It looked like the world’s largest piggy bank but it wasn’t. On November 11, a semi carrying an 18,000-gallon propane tank arrived at the Cook County North Shore Hospital and Care Center and it was lowered into the ground by two cranes that had to work in perfect coordination, said Boldt Project Superintendent Mike Knudsen.
Knudsen and Ruth Drake, Boldt’s appointed superintendent for the $24.5 million Cook County North Shore Hospital and Care Center rehabilitation and build-out said work was progressing as scheduled.
To date the first phase has centered on remodeling the care center—new, larger home-style rooms are being built to replace smaller rooms and a new front entry are highlighting the work.
Drake and Knudsen gave an update to the Cook County North Shore Hospital/Care Center board of directors at their November 19 meeting.
It took less than 15 minutes for the cranes to lift and set the 45,000- pound tank onto the support saddle, said Knudsen.
When asked how long a filled propane tank of that size would last, Hospital/Care Center Head of Maintenance Rory Smith said, “A long time, maybe a couple of months, but maybe not as long as you would have thought. This is a big building and there is a lot to heat. It also depends on how cold it gets. We’ll have to wait to find out.”
Meanwhile Boldt crews, working with a crew from Edwin E. Thoreson Inc., have backfilled the north and south side of the care center additions, set the wooden trusses for the care center addition, and insulated the north and south side of the care center foundations. Electric crews have also set and stubbed in below-ground electrical conduits, and electrical conduits have been put in place for the mechanical room.
While that was happening outside, inside the mechanical room the concrete pads for three new boilers were poured and the boilers were set in place. One of the old boilers has been removed, and the other two will be taken away when the new heating system is ready to be fired up, said Smith.
Drake said she was meeting with a local flooring company later that day to see if they could do the tile flooring in the care center. Because of the way the work is being done, Drake said it wouldn’t take a big crew to finish it because the job could be parceled out week by week as various mechanical, plumbing, electrical, and carpentry contractors finished an area and moved to the next area. “They don’t know if they have a big enough crew, but I told them they didn’t need a big crew. We aren’t asking to have all of the bathrooms tiled in one week. Maybe two a week can be tiled as the other workers finish and move on,” she said.
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