MECHANICAL CONTRACTING Ready to go at 50 below North Pole, Alaska: Men and machinery take on the rigors of winter
near North Pole, Alaska. “Ready to go at 50 below” is their motto, and rightly so. F-16 fighter jets and their crews need to be in top condition, ready to move out at a moment’s notice. So do the mechanical systems on base. Of course, the Alaskan climate
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dishes out an ice-cold punishment all its own. “Our average temperature in January is negative 10, but it dips well below that,” said Al Morlan, superintendent for Slayden Plumbing and Heating, based in North Pole.
“And when the winds kick in, it’s downright brutal, even for locals.” In 2008, Eielson AFB undertook
the construction of 349 new, multiple-family housing units (or multiplexes), and 99 existing units received mechanical system upgrades, all completed by Slayden P+H. Neither the general contracting firm, Fairbanks-based Osborne Construction, nor Slayden P+H, are newcomers to military work. For the past four years, Slayden has installed over 1,000 mechanical systems in facilities nearly identical to the ones at Eielson. They’ve got it down to a science.
Double espresso for Henry Ford Others see it as life in the fast lane,
a caffeine-fueled rush to get a lot of groundwork done between winter seasons. No wonder it seems that there’s a coffee shack on every corner in Alaska, even in some of the most rural spots. Dark coffee and espresso help the locals leap from each deep freeze into the next one, a period of about 120 days. In the North Pole region, there’s a
four-month period when ground can be broken and foundation work safely concreted or poured, including radiant heat work. In late July, dozens of crews at the new housing development at Eielson were moving at an amazing pace to outrun the coming of the next freeze, expected within six or seven weeks. If Henry Ford had invented the
mass production of houses, not Model Ts, he’d have been just as comfortable here, surrounded by
Eielson Air Force Base undertook the construction of 349 new, multiple-family housing units (or multiplexes), and 99 existing units received mechanical system upgrades, all completed by Slayden Plumbing and Heating.
construction teams, each focused on a task they’ve repeated for months with little variation. Within one block, all facets of
construction were underway simultaneously. At the beginning of a cul-de-sac, excavators were moving soil for a poured footer. The concrete truck, spinning slowly, had just arrived. The footer crew was 10 minutes behind schedule.
Modular housing on steroids Next to that foundation was
another one where the footer had cured sufficiently to cover with rigid foam insulation and reinforcement wire. Thirty feet away was another multi-housing unit, its foundation work advanced by exactly 24 hours. Here, a crew was attaching radiant PEX tubing to the re-wire, with taped-shut tubing ends tied to temporary rigging where, perhaps by the very next day, the tubes would be connected to a radiant manifold and attached to the wall of a preassembled, modular mechanical room. A different concrete truck was on its way down the street, bound for this site, ready to pour the slab floor, concealing the tubing. And, next door, now moving into
the curve of the cul-de-sac, a forklift gently placed a small, modular component of the home onto the slab; this six-foot by six-foot, covered section was the mechanical room.
The roof was temporary, but it served its purpose, permitting key mechanical components to be installed in advance. Within a week or two, the rest of the building would rise up beside it. By that time the mechanical team will be a few blocks away, repeating the process. “All the new units need to be under
roof and heated by the first of October,” said Morlan. Quite a task, considering excavation for new housing units on the 500-acre site had only begun in mid-April. Units in every stage of completion,
from excavation to occupation, could be seen from any vantage point on base last summer. Over the past two summers, the military essentially built a town with a population of 1,500 in nine months. Three or four 1,800-sq.-ft. homes make up each well insulated, slab-on-grade multiplex. Each is hydronically heated, with delivery best suited to the Alaskan climate; radiant heat downstairs, fin-tube baseboard upstairs.
District heating makes a comeback We’re on a military base, and a big
one at that. Naturally, they have a few secrets. So when we asked to see the source of all these Btu, we were told that the main steam plant was
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icknamed the “Icemen,” the 354th Fighter Wing flies out of Eielson Air Force Base
phc may 2011
www.phcnews.com
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