FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 1:  The morning was quite dreary, midday clear; the evening approaches and the weather has turned cold and rainy. The front door frame assembly has been installed.  It has a double width door opening with sidelights and transom panes.   The pastor's office has a "private" door to the right (south) of the main door; there is a balancing window on the north.

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 2:  The refrigerant piping for the downstairs air conditioning equipment has been stubbed out.  There are four refrigerant circuits, two for each unit.  Each circuit consists of one 1 3/8" outside diameter (OD) suction line and one 5/8" OD liquid line.  The suction lines are  insulated with 3/4" thick tubular closed cell rubber insulation (Trademark:  Rubatex), which is slipped over the tubing as it is assembled.  The joints in the tubing are welded with an alloy of copper and silver (typically 15% silver) with phosphorus included as a fluxing agent one common trade name for the rod is "Sil Phos".  Nitrogen is [supposed to be] passed through the pipe as the joints are welded, to displace the oxygen and prevent oxidation of the inside of the pipe.  The brazing rod melts in the 1200-1500 degree F. range, depending on actual alloy used.  (The term "welding" is a misnomer, since an alloy is used; however, the American Welding Society defines this as a welding operation, since temperatures are above 1000 degrees.) The piping has not been connected to equipment at either end.

Upstairs, duct work has been extended into the choir practice room; there will be two large outlets discharging air horizontally into the practice area.

At the condensing units, disconnect switches have been installed.  The unit in the new niche has been connected; the units on the upper equipment plaza have not yet been connected.  A switch is also in place for the office outdoor unit, which is not yet in place.  Refrigerant piping has not yet been run for the upstairs units.

Near mid afternoon, Charles Ingram was giving his wife a tour of the building.

The entrance on the east end has been poured.  The masons have not been on the site for a couple of days.

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 8:00 AM:  Yesterday the north 1/3 of the front porch floor was poured; this morning the concrete truck is there again.  Inside, (yesterday) the air conditioning men were installing a duct from the downstairs indoor unit into the crossover corridor hallway, and continuing the installation of refrigerant piping.

The corridors  (halls) are fire rated: every duct which penetrates the corridor walls has a fire damper in the wall which will close if the temperature reaches a certain level.  At each of these places, it is necessary to install an access door in the duct work to inspect and reset these dampers.

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 6:  At midmorning the temperature is forty degrees Fahrenheit.  A heavy mist (light rain?) falls.  A Reddy Heater roars in the fellowship hall to provide some relief for electricians working in the kitchen; another is in the choir suite upstairs.  Water, ingress from the incomplete east wall, is puddled in the upstairs equipment room; water drips from the beam in the choir suite.  Air conditioning workers are insulating the duct work downstairs in the east end of the building.

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 7:  Doors have been installed in the openings on the south wing: two double door units between the kindergarten room and what will be a play yard.  The doors do not as yet have any glass in them.  In the same area, refrigeration technicians were installing piping between the condensing unit outside and the upstairs air handling unit at the rear of the building.  Scaffolding was raised higher along the east wall for use of the masons when they return.

In the kitchen, a worker was rubbing a stone against the block wall, to smooth the surface of the wall, which will be painted.  Electricians were in the same area.

Some of the workers were pulled off the job for tasks related to a Troy State University project:  The press box at the baseball field, where five television stations were interviewing athletic signees.  Apparently there was some unfinished business there.

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 8:  At midmorning, with outdoor temperature only 50 degrees, two 115,000 btu Reddy Heaters, one on each end of the central hall had the workers upstairs working in short sleeved shirts.  Workers on the front porch were not so comfortable as they smoothed the fresh concrete.  At that time, there was still about 1/4 of the porch left to be poured.  Electricians were pulling wire for the fire alarm system; one 3/4 inch conduit had thirteen #14 wires being pulled in.  Jim Tustin, from The Tin Shop, was arriving with what appeared to be flashing material.  Drywall finishers were working in the stairwell.

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 9:  Shortly after noon, one man is sweeping the floors of the building.

Observations missed earlier:  The footings have been poured for the columns supporting the canopy over the east drive-thru entrance.  Reinforcing bar extends up several feet from the concrete.

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 12:  In the excavating in the vicinity of the  Oak Street entrance last week, a sewer line was broken.  Workers came in Monday to find a hole full of wastewater.  This was corrected with a few pieces of plastic pipe and some elbows. The line will eventually be disconnected.

Telephone lines have been installed into most of the rooms upstairs, extending into the electrical closet.  There is as yet no sign of either computer wiring or television cable.
Workers are still installing refrigerant lines for the upstairs air conditioning.

This morning, activity appears to be concentrated on the front porch, where workers on scaffolding are preparing to build a roof.

An article in today's Messenger may give a clue as to where the masons are:  It shows a picture of brick layers at the Bush Memorial Baptist Church, a project which has been running in parallel with this project and is also being built by Whaley.

At the corner of Acadamy and Oak Streets, a contractor for the city is completing repairs to a water main which had been leaking as a result of a century of erosion by storm water passing over the main where it passed through a storm sewer.  That excavation has been open for about two months, and Acadamy Street has been closed.  The other contract work around the area continues, with paving in progress in the new parking lots.

Also, perhaps of interest:  Park Memorial United Methodist Church has received quotations and is negotiating for the construction of a new Christian Life Center.  Rumor has it that the bids on that job ran about 30% over initial projections.

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 13:  The masons returned! The brickwork on the east end of the building is up to within six feet of the peak; also gaining in height are the columns at the north entrance.  Air conditioning workers have been working in the front equipment plaza, on the refrigeration lines for the air conditioning equipment.  Flashing is being installed at the top of the brickwork on the north side.

THURSDAY FEBRUARY 14:  By noon, the back (Oak Street) Wall had received its last brick; there will be columns and entryway added.  On the North side, a beam was being poured across the entrance to support the gable, which will be masonry.  Masons were moving to the front wall.

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 17:  All of the outside doors have been installed except the front door at the porch.  Scaffolding is in place for installation of styrofoam plaster base from the window sill level up at the south wing and around to the old building at the crossover corridor.  The styrofoam on the site apparently for this application is 1" thick and is flexible enough to conform to the curvature of the building.  On the front, brickwork is up to the middle of the windows, and around the corner to the kitchen wall.  The front wall of the kitchen will be raised higher than originally planned, to hide the mushroom fan exhausting the range hood.

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 19:  The interior drywall has been sprayed with a coat of tan paint; interior door frames have been painted white; block interior walls have received a coat of white paint. Outside, the air conditioning condensing unit placed in the south niche has been removed, apparently to be replaced by a heat pump unit which has appeared on the lot.  Brick work has risen almost to the top of the front door.  Columns are rising on the east side of the drive-through.  The front wall of the kitchen has been extended up to the height of the exhaust fan on the kitchen roof.  In the fellowship hall, cutouts have appeared in the duct work with collars attached for connection of the register branches.

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 21:  Conversation with the refrigeration technician connecting the air conditioning units reveals that all of the air conditioning units previously in place were wrong! It turns out that all of the units should have been heat pumps, but were instead straight air conditioning units.  This has been corrected.   Fortunately, the indoor units are the same for both heat pumps and straight air conditioning, so the indoor units did not have to be modified.   According to the  technician, his boss was "upset" about the mix-up.   The technician was leak testing the refrigerant piping of the front unit, now completed, using compressed nitrogen.  Since he had only two gauge manifolds, he was only able to work one system at a time. Inside, electricians are pulling wire in conduit from the center downstairs to the east wall.  Conversations with them indicate that the only provision for TV was the installation of boxes and conduit from outlet level to above the suspended ceiling.  There is no dedicated  conduit system for telephone, television, or computer wiring.  Outside, masons are extending brickwork up the front wall, and constructing the entrance on the north side.

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 22:  Construction workers have left for the week.  Inside a lone cable TV technician is reconnecting the incoming signal line for the Sunday Morning Service production site from the overhead line to the underground line.  Upstairs, ceiling support grid has been installed in six rooms; two of these have already received light fixtures.  On the front of the building, brickwork has reached to within six feet of the peak of the building.  The entrance front on the north side has reached about the same height.  The columns for the drive through on the east side are up to the level of the second floor.  The cable technician stated that Charles Ingram was going to mark the TV cable outlets so he could pull coaxial cables into them.  Telephone wires have already been pulled.  No one has told the contractor who will do the computer networking, if it is to be done now.  Installation of these cables to a central point would certainly be much easier at this stage of construction than after the ceiling has been laid in.

Earlier in the day, the superintendent accommodated an air conditioning contractor on another job by unloading a piece of equipment from a delivery truck and placing it on the Juvenile Court Building, across Walnut Street.  It will be used to replace the existing unit on that building.

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 26:  The brickwork on the front wall has reached full height; at noon the scaffolding there  had been loaded on a trailer.  On the north side, the brickwork around the entrance has been completed.  On the Oak Street side, beams extend across the drive through, and workers there are constructing a roof gable structure.  On the south wing, there are three fake windows formed in the stucco at the second floor level.  And in the middle of the center fake window, there is a massive floodlight! The front porch roof has not yet been constructed, and the front door is not finished; there are, however, beginnings of forms for steps along the front wall from the porch south toward the main building.  Apparently, because of the height of the porch, the steps toward Three-notch Street have been eliminated.

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 27:  At 7:30 AM the temperature outside hovered around 32 degrees, coming up.  The auxiliary heat in the fellowship hall heat pump was holding the temperature there at around 55 degrees.  Upstairs, at the choir suite, a Reddy heater made the temperature almost comfortable for those constructing the risers.  The room will receive two 6" risers, leaving the ceiling height from the top riser at 8'3".
The permanent lights in this section are operating, as is the case in several of the upstairs rooms and the downstairs equipment room.  On the Oak street side, the mini-gable outside the drive-thru has been bricked almost to its peak.  In the nursery/kindergarten, an conflict between the ceiling and the duct work above has resulted in the relocation of some light fixtures.  Brickwork for this and the front steps has halted until the temperature moderates.