General Mechanical

The project was to replace a 40-year old wooden cooling tower on the top of a 20-story building in downtown Seattle. The entire project, from shutdown to start-up, was done in a single weekend.

The system was shut down at 6pm on Friday. There was then 12 hours of asbestos abatement before demolition of the existing tower. The abatement work occurred through the night until Saturday morning and then demolition occurred all day Saturday and was completed by Sunday morning. Wooden debris from the existing tower was transported in the freight elevators on custom carts down to the parking garage and loaded into two 30-yard trucks.

At 2am on Sunday morning a 550-ton crane began mobilizing. The crane made five picks and then was demobilized to open the street to traffic for a 9am church service. Permitting, street use, and traffic control required a lot of coordination. The new prefabricated steel support frame and handrail were picked first followed by the four sections of the two new cooling towers. The piping was prefabricated with grooved fittings and staged on the roof. The entire system was installed, operational, and started up on Monday morning.