fact that the site is spread out, said Jim Sharpe, principal and project manager for the San Francisco office of Affiliated Engineers. It designed the mechanical, electrical and plumbing systems for both the Salem and Junction City projects.

“The reason we did it is because of the site,” he said. “It’s just perfect. We couldn’t do it in a lot of places.”

The Salem hospital site, for example, did not have the geography needed, Sharpe said. So, crews in Junction City drilled two test wells to see how the heat exchange system would work.

“It was really to test the underground geography, to see if you can flow water from one end and it would flow back into the ground,” he said. “That test told us the geography was good.”

The water table starts at roughly eight feet beneath the surface and continues down to about 150 feet. Water temperatures at that depth are relatively stable – between 50 degrees and 55 degrees, he said.

The open-loop system, named because the pipes that draw water from the ground and eventually release it back into the earth are not connected, will allow the building to use 40 percent less energy than it would otherwise, Sharpe said.

A more standard, closed-loop system, which Hoffman built at the Port of Portland, would have involved 300 to 400 wells being bored into the ground and relied on soil temperatures to heat or cool water passing up through the earth. That would have ultimately raised costs, Sharpe said. Under the open-loop system, only eight wells had to be drilled, he said.

The system, installed by Wilsonville-based Hydro-Temp Mechanical, heats and cools the water through six heat recovery chillers, or heat pumps, installed in the building. The water makes its way from the aquifer through pipes to the chillers, which either raise the water temperature to heat the building or lower the temperature to cool the building. The water then moves from one end of the site to the other and is released back into the ground.

The project team toured Portland State University‘s similar, open-loop geothermal system, which also uses a heat exchanger to extract water from one place and put it back in another, Sharpe said. The main difference is that PSU’s well is roughly 800 feet deep and uses the vertical distance to heat or cool water, he said.

“We’re using distances horizontally when we put it back in the earth,” he said.

At peak usage during summer and winter, respectively, the system will pump between 400 and 800 gallons of water to cool and heat the building.

‘You need the underground aquifer and you need the distance,” Sharpe said. “You’ve got to have a good geology – there’s got to be good sand and gravel. If there is a lot of clay and rock, you can’t suck the water out very easily and it won’t want to go back in.”

Other sustainable features of the Junction City project include 442 photovoltaic panels installed on the building’s roof along with dozens of hydrothermal solar panels to heat water in the building, said Jodie Jones, Oregon Health Authority‘s administrator on the project.

Once funding was granted in July 2013, Hoffman and its project team accelerated the work by performing much of it off-site. One of its subcontractors, Knife River Corp., precast 256 panel walls at a Harrisburg location about five miles from Junction City.

The walls were on average about 52 feet tall and weighed 70,000 pounds, according to the Oregon Health Authority. When construction started, they were trucked about five miles to the Junction City site, and then lifted and put in place using large cranes, Lawrence said.

“It helped to have our precast ready to roll,” Lawrence said. “We went vertical fast and worked with our subs to make the schedule. Everybody did their job.”

Oregon State Hospital – Junction City

Construction cost: $84 million

Construction start date: July 2013

Anticipated completion date: Dec. 31, 2014

Construction manager-general contractor: Hoffman Construction Co.

Architect: HOK, SRG Partnership

Owner’s representative: CH2M HILL

Structural engineer: KPFF Consulting Engineers

Civil engineer: Westlake Consultants

MEP: Affiliated Engineers

Landscape: Walker Macy

Other consultants: SOLARC Engineering and Energy + Architectural Consulting

The post Capitalizing on an underground river appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

Major energy upgrades are nearly done at the Columbia County Courthouse and annex in St. Helens. The county received $1.1 million in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act money for a complete overhaul of the 54-year-old annex’s mechanical system, controls and boilers.

But replacing the mechanical system, which is on the building’s roof, required to remove walls and lift the air handling units into place by crane. The team replaced six units with two energy-efficient models, with less than an inch of clearance in the ceiling space.

“When you design a complete changeover for an old building, there are a lot of challenges you couldn’t predict when the design is done,” said Bill Potter, Columbia County building services manager.

The project team, led by Portland-based , also swapped out the old boiler, added direct digital temperature controls, and installed energy-efficient lighting with occupancy sensors in 90 percent of the 42,500-square-foot building.

“The building has a lot of creaks and cracks and drafts,” Potter said. “And it was heated and cooled 24/7 – we never had nighttime shutdowns, so the building was pretty uncomfortable and energy inefficient.”

The upgrades are expected to save the county $57,000 in energy costs each year, according to Potter, and they are already making the courthouse and annex more comfortable environments.

The county and the project team also committed to hiring subcontractors living in and near the St. Helens area so that the bulk of the construction budget remained within the community.

Most of the work wrapped up in January, but Potter said the team is still fine-tuning the new systems.

“Green Spotlight” is a weekly feature on local firms’ best sustainable projects. To submit a project, email GreenSpotlight@djcOregon.com or call 503-802-7226.

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The post Hydro-Temp Mechanical, Inc. is Requesting Subcontractor Bids for the Portland International Airport Concourse A HVAC Project. Bids are Due on Thursday, February 23, 2012 at 2:00 PM appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

Hydro Temp Mechanical is looking for sub contractors to bid on the Justice Center Cooling Tower Replacement Project for Multnomah County. The bid date is January 19 at 2:00pm. Please click on the sub bid here for more details or see today’s 91��Ƶ.

The post Hydro Temp Mechanical Needs Sub Contractors For The Justice Center Cooling Tower Replacement Project. Bids Due January 19. appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.