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Our Construction Site
August 2006
The
real construction has now finally begun. At least there are large holes in the
ground and it appears like we are under way with building the new church. This
portion of the construction by the contractor is extremely important because
this is the beginnings of the base for the entire church. The below grade work
is where everything must be done correctly in order to have a firm foundation
for the new building with everything being square and level. If things are done
wrong here then the whole building will have problems and pieces or rooms will
just not fit together like they were designed.
We have all waited and watched as first the old building began being torn down. I know that over the months now I have heard many comments on “why is this all taking so long” and other questions like that. All buildings under construction need to follow the same tedious steps in order to build a good, strong structure. Any short cuts taken can and most likely will have disastrous results so everyone must practice patience.
Site preparation of this type takes on many new challenges. The big hole in the ground. All the concrete pilings are now cured and ready for the weight load that will be placed upon them. The contractor then removes all the extra soil to lower the foundation which will make room for what will be the large multi-purpose room in the basement. All of Abu Dhabi sits very low with regard to the level of the Gulf waters so when digging out the soils began the contractor dug into the ground water below. A pumping system had to be installed to remove all that water from the new basement area so that the waterproofed footers and floor and side walls could be constructed.
Right
outside the two old exit
double doors you can see wooden form
work. These are the very first beginnings of what
eventually will become the left-hand stair tower as you look
at the artist rendering in the heading of this document. The
contractor will be building this portion first so that fairly soon we can use
that as our entrance into the building and it will go to both
floors. Shortly after that portion is completed and ready
for use some more of the existing building will be removed
as construction progresses. Some of the pilings still need to be reworked but
that is all what I referred to earlier about all the preliminary work that has
to be done to make a good, firm foundation. Sometimes it is hard to visualize
just what you are seeing. The extra lengths of steel will eventually be a part
of the next pour of concrete and become part of the walls.
Several
modular buildings or porta-cabins have been placed on the small plot of land
next to the present church on the side street. These temporary buildings will
serve us for several different uses. The porta-cabin shown contains two large
rooms each with its own bathroom, Among the planned uses are one room will be
used for our caretaker. One room will be a classroom and other areas yet to be
decided upon. Construction of the new building required a large portion of the
old building to be demolished which took away a lot of our rooms and storage. We
are trying our best to get back a little bit of this lost space by using these
temporary buildings but we are still going to be short of space and patience by
all is appreciated.