A Brief History

The project entails repairing the building at 335 Maplewood Ave in a manner that meets both preservation and sustainability goals. The building is the new location for Petersen Engineering, a firm that has been located in Portsmouth since 1992, and specializes in sustainable building engineering. We intend for this project to showcase techniques & materials that promote both preservation and sustainability and intend to share all aspects of the project locally and regionally through open houses, presentations, industry tradeshows, case studies and publications. We foresee this project being a valuable educational tool to demonstrate that preservation goals need not be compromised by sustainability goals. We have teamed with Bruss Construction who we know from past collaborations has exceptional experience and expertise on projects with the dual goal of preservation and sustainability.

The project received approval by the Historic District Commission on January 6, 2010 with construction scheduled to begin early February 2010.

The projected peak heat loss reduction is 85%.


Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Layin' down a bed of crushed stone


Double click on this detail to see exactly what we are building here.
Please note that they have laid the perforated pipe in the back "L" part of the basement (I didn’t get any pictures) and are going to install the rest today hopefully. They are right now trying to get all of the stone they are going to need for the main part of the building piled into the center of the basement so that they can return the conveyer, install the remaining perforated pipe, and rake the crushed stone out on top of it. They could not lay all the perforated pipe first because it would get in the way of the wheelborrows needed to get the stone in.



Site Structures first put down a layer of this black, water permeable, geotextile fabric that will keep the crushed stone from getting fouled by the clay below.




They rented a conveyer belt to get the crushed stone into the building. Outside, somebody pushes and shovels crushed stone from the back of a truck or trailer onto the conveyer belt. The conveyer belt then brings the stone into the basement and conveniently drops it in a strategically placed the wheelbarrow. This whole process requires a lot of yelling back and forth to not overload the wheelbarrow.


Once full, whoever is inside would carefully walk the loaded wheelbarrow across the basement planks and dump the stone in a big pile in the center of basement.



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