Concrete poured for foundation

What used to be just a hole in the ground is now filled with concrete and rebar. In the past few days, we’ve poured concrete to fill in around the footers and to start the walls.

That’s 240 linear feet of concrete for the walls, and 300 more for the footers. It makes for a sound foundation.

Now we’re back-filling, adding new fill to create a sound base on which to erect the building, and shipping the old material elsewhere to be re-used. We would have loved to use the fill on-site, but the soil just wasn’t solid enough to handle 60-odd tons of steel, and tons more concrete, conduit, furniture, equipment and people that will sit atop it every day.

The structural steel from Schenectady Steel is due July 27, and we’ll begin piecing it all together by July 28. And before that all happens, we’ll have to install the stormwater retention tanks and do the preparatory work for water and sewer service.

Footers driven to support building

Even if you missed us at the Sidney Hometown Parade last week, you couldn’t possibly miss the latest developments at the site of our new building. We’ve cleared the site of the asphalt from the back portion of the parking lot and began driving the steel footings.

The material we excavated is being recycled at another site, and we’re backfilling with material better able to handle the weight of the building we’re putting up.

We’re trying to keep this building as green as possible, and that doesn’t just mean energy-efficient. We’re using recycled materials wherever we can – from the structural steel to the office paper.

Steel is an easy material to recycle. It doesn’t lose any of its best qualities – strength and durability – when it’s recycled. And in fact, recycling old steel, to some degree, has been part of the industry for 150 years. The difference today is the amount of recycled content that’s used, and the effort a contractor makes to use it.

We’re pushing to do both. Our architect tells us we’re going to use more than 120,000 pounds of steel, so the difference between 10 percent recycled and 25 percent recycled is more than 18,000 pounds of metal kept out of a landfill.

At its foundation, steel is what makes this building stand, so what’s the point of energy-efficient lights or windows if the very heart of the building isn’t green, too?

Next up for the builders is laying the foundation, which we expect to happen in early July. If all goes well, by this time next year, we’ll have a new home.