Mechanical Control Room Construction on the First Floor

Work has begun on a set of mechanical control rooms planned for the 1st floor adjacent to the emergency exit on the Dixon Hall side of the building.

This part of the construction project displaced some shelving in the general books stacks nearby as well as several faculty study carrels.  However, with most of the building’s mechanical systems to be raised to the new 5th floor, the equipment in these rooms will allow for ground floor access to the building’s primary controls in the event of a future emergency. 

The new control rooms will include some electrical rooms, a fire pump room, a water service room, and a fire command center. 

For the remainder of this week a crew will be pulling up the old floor tile in the area that will be underneath the control rooms. This area is presently sealed in a containment area due to trace amounts of asbestos used in the old tile that will be removed. Next week the permanent walls around the perimeter of the control rooms are scheduled to be built. Until those walls are finished, access to the key-paneled door to the graduate carrels nearby will be blocked. A temporary work-around has been arranged hat allows carrel holders access through a small door that opens into one of the adjacent aisles in the stacks. 

Construction of the control rooms is expected to take about a month overall.

Meanwhile, the construction contractor began the installation of the fire suppression (sprinkler) system on the 2nd floor as planned this past Monday.  The sprinkler installation work on the 2nd floor will be done in quadrant phases that will progress counterclockwise in sequence.