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You may have noticed in a previous post that new piles were being put into the ground for a new building located just south of the staff parking lot.
That new building is now installed and its purpose will be to house a giant water tank for our fire suppression system and will be a workshop and storage room for maintenance.
The building is sitting on a dozen concrete piles that were pounded into the ground this summer, ensuring it will not shift over time.
The building itself is a steel structure made up of steel columns, purlins and metal sheeting. It measures 80′ x40′ (3200 ft²) and 16 feet tall roof at its peak. It sits on a thickened edge concrete slab with additional concrete curbs inside for mechanical equipment and “housekeeping pads” out of every door. The metal structure was erected in a little over a week. The building features a 12′ x 12′ roll up garage door.
The building will serve as a warehouse for storage of all items needed at DUC. Everything from magazines to snow blowers. Roughly 1/3 of the building interior is the mechanical room.
The 12,500 gallon steel water storage tank is the most eye catching. The tank will weigh 104,250 pounds once full. The water in this tank will be used to put out a fire in the main building in the case of emergency via the emergency sprinkler system. The size of this massive tank of water is required for buildings based on their size for firefighting. In most cases, a building the size of the Discovery Centre and the DUC Headquarter is connected to a municipal or city water supply which has built in redundancy. With well supplied water a situation could arise where a well is not able to produce the volume of water or any water at all and the fire suppression system must have a source of water at all times. The tank is required by code for all fire suppression systems not connected to a city or municipality. Ours just happen to be a very large tank because we have a very large building. The tank has to be able to supply enough water to the fire pump for 30 minutes of continues operation.
Installing a water tank of this size can be a challenge, especially when the building only has one opening large enough for the tank itself! It was a tight fit but it all worked out in the end.
The mechanical room also houses our fire pump which is a very large pump dedicated to supply water to the fire suppression sprinklers throughout the facility. The building also houses two 12″ wells located at either end. These two wells serve a dual purposes, they both serve as cold water supply for the building’s existing geothermal system during the summer months and they also fill the tank and ensure it remains topped up at all time.
