This Union Station update is about rebar and concrete. Plenty of both. Construction of the bus terminal floor is in full swing.
Multiple flatbed tractor trailers show up each day with loads of rebar. Much of it is 60-foot long #10. At 1.25 inches in diameter and 4.3 pounds per foot, each piece weighs 258 pounds. Now I know why it takes three guys to carry one piece.
After the rebar is unloaded and staged, the crane “flies” it into the specific work spot at a rate of 2.5 tons per flight. The base level of rebar is the typical steel color. Vertical pieces of green rebar are shaped like an upside-down V. Straight, green pieces are tied to the top of the vertical pieces to form a giant three-dimensional grid. The sheets of membrane that are being installed over the mud slab and under the rebar will adhere to the bottom of the new concrete floor making the terminal water proof. Here are a couple of photos.
Starting as early as next week, concrete will be poured in 15 sections of varying lengths and widths. Each of the 15 sections will require 100-140 truck loads of concrete to fill it to its full depth of four feet. That’s about 2,000 trucks of concrete! The floor needs to be four feet thick so it can bear the weight of the buses and the structure above, and so the bus terminal won’t float once the dewatering system is dismantled and the water table resumes its normal level. (I guess if you can float an aircraft carrier, you can float a bus terminal.) Roadways in and around the construction site are being beefed up and dressed, presumably in anticipation of heavy concrete truck traffic.
Construction of the bus terminal walls is expected to start this month. In fact, in the upper left corner of the close-up photo above, you can see vertical rebar rising above the floor level.
Remember, this is only half of the eventual bus terminal. Excavation has not yet started on the Union Station side of Wewatta Street.
If you want to express your opinion of the bridge formerly known at Kinetic Plaza, you should attend the Planning Board meeting tomorrow (August 4) at 3:00pm at the Webb Municipal Office Building, Room 4.F.6. Here is a link to my blog and your comments on the topic.
Please see our Denver Union Station page at JobSiteVistor.com for 12 new photos this week.
