The Putney School is building a field house. It’s the third in a series of buildings intended to expand the student boarding population (Huseby House Dormitory), provide a home for our performing and visual arts programs and presentations (Michael S. Currier Center), and augment our student athletic programs and employee health opportunities (Field House). Check in here over the coming months to see how the design, planning and building progress. To make a donation in support of the Field House, please call 802-387-6272 or email cbaskett@putneyschool.org.
Vermont is not supposed to have a summer monsoon, but it sure seems like we’re having one these past two weeks. That hasn’t been helpful in the roofing and painting departments. Despite days of threatening skies, the roofing crew was a able to lay the insulating layers. Once the weather clears, they’ll cover them with Sarnafil, the same product covering the non-vegetative areas of our last major construction, the Michael S. Currier Center. Battens will be installed to simulate the look of a metal roof.
Choosing the roof color was easy: to meet our LEED platinum-level criteria for sustainable architecture, the roof has to be white. The exterior walls, however, were up to us. The final, final, final decision on the shade of exterior green is “evergreen.” You can see the final four swatches in the photo gallery link (evergreen is 2nd from the left). We’d be painting by now, but for the rainy spell. Siding covers nearly three sides at this writing.
Machinery to heat water, circulate air and so forth continues to arrive and be installed. The floor polishers have been literally grinding away at the upper deck concrete to make a durable, eco-friendly floor surface for the social room, offices, and locker/bathroom areas. Outside, work is nearly done installing the catch basins and other structures to direct rain water from the curtain drains recently finished in the adjacent playing field to a place where it can filter naturally.
Alumni from classes as far back as 1943 gathered last weekend and a few opted to tour the Field House on Friday afternoon with Clerk of the Works Randy Smith (also known as The Putney School’s business manager and CFO). The first stop was the wood-fired bread oven that’s being built into the former waiters’ dining room of the KDU, which should be finished some time in late July.
At this juncture, siding is going on the exterior of the Field House, the upper deck concrete has been poured, and internal framing belies the thickness of the eventual wall insulation. Color swatches on the north elevation are helping the building committee zero in on just exactly the right shade of green (human eyes can detect upwards of 40,000 variations, so it’s a daunting task) for the exterior. The curtain drain in the playing field has been installed and the bare ground will be seeded this week. Machines to grind and polish the upper deck concrete floor will arrive soon.
The Field House Building Committee met today on-site to vote on the exterior color. The committee is comprised of faculty, staff, administration, current students, and trustees. The choices had been already narrowed to gray and green. The committee met to view samples of both colors displayed on the north wall. The vote was 11 to 2 in favor of green. This recommendation will now go to the board of trustees for final approval.
While we were out there, workers were delivering part of the air-to-air heat exchange system that will regulate the temperature of the building. Here are a few other photos from the gathering.
The court floor is poured and it was sunny enough today for the acoustic metal roof to cast shadows inside. That’s because of many tiny holes in the metal that will serve to absorb sound from cheering fans, grunting athletes, and bouncing balls. Progress has been made on the interior walls separating the locker rooms and wax room from the court area. The block wall shaft for the elevator is done and windows are going in right now. Sealant and Tyvek vapor barrier material now cover most of the outside surface. It’s really beginning to look like a building, at least from the outside. Work has also begun on improving the drainage of the playing field directly in front of the field house.To see more photos from this week, have a look here.
Materials were in place on Monday, ready to receive 130 yards of concrete to form the base of the playing court floor, which was poured Thursday and Friday. Elsewhere, work continues on sealing up the frame with plywood, insulation panels and foam insulation. The skylight boxes are in place and ready for glass. For a look at how things are as of this week, click here: Field House 5-8-09.
One crew from last Thursday’s all-school Work Day was assigned some heavy construction work on the field house. Plant Manager Jim Taylor worked with students to sheath the north wall with plywood sheets. There was a lot of grinning and hammer banging, and not just because it was a lovely day for building outdoors.
Tony Papa, DEW’s construction manager for the field house project, gave a tour of the recently framed structure to students and faculty recently. Give a look to learn about the interior, concrete upper decking, fly ash, recycling and more.
The field house had two very important features added recently: an inside and an outside. It’s no longer a field house site. The newly-framed building has provided us with the opportunity to explore what it’s going to be like inside and how it will blend into the overall campus outside.
Click on the photo gallery link here to take a tour of the interior. Look for stout, 6-inch-deep wall studs prepared to accept lots of insulation. Also notice how the studs only touch the exterior steel minimally, to reduce heat temperature conduction from interior to exterior and vice versa. You’ll also notice that all steel/concrete interfaces are insulated with blocks of structural insulation to reduce temperature transfer from ground to structure. And check out the views from the windows! Those are the best.
All of the roof beams were in place as of Monday and the roof decking was finished by Wednesday this week. More exterior walls are cropping up and a clever solution involving metal scaffolding is being employed to build the exterior wall on the weight room before mud season is over and the cement trucks can come up the truck road to pour the floor slab. We’re having a mucky one. The building committee is hard at work considering exterior treatments and hues while the building gets closer to its final shape every day.
