During the next couple of weeks, with very short notice of the exact date and time, we expect natural gas service to Daniels and Mathews wings to be shut off for up to half a day. If you use natural gas piped into the labs in either Daniels or Mathews, please tell John Moore (jwmoore@chem.wisc.edu) as soon as possible. If a half-day outage will cause serious problems we will need to confer in more detail as soon as possible. (Thanks to those who have already responded to the “everyone” email on this topic.)
Work on demolishing the old brick house attached to The Crossing (next to the grassy knoll) will begin this week. Stay out of this area because there will be heavy equipment and lots of dust.
Within the next week or so we expect that a webcam will be installed so that we can view construction of the new tower in real time. Once the camera is in place images will start to appear on the department website.
This week construction is beginning on the new, permanent masonry wall that will separate our building from the demolition zone. Because abatement of asbestos on the second floor (the old library) has been slower than expected, the first construction on the wall will be in the basement. Construction of the wall requires that building materials come in on the first floor of Daniels (where the University Avenue atrium used to be), go to the freight elevator, and then move along the basement corridor past small classrooms and B371 to an organic lab, B341, and other areas at the north end of the basement. Thus, there will be significant construction traffic in the corridors on both the first and basement floors of Daniels. Please remind students on all floors to watch for construction traffic and be aware of their surroundings.
Reminder: There is absolutely no parking in the loading dock area at any time. On Saturday, Oct. 13, a fire truck was unable to get into the driveway between the loading dock and Charter Street. This means the fire truck could not access the water supply at the north end of Shain tower. This was just a test, so there was no fire and no danger; however, had there been a fire precious minutes would have been lost getting fire fighters on the scene.
Reminder: Sometime this week we expect that a rest-room trailer will be installed at the south end of Daniels, accessible through both Daniels exits to Johnson Street. Once the trailer is in operation, signs will be posted so that students know where it is.
Reminder: Within the next two weeks we expect a day without heat in all floors of Daniels. The plan is to do this when the weather report says we will have a warm day. This means that the building will not cool excessively, but also requires that we get very short notice of the outage-probably a day’s notice. The outage will affect heat and hot water, but not ventilation or other facilities. We will send an email to everyone as soon as we know exactly when heat will be interrupted.
This was written at 4 pm Friday. Email updates will be provided as needed.
John Moore and Bob McMahon