Last week we got enough good weather to make a start on the masonry walls that will ultimately separate our air conditioning condenser units from the rest of the studio environment. By making the blocks that face the units out of RPG DiffusorBlox, we can dramatically reduce the noise pollution of the condenser units, bringing greater peace both our neighbors and our own environment:
Here’s a view of the inside of the small equipment corral:
In both this photo and the one above, you can see that we’ve used a few non-RPG blocks…that’s because various boxes and faceplates will be attached to those blocks, and it’s a real pain to make such attachments to the RPG blocks themselves.
Looking at the back side of these walls you can see the profiles of the steel rebar that will reinforce the masonry wall that will face the patios. You can also see shadows of the ladder wire that will tie the RPG walls to the patio walls, providing additional strength:
Continuing around the outside of the site, we can see there’s been quite some change to the construction site’s boundary:
The main excavation you see is to make room for a series of water features that will extend to the West of the patio. In the foreground, just inside the foundation blocks on the left hand side you can see a new excavation for a planter we will embed into the patio. Here’s a different view that shows better the length and depth of that excavation:
From this view you can also see that we’re going to be widening the concrete patio by 8′ to provide a better pathway between the meadow (above) and the West patio.
In the distance you can see some red ribbon tied around the Loggia columns. Up closer you can see why: we’ve put sealer on the finished concrete and want to protect it from traffic while it dries:
Continuing on around the building you can see that we’re also extending the Southwest patio by 4′:
It would have been great to have gotten this right the first time, but this is an example of a design change that resulted from careful consideration of our original aesthetic intentions and more clear-eyed examination of the realities of drainage, circulation, and anticipated use.
Another design change we made last week was the addition of an additional 100A branch of clean power in the attic above the Control Room. We’ve decided that we can, in fact, move our console power supplies out of the QR. To bring them power, we cut a hole in the QR wall that you won’t see when all is said and done:
Here’s the other end of that pipe feeding into the Utility Room:
Moving inside, we can see that the ductwork that was standing on the floor last week is now mostly installed:
Here’s a view that confirms the trapezoidal profile of the ducts:
The soffit framing is also up in the Control Room, but you’ll have to wait until next week for photos.
We’ll leave you this week with an overview of the site taking from the Northeast:
