Week 123 (The QR)

While progress continues all around the site, one topic that’s been getting a huge amount of attention lately has been the wiring plan and the audio eQuipment Room (which we call the QR).  Here is an overview (literally) of the QR:

Here’s what it looks like down on earth:

The ladder you see in the right rear corner is a cable ladder.  Our chief engineer Ian is laying down some tape we’ll use to make a scale so that we can figure out precisely where a small equipment shelf will be located.  Elsewhere you can see the outlines of where our vertical cable ladders will go, where the support brackets for our horizontal ladders will go, and where we expect to place our three 44U Middle Atlantic racks.  Down on the floor you can also see the conduit ends from which all of the digital cabling will emerge (AES, MADI, Aviom headphone mixes, CAT6, 10G fiber, video fiber, 3G-SDI, etc.).

Speaking of digital cable, here’s our main wiring guy, Thom, with the first handful of what will ultimately be 3 miles of CAT6:

He’s happy to start this phase of the project!

The first feed is underway:

And through:

After a day’s work the spools are down considerably:

And the panels are showing some new colors:

But new spools are positioned to be pulled:

That will be digested soon as well…

And now for something completely different: progress in pulling the electrical wires that will feed the variac panels:

Meanwhile, over in the Annex, plates are going into the floor in preparation for framing the walls.  The framing crew has covered up and protected our beautiful concrete finish.  We’ll see it again when the risk of construction damage has passed.

Here you can see the beginning of the double-wall to acoustically isolate the Annex Control Room from the garage:

Blocking is installed into the rafters in preparation for framing the walls in the Annex Lounge:

The ceiling above the Annex Control Room also gets some blocking.  Note the symmetry about the central axis:

But as you can see in this detail, it’s embedded with acoustic isolation:

Here’s a little visual joke:

Now, to the outside, to survey the latest progress of the equipment corrals.  Here’s the rebar and vapor barrier in the small one:

And the large one:

And here’s an overview from the North East corner putting it all into perspective:

Enjoy the weekend!