Design Team Meeting

Our weekly design team meeting was held Tuesday morning. This will continue to happen throughout the 2 year span of our project. The meeting is held at our architect’s office. The team usually consists of our Principal Designer Jess Sowards, Richard from his office, Rick Mouw our General Contractor, Dan & Andrew - Mechanical Plumbing & Electrical engineers from Thompson & Youngross, Bob Selinsky our Structural Engineer and myself as the church’s representative. Among the others that are invited to participate as their specialties are required are our Interior Designer Debra Hutchenson, our Landscape designer Dave Bodker (with Jeff Nurge’s help), Joe Pike our civil engineer or William Andrews our energy consultant. And more!

This Tuesday’s topics ranged from confirmation of utilities easements to electrical service needs, from the number of toilets (potty parity – ask me) to kitchen design to roof structure and exterior lighting. We will probably be required to build a “four hour wall” between the church and the parish hall to meet fire codes. We are working with the city building division and the fire department on this.

Also since the total building will be capable of holding many hundreds of our parish family, those we know and those we haven’t met yet, we will be hiring a Threshold Inspector. Florida Code requires that a duly licensed professional serve as an inspector on larger projects termed "Threshold Buildings" whose definition is, in accordance with Florida Statutes, any building which is greater than 3 stories or… blablabla ... and an occupant content of 500 people or greater (wow, that’s us!). This person works just for us and is a special (certified) inspector to perform structural inspections to confirm that our building is safe, to code and what we are paying for.

Plans are being developed to accommodate essential church activities while we are building. A trailer may be in the office staff’s future… The challenge of storing all the stuff we are now tripping over to someplace where we can still access it should be interesting. Phone, computer and internet services need to be as near seamless during the transition as we can make it. There will be a couple of presentations at the next vestry meeting; one will be by Jim Farnes on our computer and new phone systems.

The other presentation will be by William Andrews our energy consultant, to explain some of the ways our building can be sustainable, green and occupant and environmentally friendly. Along these lines we’ll also be talking to the folks at EcoDecor, specialists on green interiors. As someone who has driven a hybrid car for the last 8 years this stuff is a particular interest of mine.

Please feel free to stop me and ask questions. I’m more than happy to fill you in on how we are going to… Make Room at the Inn.

Ric Filer
Ric@StJoesWeb.org
561-248-1355