Day Eighty Eight -- Closer Still

Eighty Eight working days into this studio construction project, we're seeing the end in sight.

The contractor's portion of the studio itself is almost complete. The wall behind the ladder used to be the front of our old building, so it needed to be patched where they removed our old front door. All of the studio walls have been painted "CBS Gray". If seen on television, the walls will appear to be white, but will not reflect back into the camera more light than it can handle. A pipe grid from which to hang our studio lights, and a curtain track and curtains will be installed either by us or by a lighting system contractor. The concrete floor needs to be cleaned and sealed, and the studio should be ready for those final touches.

This is a close up of one of the special air conditioning ducts used in the studio. There are three long fabric "tubes" which are perforated along their lengths. The cool air from the A/C units inflates these ducts and "oozes" out the perforations to drop gently to the studio floor. This provides more even distribution and, more importantly, very quiet operation.

Here is our new reception area as viewed from the new front door. As you can see, ceiling tiles have been installed, and all that remains is floor covering to complete this area. The opening in the background leads into our old building, part of which is being remodeled as a part of this project.

Here in one of the remodeled offices in the old building lies the ends of the computer network and telephone cables which have been pulled into the new offices and control rooms. This entire bundle will be pulled over the suspended ceiling in the old building into the transmitter room where all of the telephone and computer terminal equipment is located.

As a part of the remodeling of the old building, the wall between two of our former edit rooms has been removed to make a larger room which will be used as a kitchen, break room, conference room combination.

This photograph, taken yesterday, shows the forms being placed for the sidewalks. Early this morning, the sidewalks were poured and the forms removed.

It won't be long now!

Day Eighty -- The Home Stretch

There were a couple of days of virtually no activity on the new building after our last post, but the pace has now picked up considerably.

As you can see from this latest photo of our new reception area, the drywall has been finished, the first coat of paint applied, and the grid work for the suspended ceiling has been installed. The same is true for the General Manager's office, the Studio Control Room, and the Audio Room. We have the first half of next week to pull our video, telephone, and computer network cables before they are scheduled to drop in the ceiling panels. It would be possible, but much less convenient to do it after the panels have been placed.

Yesterday, a crew installed a black, "blown-on" cellulose material on the ceiling of the TV studio. It serves as both thermal insulation and as an acoustical treatment. As you can imagine, it was quite a messy job. The workers had to wear plastic suits and wear face masks as the entire room was filled with a black haze as they were working. The plastic that protected the walls and floor have been taken up, and the paint crew is priming the studio walls.

Elsewhere, the four rooftop air conditioning units were mounted in place yesterday, and they've had their electrical connections made. They won't be started up until all of the duct work is completed. Our security company is pulling wires to all of the locations for door switches, motion detectors, and surveillance cameras.

One as yet unresolved issue relates to the required fire protection water tank. We must have a tank holding at least 10,000 gallons of water on site before the fire inspector will allow us to have an occupancy permit. There was supposedly a 6000 gallon underground tank already in place, so the initial plan was to install a 4000 gallon auxiliary tank in order to meet the requirement. However there were some serious questions about the functionality of the existing system, so the fire inspector requested that it be uncovered for examination. When we started digging, we uncovered not one, but four tanks, the sum total of which was apparently the earlier-required 6000 gallons. The problem was that the tanks were apparently not vented and perhaps not appropriately interconnected. An inspection scheduled for Monday should show whether it would be financially feasible to make the existing system operational before adding to it or whether putting in an entirely new 10,000 gallon system would be a better investment.

The excitement around here is mounting. We're just a few weeks away from realizing a dream that was born almost five years ago.