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Photo: Fermilab |
Rainy-day rehab
From the day it was completed in the early days of Fermilab, the design of the Meson Lab roof has been an aesthetic success and a structural nightmare. It leaks. Always has.
The water-welcoming weakness lies in the signature of the design, the corrugated steel arches: the ridges run perpendicular to the flow of water from a rainfall. "They do not encourage water to move from the roof," says Fermilab's Elaine McCluskey, project engineer for the upcoming roof repairs. The roof has many steel-to-steel connection points, which provide inlet opportunities for water. Without a water-tight coating, the roof has been leaking since it was built.
Repairs began in early October to make the roof water-tight. The renovation will include power-washing, filling in cavities with a mastic-type material and applying two coats of a spray-on rubber coating. The coating material, used in many industrial roofing applications, will dry as a sheet. "The material's manufacturer said the Meson Lab roof was one of its most unique uses," McCluskey says.
The trademark Fermilab colors, bright blue and orange, will also be restored, honoring the original vision of founding director Robert Wilson and designer Angela Gonzales. The duo attended to virtually every detail of the site's appearance. At the Meson Lab, they called for the use of corrugated steel culverts, laid side by side, to create giant scallops, with an orange inner surface and a blue outer surface to give added texture. McCluskey says, "The architectural legacy of Dr. Wilson is something we try to preserve as we remodel buildings and look to future facilities."
The renovated Meson Lab will house R&D projects for the proposed International Linear Collider. The west side of the building will belong to the development of detector components; the east side, to the testing of superconducting radiofrequency cavities for particle acceleration. Repairs to the roof are expected to be completed in two months–if the weather cooperates.
D.A. Venton
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