The School!
Paulette Elementary
Week 11
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Often I find myself
wondering what to write about in a week. It isn't that there isn't
anything going on, it is simply there is too much going on. I really
don't know what people want to hear about or what may be historic.
However week 11 does not lend itself to this problem. This may be the very first time I arrived on the site and had no doubt. The video to the left depicts employees of JDC Masonry building the very first wall of our new school. Years from now you can tell your grandkids you saw the first blocks of this school installed! Even as I filmed, big machines were unloading blocks by the hundreds. |
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 At
the site today the thing that caught my eye most was that we now have
walls! I remember a few months back the rumor got around that we were
building a metal building for a school. I hope as people drive down
Maynardville Highway and see these huge block walls (Figure 3) that
will be all we hear of that rumor. It probably won't be but we can hope.It is my hope that if this website does little else it can cast away rumors as they happen. I also hope that officials and citizens use it to see how the tax dollars are being used. I received a call the other day and was informed that Knox County is watching this project. How is that? We have other counties watching us for an example. That is a change isn't it? Things like this give me hope that this school will be the catylist to start Union County in a direction of prosperity and growth.  So what was going on besides the walls? First
the heavy machinery was at work leveling the north end of the site
(Figure 1). What it appears to me is that we are level with the road at
the building area, level at the north end and even in the back. In the
middle we have a mound of dirt. I once was like other people and
wondered where we would get the dirt to fill in the valley. Now I
wonder if we may end up having to haul dirt off.I met up with Mr. Beeler at the site and was directed to things that had been completed that I would not have noticed. I was shown where the HVAC system would be going, how the metal was laid out in the piers and then my favorite... Alright it is week eleven now, and many of you have formed opinions about me and my writing. If your opinion of me is that I am a twelve year old boy in a forty-five year old body you are spot on. I love watching the heavy equipment work. I would play with Tonka Toys if the neighbors wouldn't talk about me. My wife said I only had a child to have someone to play with. She may be right, but I had a girl. Girls want to play with Barbie dolls. One thing you can say  about
Barbie is she is a very modern woman. However, it seems that Barbie
does not want to run a Tonka dozer in the dirt pile in my back yard. At
least the Barbie in my daughter's imagination doesn't.Today what enlivened the twelve year old in me was not a dozer or excavator, but a grease trap! That's right a grease trap! I walked right by the thing and never noticed it. Mr. Beeler took me over and pointed it out. This thing is like a septic tank on steroids (Figure 2). It is a huge concrete reservoir buried underground behind the back wall. It has manhole covers, ladder and the works. Buried several feet underground it would make a superb bomb shelter. Give me a TV, some DVD's and a supply of Moon Pies and RC's and I could ride out the worst of natural disasters in that thing! Ask any man and I promise he has dreamed of having an underground room. Or maybe it is every man who has not grown old internally. So why do we have a grease trap? Yes we will be on sewer, but sewers and grease don't mix.  A
little grease from your house is one thing but grease from two meals a
day for 500 kids can be substantial. The grease trap is put into place
to catch a large amount of waste grease before it makes it to the
sewer. This takes a load off the sewer system and the treatment plant.
Innovative things like this will make this school hundreds of times
more efficient than those built in the county back in the 60's. More
efficient means less cost to operate. As a taxpayer that sounds good to
me.As I left the site I spoke to the man that is over the masonry company. As I stood there talking to him I noticed his workers laying block. I have laid a few block in my life and have nothing but admiration for these folks. One supplies block, another the cement or "mud." On top of the scaffold are the other men laying them down as quick as they come up. In the video you might see the young man that got out of the skid loader. I don't know his name but he was interesting to watch. He began tossing the large block up  above
his head and landing each one on a board. This young man could stand
flat footed and toss blocks and stack them better than I could have on
the ground.I have hit on this point in the past and probably will in the future again. I will have to say I have been impressed with Rouse Construction since day one. And that extends to the companies that Rouse hires. These seem to be top notch companies that don't work quickly, though it seems like it. These seem to be companies that work efficiently. This in my opinion will be a project that the taxpayers will look back on and say., "we got our money's worth." |
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