EXCITEMENT ON THE SITE

 

Photos courtesy Beckie McKinney

I was out shopping. And arrived back to find I had missed a great deal of excitement. 

A worker who was demolishing some blockwork around a fire hose cupboard accidently flicked an unseen cable out of its socket, and the fire alarms blasted into action. Brigid phoned the fire service, and THREE fire trucks turned up, bearing hearty and muscular crews. Naturally, there was no fire, but it turned out to be a very smooth evacuation exercise. The construction crews evacuated via the scaffolding stairs and the internal fire stairs, and the current residents (only the lower four levels are still here) behaved in their usual exemplary fashion. Twenty minutes later, the site and building were assessed as clear, and the activity resumed to normal.

I do wish I had seen those fire trucks, but no one, not a single person, had thought to take a photograph.

As an accident, it was understandable.  It is very dark back there in the riser, and the cable was not at all visible. But, as Gazelle says, the teams will take more thorough steps to trace existing cables and positively identify them prior to demolition. Perhaps a strong torch will be necessary.

But it was not the end of the excitement. In the evening a shareholder reported to Brigid that there was a distinct sound of running water from above.  Brigid listened, agreed, and contacted Gazelle, who came out right away. It turned out to be flapping plastic from the vent of the asbestos enclosure on Level 6 (Apartment 6C); which was making more noise than usual. An extraction fan had been left running for the night, and that, with the Wellington wind, set the plastic flapping. 

The plastic was cut back so that it wouldn’t flap against the window frame, which lessened the noise significantly. No more fears of massive flooding were felt.

More good news.  The Aoraki plumber has been installing tobys downwards in the shaft, so in future it will be easy for us to control the water in the bathrooms, laundries and kitchens, a major plus to avoid one of those massive floods.

As you can see from the collection of photos above (kindly sent by Beckie Aoraki) great progress is being made on the finishing of the top two levels.  As Gazelle said to me, meeting the deadline has been a challenge, but they are certainly getting there. 

More good news for the top two levels as that the north face watertightness has been apparently solved, all due to brilliance from Gazelle and Lance. Where aluminum flashing has been installed in the lower corners of the windows, there is no sign of leaking. And there is hope for the  future. These flashings are being installed throughout the building where windows either meet aggregate panels or concrete columns, and an equally good result is expected. 

Aoraki will be water blasting as part of job to test. Damien observes that it would be great to have a north west rain event to fully test.  As if we need more rain!!