By Jessica Wind (The Cascade) – Email
Print Edition: March 6, 2013
It started with a hole in the drywall.
Soon came the tarps and garbage cans, and now the ceiling is missing.
By now, students and faculty alike have probably noticed the construction zone that has taken over the entrance, stairwell and lower floor of B building outside the B101 lecture theatre. The project started out as a routine building renewal initiative that was being conducted at various locations on the Abbotsford campus.
“The initial project was called post-tension cabling,” explained UFV’s executive director of facilities and campus planning, Craig Toews. “The slab has a series of high tension cables running through the concrete in a web … That type of system needs regular maintenance and repairs as the cables fail.”
The university received capital funding from the government in the fall for building maintenance and rehabilitation, under the stipulation that they spend it by the end of March. This project is only one of almost 40 projects facilities is working to complete by the end of the month.
It wasn’t until they opened the ground near the entrance to B building that they discovered the crack.
“We dug away the patio, and lo and behold we found a crack in concrete that was at the edge of the theatre box,” Toews explained. “We had the structural people [and] the engineers take a look at it. They right away deemed it wasn’t a structural fault, so safety factor was right away taken out of the question. But it was definitely a water penetration issue – so a big crack.”
The trickle of water that was seen coming into the lower foyer in B building last month was minimal compared to what the crack could have caused.
“The water membrane that was over the crack was holding up quite well, because the crack was quite long. If the water membrane had failed, we would have had water pouring down that wall,” Toews described.
He went on to explain that the unique placement of the theatre, underground and between the foundations of A and B buildings, led to the crack.
“It’s very non-typical of a building design, having a box like that sub-surface [and] between a couple buildings,” Toews said. “Not so much do other buildings experience that.”
When it comes to leaks, UFV is no stranger; it’s hard to forget the sheets of plastic that protected many of the library’s books last year. Toews stressed that the leak in B building is not related to the one in the library.
“The library is a roof technology that is now meeting its end of life, and we’ve just got a roof that needs to be replaced,” he said. “That’s not a crack failure; that’s just a roof that’s worn out.”
The post-tension cabling project will use roughly $200,000 of the $1.1 million UFV is currently investing in general building renovation and improvement. Of that, the leak by B101 will cost roughly $20,000 to repair.
“It was appropriate when we had it open for the post-tension that we tackle that at the same time,” said Toews of the crack and subsequent leak. “It was a good use of money and use of time … kind of coincidental, but also very convenient to tackle it all at the same time.”
