The wooden backhoe gets delivered this afternoon on a wooden flat deck truck.

I dont remember to many foundations being built out of wood.

Haven’t seen the plans but is there gonna be a big honkin’ cement shaft in the middle of the structure for an elevator which you can’t use in case of fire? And ya can’t go down the stairs if they aren’t surrounded by cement. So can I presume it will have a quaint metal balcony and ladder fire escape on the side of the building like they had in Brooklyn, New York? Beware of potential terrorists with a Mason jar filled with termites.

Looks like steel piles/shoring. Wood doesn’t work so well underground.

Does on trees.

Steel piles? For a wood building?

Use marine wood piles. Something a bit more innovative for an “innovative” wood building … ;-)

If they are going to build a wood building, they should not be using concrete elevator and stair shaft. They should be using cross laminated timber (CLT)

http://www.wecbc.ca/database/rte/files/CLT-Context%20of%20Wood%20Building%20Systems.pdf

I am not sure how far they will be going down for a foundation. I thought they were going to go down for one parking level.

The steel may also be there for the base of a stationary crane. Some are not anchored to a concrete base. Instead they have weights added to the base and sit on steel or rails for moving cranes.

Then again, they may have just brought that in to see what kind of comments there would be from the peanut galleries. ;-)

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I wonder when they will be putting in a sidewalk hoarding plus overhead protection …… and a few viewports for sidewalk inspectors.

Then again, they do not have that around the RCMP building except on part of 4th. That is what makes it really economical to build in PG …..

Once again I plead people to be positive. How can the same people complain about every single topic.

Perhaps they should move to another city?

I doubt I would knowingly ride in an elevator with a clothesline pully duct taped to a laminated beam.

The word is not complain. Just say to yourself, “people such as I just making observations”. Gee! That sounds better, eh?

I despise the use of the words positive and negative when making an observation.

Those words are relative. What might be positive to one person may very well be negative to another.

“It’s a sunny day”.

“It’s a rainy day”

They are soimple observations of a fact which are neither postive or negative.

“It’s a sunny day, so I won’t be able to go out because I have already got a sunburn.”

Even that is a factual observation and perceived consequence. Is it negative, neutral, or positive?

Who cares!!!!!!

Moving to another town is rather extreme. Please refrain from telling other people to do something to satisfy your point of view of the world!

I’m with you, tburbee! As for most of the other people who are commenting, are you fully informed about the project? If not, your comments are of little value to others.

Well it better be wood, the Hydro building should have been wood also but they said it was not economical for their needs LOL

So…i think I get it;
positive can be negative.
negative can be positive.

For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

E=MC2.

Pie is round and cake is square…lol.

steph99

It seems that some people may not quite understand that there is such a thing as a building code.

The type of construction – very simply called combustible and non-combustible – depends on the size of building and the use of the building.

If one provides sprinklers for a building one can generally double the size of a building using combustible construction. Providing more exits, more internal fire separations, etc. etc. it changes the whole thing as well.

The main thing is, it is not as simple as trading one materila for an other.

THAT is why it states that Wood First means that wood should be considered first … and used if appropriate.

So, is this a positive post …. or a negative post …. or somewhere in between. Enquiring minds want to know.

It looks like they took out some of the remaining cement this week, and then began digging, plus bringing in the beams. It appears that the intent was to show that this building was going ahead.

It was just a coincidence that the construction started a week before the election.

Hopefully they have some bailing buckets available, because if they go much deeper they will hit water.

This building when and if completed will be another white elephant with huge maintenance costs attached.

High priced engineers pontificating about the use of resin in turpentine, or how to use woodchips to make pulp and paper, or better still, how to use hog fuel to heat water to heat the wood innovation building, so that they can continue to work in a warm environment. Perhaps they will discover that we can use beetle killed wood to make low grade lumber for cement forms in China, or perhaps make 2×4’s to sell to the USA for house building.

Perhaps we can use pine lumber for bed frames, the list goes on and on.

Seems there is no end to the possibilities of using wood. It is absolutely unbelievable that the Americans and Europeans (Especially the Scandinavian Countries) overlooked all the possible uses of wood in the past 100 years, and left this field of research open, so that the people of Prince George will be able to supply the world with all these innovations.

Palupo, what year did you decide that your world was perfect and anything that remotely looks like it could be progress was automatically rediculed by you from that point forward? Im guessing about 1962 by your posts.

interceptor. The building of a Wood Innovation Centre, in Prince George that at best will re invent the wheel, is exactly what is wrong with this Province and this City.

If our elected officials are intent on building foolish projects, then they deserve to be treated as fools. They have a responsibility to be accountable to the people that elected them, and this doesn’t happen. As a result they spend hundreds of millions on useless projects for no other reason than to give out contracts, and get re-elected.

We have many projects in the Prince George area that shows how inept we are when it comes to being innovative.

1. Community Energy System that serves no useful purpose, and was built as the price of natural gas was falling.

2. Airport Runway and other money spent at the airport. Since being set up as a Airport Authority they have spent in excess of $75 Million dollars, have a huge debt (over $17 Million) and have not brought one iota of business to the community that would not have came under the old system.

3. Initiative’s Prince George. With a budget in excess of $1 Million per year, has very little if anything to show for the millions of dollars that have been spent.

4. Millions of dollars spent of garbage disposal, and all we have is beaten up trucks, more debt, and a perfectly good transfer system on 18th avenue that we cannot use (you guessed it) for garbage.

5. A $38 Million dollar police station that with interest will cost us over $70 Million dollars over 20 years. Why??? We could have renovated the old one for a max of $5 Million, or a least built a new one for $20 Million.

6. The fancy wood innovation building will cost $25 Million be six stories high, built out of wood, and will be $13 Million cheaper than the police station???

7.We presently are in the process of building the Boundry road extension at a cost of $42 Million dollars, when we could have upgraded the Old Cariboo Highway for some $5 Million.

I could go on but you get my drift. The name of the game is to build useless projects, give out generous contracts, and basically take us to the cleaners.

A lot of this money could have gone to reduce taxes, upgrade water, sewer, and roads, keep our parks and recreational facilities above ground, or be spent on reforestation, etc;

Instead we build a wood innovation building for some white coats to walk around humming and hawing, and generally having a good time.

The way I characterize Palopu’s posts when it comes to innovation is that everything that could possibly ever be innovative has already been discovered, it’s patented by someone else and we are now on the levelling off part of the curve.

Now THAT is negative thinking!

Are ya listnin’ tburbee?

Here is positive thinkin’. ….. Palopu’s thinking might look like that close up, but gee, one pulls their point of view a bit further and further away from the stick, and one notices that the flat we encountered is a actually only the top of the blade ansd we have yet to reach the transition from that to the handle ……

And we are part of that transition!!!!!

Now ain’t that positive, eh, tburbee?

Give da boy a hand…… ;-)

There are many ways that we can be innovative without spending millions and millions of dollars.

1. We could as an example spend some time and money on reducing the wait time at the hospital emergency. We could also find ways to have surgeries done more quickly.

2. We could have our City Managers and Administration look seriously at reducing the cost of running the City and have the money that was saved go into infrastructure.

3. We could have a more comprehensive plan for snow removal, and street cleaning, so that the City begins to look and smell better sooner, rather than later.

4. We could (and this is a big one) send a message to the residents of the City that it is time to start to support the local facilities, such as swimming pools, hockey rinks, hockey games, civic center, northern sports center, etc; etc;. If the people of this city (myself included) would support these facilities on a regular basis, then they would be self supporting, and as a result we could get a tax reduction, or at the very least have the money that was saved put into roads.

5. We need to hold the line on increases in salaries and benefits to ALL City employee’s at least until those who earn much less, have a chance to catch up.

There is much more that we could do, however spending millions on various projects is nothing more than a mugs game, played by politicians all over the Country.

It would be nice if Prince George could break the mould, and really do something positive, other than complain about Macleans magazine, or boast about the Little Green University on the Hill.

2 to 5 are all city responsibilities.

So, since this deals with money being spent by the province for provincial purposes, not city purposes, let me try to be innovative about it.

Provincial Policy.

Rather than spending money in a city which has problems figuring out how to run itself sustainably, spend the money in a city which has managed to operate effectively and efficiently. In other words, reward cities for being well run. Do not boost cities which are poorly run.

It is a little trick many of us have learned from our parents as we grew up.

Oh, forgot to ask whether that was a positive or negative post. ;-)

The inventors of CLT are considered to be reinventing the wheel, eh??

And what about Parallam?

“The invention of Parallam PSL was one of those building material breakthroughs that happen maybe once or twice in a generation,” said Carlos Guilherme, Vice President of Engineered Lumber Products for Weyerhaeuser. “Engineers and scientists invented a new product that took a great building material – wood – and made it even better. Parallam PSL’s high-strength and long lengths allow architects and builders to use wood framing in applications that might otherwise have been built with concrete or steel, which are more expensive and require specialized labor. Plus, Parallam PSL can be made from trees that are too small for use as standard lumber, making efficient use of natural resources.”

Ah yes, they took the wooden wheels and put rubber tires on them.

A wheel is a wheel is a wheel…..

wood is wood is wood……

nothing ever changes.

The Wright Brothers’ plane was a plane ….. so is the 767 …. nothing has changed …. all that research is for nothing ….. well, according to Palopu it is … ;-)