Job of the Month -
St. Vincent's Hall Built in 1906 Receives a New Life with FIRM-FILL® High Strength

The doors of St. Vincent's Hall, a 95-year old tribute to Collegiate Gothic Architecture standing at the center of Niagara University, a comprehensive liberal arts college located in Lewiston, New York, temporarily closed to students on December 19, 2000. The hall was closed to permit extensive and complicated renovations to modernize the interior floors and walls dating back to 1906.

One of the first projects tackled by the General Contractor, Scrufari Construction, was to find a way to level the existing flooring that consisted of a wood floor on sleepers over a very rough structural 3-inch concrete slab. Scrufari Construction hired Patterson-Stevens, Inc. of Tonawanda, New York, a concrete specialist and newly Licensed Applicator of Hacker Floor Underlayments to help find a solution. Cast-in-place concrete was one option, but the thickness of the slab required would have added more weight to the floor. Another option was to install a new sleeper system, but the downside was the substantial installation expense and the lack of fire resistance. The winning solution was the installation of 32,000 square feet of FIRM-FILL® High Strength gypsum concrete floor underlayment. FIRM-FILL® High Strength was pumped over the existing floors on three stories of the building, leveling the uneven structural floor and providing a smooth, durable new surface for finished floor goods.

GBL Construction Company of Harmony, Pennsylvania, also a Licensed Applicator of Hacker Floor Underlayments, was onsite to assist Patterson-Stevens with the challenging project. The original floor had a 3-inch crown with a 2-inch slope lengthwise, and an extremely dirty surface finished with a garden rake and stamped footprints. The first step was to clean the floor, not an easy challenge. The next day was spent drilling and setting pegs in the floor. The 3/8-inch wood dowels, spray painted orange to avoid them inadvertently getting stepped on, were placed at specific elevations on ten-foot centers. The crew then started installing the FIRM-FILL® High Strength at the high point in the floor and continued pumping every ten feet in all directions, to minimize the variations in depth to create a smooth floor surface.

With below freezing temperatures outside, another challenge was to get the interior heated to the 50° necessary for FIRM-FILL® High Strength to dry properly, in time for other trades that were scheduled five days later to move in and begin their work. Scrufari Construction arranged for space heating indoors and the FIRM-FILL® High Strength was ready on schedule, in fact two days early.

St. Vincent's Hall, or "Vinnie's" as it was commonly referred to around campus, originally housed dormitory space, the gymnasium and the nation's second largest indoor swimming pool. The interior space later evolved primarily into classroom and office space. With the new, smooth, sound insulating floors FIRM-FILL® High Strength brought to this construction effort, the student's of Niagara University will enjoy a modernized, substantially quieter academic atmosphere.

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