If steel constructions form the skeleton of Oodi, building engineering represents its nerves and blood vessels. Now, capacities are being built to create electricity, heat, water and fresh air in the library. Technical systems originate underground, from the library basement.
The installation of building engineering is not carried out conventionally, as the possible movement of the frame of the building and, for example, the needs of the movie theatre and recording studio are taken into account during the installation process. In the basement, Are Talotekniikka Ltd employees, project manager Tony Lindholm (on the left), plumber Simo Järvelä (in the middle) and plumbing project manager Jani Lindvall, examine the installation map.
According to Lindholm and Lindvall, the possibility for the frame to move is rarely taken into consideration during installation of building engineering. In the Oodi building site, this possibility is linked to the indoors bridge that supports the building and requires flexibility for the structures. The solution is to install compensators in the pipelines to cushion the movement. Besides, several reference and dispatch points will be installed. These all suppress the noise and ventilation noise carried on in the pipelines.
“In this project, acoustics play a major part. The starting point is that the operations of the library are based on a soft soundscape. The noise reduction systems of the movie theatre and studio premises form a special challenge. Tailor-made sound attenuators will be installed in the movie theatre. These plans will be handed over to an acoustician, who will calculate the optimal octave bands and final decibels,” Tony Lindholm says.
Pipelines in clean spaces
One might think that the basement where the works are going on is cold, dark and dusty, but the basement of Oodi offers a surprise. Temporary heating is in operation, the lights are on and the premises are clean.
“This is a building site with purity class P1, which means that no dust particles are allowed in the air. Ventilators will arrive in a couple of weeks. They can’t get dirty already in the installation phase,” Tony Lindholm explains.
Several mechanical rooms will be built in the basement. The largest of these rooms will be as big as 100 square metres. In the mechanical room portrayed in the picture, the installation of the main pipeline is nearly finished. There are bushing sleeves in the walls for the future installation of pipelines. Eventually, the whole space will be filled with different types of machines and equipment.
The mechanical room will be fitted with the technology required by district heating and district cooling, and ventilation systems for heating and cooling, including heat recovery. The large pipeline in the middle of the picture is a ventilation duct.
The masonry work of the dividing walls and the main pipeline installations continue in different parts of the basement. The main pipelines form a network in the ceiling, as there can be as many as a dozen pipelines side by side. The liquid running in the pipeline is either water or glycol, depending on the purpose of usage – heating, cooling, drinking water or melting. The welder works on the branch of the pipeline which forms the coupling point to the radiators.
Plumber Simo Järvelä fitted grease trap hangers in the ceiling of a space that is below the kitchen of the restaurant. Institutional kitchens must be fitted with acid-proof sewers, as plastic pipes won’t cope with hot frying fats, among other things.
The skeleton grows above the ground
The supervisor in charge at YIT, Tero Seppänen, says that the construction of the frame of Oodi has progressed quickly. Over 65% of the steel structures have been installed. The frame should be nearly finished by the end of June.
“The frame requires a lot of work. We must think carefully about how to proceed. If there is some work that obstructs the works on the frame, we must reconsider the procedures and find alternative installation locations to keep up with the schedule. The skeleton will start to look like a building in the summer, when we start to install the roof and the wooden elements and glass structures in the facade.”
The welding works on the steel arches that support the building have been finished, and the inspection of the welds has also been carried out. Steel trusses have already been installed in between the arches as part of the massive truss structure of the frame. The cast-in-situ concrete plate that will be built in the upper part of the shaft in the picture will be stressed to support the steel arches sideways.
In the north end of the building, the installation of hollow core floor elements, i.e. the floors and ceilings between the different stories, has already started. In April, the work continued by the lobby, next to the movie theatre.
Trusses that support the balcony have been installed in the north end of the building. Trusses haven’t yet been installed in the middle of the building, as they would obstruct the cranes and the installation of the steel structures of the roof.
Aaro trained father during parental leave
Site engineer Topias Rintala has just returned to work from a “training period” of five months, i.e. parental leave. During the parental leave his one-year-old son Aaro taught him stress management, organisation and multitasking, among other things.
“With a small child you sometimes end up in tighter situations than at the workplace, especially now that the son has started to walk,” the father says.
Rintala moved to the library construction crew from a building site of a senior centre in Leppävaara. His tasks include supervising the timetable and costs. The training provided by Aaro became very useful, as it requires a swift reaction to jump into a moving train.