As of yesterday afternoon the roof penetration phase of the construction project is complete. The weather cooperated and after a foggy morning we enjoyed clear skies. The roofers were able to seal up and weatherproof the project. The next phase is completely independent of weather, so we can proceed at a pace dictated by ourselves and our contractors, not the national weeather service.

Today (another sunny day in Seattle, we're enjoying them while they last!) the electricians are on the roof preparing the circuits for the HVAC units which are scheduled to arrive early next week. On Tuesday the crane will arrive to install the steel superstructure to support the units, which will be welded onto the support columns installed this week. As soon as the steel frames are ready the two new HVAC units will be lifted up and placed on the roof. Our primary contractor for the project sent us this photo of the steel structure today:

Constructioncam is offline for this lull in rooftop action. Expect an update to the timelapse next week.

To bring you up to date, here are some photos of the project after our rain ceased and work continued:

A single penetration remained after the rain stopped, a return duct in what we call "datacenter two". This is the room we completed and opened exactly one year ago today. Since that time we have sold cage space to five new clients so only about 500sq' of floor space remaining. The final penetration is coincidentally located above this empty space.

The metal workers had two electrical conduits to work around but did so skillfully and without drama or delay. These guys know what they are doing. You can see above the beginnings of the penetration and the conduits they avoided. In the background of the photo is the cold air supply plenum and a stub duct we have in place.

Above: Two views as the hole is completed, the last one showing the work in context of the datacenter two room.

As I indicated in previous postings about roof penetrations we do our best to mitigate or eliminate any risk to the datacenter and its equipment below during this sort of work. We increase supply fan output to positively pressurize the room. This means that fine particles are forced out and upward. Heavy debris such as metal shavings fall straight down and onto a drop cloth we place under the work area with more coverage than required. Our Facilities Manager is everywhere at once, supervising work, ensuring that everything is just right, even operating the shop-vac to make sure as much debris is caught at the source as possible. He also made sure that each penetration was completed within 30 minutes, from first cut to capped. This meant that temperatures in the datacenter remained stable throughout the process. Thankfully outside temperature and humidity were ideal and made managing the inside temps easy.

The final steps involved inserting the curb, duct and capping it:

The roofers then sealed up all the penetrations and the rest of the day was spent cleaning up and getting all the tools and supplies ready for the crane to come and lift them off the roof this morning.

Above: Removed materials collected and ready to go. You can see the chunk of concrete we installed studs into, then later sawed off the slab at the direction of the building engineer. If you look back at the constructioncam time-lapse this was the work carried out under lights in the pre-dawn weekend darkness.

We're going to enjoy the lull in the project to pick up some other datacenter projects that have been on the back-burner while this HVAC install has been monopolizing our attention. Early next week though we're back to full-throttle with a projected HVAC startup date sometime in mid-November. Stay tuned for updates.

Chuck Goolsbee
VP Tech Ops
digital.forest, Inc