Gettin' There
Sunday September 15, 2013
Our new headquarters is really taking shape. There has been a huge volume of activity recently and the building progress is exciting for all of us here at The Hitch House. The light is clearly at the end of the tunnel.
Motorhome Showroom
Barrie Glass and Mirror has finished the installing all of the showroom windows that make up the curtain wall. A+ Garage Doors are in the process of setting up the tracks for the three overhead doors that will allow us to load and unload the Motorhome Showroom.
Parts' Store & Office Space
The entire second floor has a finished concrete surface and sections of the main concrete floor have been completed. As of Friday, September 13th the treads for two of our 4 stairwells were poured and finished. Almost all of the interior steel framing is in place for both the upper and lower floors. Now the Parts & Accessory Store, part's storage, boardroom, washrooms, offices, storage facilities, etc. are delineated.
Service Bays
The concrete base to support our new flush-floor 55,000 lbs. KAR Lift K250 hoist manufactured by OMER was also poured this week. This is a world class hoist - specifically it is an Electro-hydraulic Pantograph Lift. In English, the really nice thing about this hoist is that when completely lowered the floor is perfectly flat and most importantly - NO POSTS AND NO HOLES! In addition, the contractors have installed all but one of the floor drains in the six new bays. The 42' Service Pit is complete and has been prepared for the installation concrete floor. Less than two weeks from today the concrete floor for the Service Bays will be poured.
Exterior
The exterior wall sheathing (Lafarge Weather Defense Platinum) has been completed and Lido Wall Systems is preparing the exterior walls for Stucco. Midhurst Roofing is completing the final phase of the roof installation. The engineered drawings for the retaining wall are now finished allowing KJ Beamish Construction to complete the final excavation at the rear of the building. Beamish Construction has already started preparing the area for the installation of the retaining wall and new pavement.
Fire Suppression
Vipond Fire Protection has completed the vast majority of the piping for the sprinkler system that runs throughout the building. In addition, our new fire hydrant has been installed; it along with the sprinkler system has yet to be connected to the pump and the forthcoming 165,000 litre water tanks. These tanks will be entirely embedded into the grassy hill at the rear of our property.
Infrastructure
We incorporated a total of 9 overhead doors to expedite the movement of motorhomes in and out of our Motorhome Showroom and the Service Bays. The two overhead doors that service the Parts' Department will allow forklift access to both floors of the Parts' Storage. Right behind the framing crew from Tri-Star Interiors is the team from Wallwin Electric installing electrical boxes, conduit and wiring. The vast majority of the heating and air conditioning ducts are in place. Where the infrastructure behind the walls is complete the insulation is already being installed.
On any given day of the week our new facility is crawling with construction workers from different trades and companies all working feverishly to meet our goal of moving into the new facility by November 26th. Dave McKee (The Hitch House founder and co-owner) along with Don Eagles (Project Manager - Eagles Building & Construction) are driving hard meet our deadlines.
