Chandeleir Rigging

The sanctuary of our church is certainly one of the key features of our space.  In the center of the very large room is the chandelier.

The original room was lit only by the chandelier... this turns out to be woefully inadequate for our current needs... but that is for another post.  What I wanted to highlight here is the way the chandelier was and is now supported above the ceiling.  Many people may be surprised to know the chandelier can be lowered down to the pews.

This is of course to be able to change light bulbs out.  But how is this done?  Well it was attached with a cable and winch.

      

While the odds of something breaking during the 4 or so hours a week the sancturay is full enough to have people underneath the chandeleir is low this is still a potential safety concern.  We had known for a while we wanted to change out how it is secured and the hardware that raises and lowers it.  Our first step was to weigh it to make sure whatever hardware we used was strong enough.  We used the strain gauge load cell my dad got...

So we found it weighed 430 pounds... it also needs to be able to be lowered 9 feet to the pews... During the process of figuring out the components to replace I looked at the current cable holding it.  It is a 1/4" diameter galvanized steel 6x7 with a fiber core... pretty old type.  New cable of the same type has a breaking strength of 1840lbs which means it is plenty strong right?  Well it is over 4 times the weight it is carrying so that seems like a lot.  Well in reality what we want is a factor of saftey of 8-9 (breaking point 8-9 times the load http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/factors-safety-fos-d_1624.html).  So 9 times 500 = 4500 pounds should be the breaking point of any single component.  So already the cable alone is well below the recommended factor of safety. But there was a secondary safety cable that was added...

See that hook hanging off the side well if the main cable breaks it would take the load right?  Well yes but notice how loose it is?  The chandeleir would drop 6" then this cable would take the load but the shock load on it would be much greater than the weight of the chandeleir alone... So it really wasn't a good setup.  Not to mention the cable attachment to the eye hook doesn't use a thimble and they saddled a dead horse... and the winch is pretty worn... and the cable has deteriorated...

So enough of scaring you about the chandelier... it has worked for almost a century.  We replaced all this cable and improper rigging with new components.

What we now have is a static and dynamic setup.  Normally the chandelier hangs from web slings that go over the main upper beam and we have all the proper anchor shackles and chain in place so we can sinch it up with a load binder to get it nice and tight.  When lowering and raising it (dynamic setup) we have a chain hoist attached to custom metal straps that connect to the beam and the post above it that goes into the cupola

So how strong is it now?  Well the weakest component for the static setup is a the 3/8" chain that has a Working Load Limit (WLL) of 2650lbs.  A WLL usually means a factor of safety of 5 so the chain would break at 13,250lbs or a factor of safety of 30!  I think we are safe;)  For the dynamic setup the chain hoist is rated for 1 ton which is plenty.  Doing some mechanics of materials on the custom straps and being conservative we are still over the 9 factors of safety.

Now I haven't addressed what is below the eye hook.  We would eventually like to add some re-reinforcement to the chandeleir itself but that would involve a fairly complete re-build of the entire chandeler to keep it from looking too ugly... that will be for another day...

Upstairs air handler update

As you may have noticed our church is heated by steam.  Not very common in any new buildings but 100 years ago steam was everywhere from buildings, trains, ships, etc...  Also the original boiler was very likely powered by the main energy source of that time ... coal.  With coal common and cheap the idea of efficiency wasn't really all that important... a lot has changed since then.

A few years before we got the building a brand new boiler was put in the 'boiler room' but the pipes and air handlers are all still there (and the original boiler was there until we removed it http://cityregion.blogspot.com/2008/11/building-work-party.html).  The main air handler, the one that heats up the sanctuary from 45degrees to 68 in just 2 hours is located in the attic... That's right the sanctuary is heated from above... why?? well see the above paragraph, who cares about the fact that heat rises... who cares that this is weird and inefficient coal is cheap...

So what was wrong with the air handler... well lets see...

First this beast of a motor is what was spinning the big fan

Back in 1925 electric motors weren't all that common.  This monstrosity probably weighed 300lbs.  Where was this spark throwing beast?  It was at the top of the ladder that is climbed to access the attic.  It was here:

See that little gray motor?  Well it is sitting on the very beefy support structure that held that old motor.  It took 2-3 people to lift the old motor but the new one could be held in one hand;)

So that took care of a couple issues namely the potential fire hazard from the original motor and the uncomfortability of climbing a ladder that had a ~300lb weight above you... but there was still this big support structure that we have to climb around when we get up there.  The next step was to move the motor somewhere and get rid of the 3 foot diameter pulley that was dangerously exposed for anyone working up there while the fan is spinning.  So to keep the same RPM on the fan while putting the motor out of the way and using a smaller pulley we changed things around to use a gearbox and modern pulley.

Quite a bit of design and planning went into this.  We did this change over during the summer of 2011 since this is not something to mess around with during the winter heating season.

This was just so much of a nicer setup all compact and neat.  I designed a special mounting plate and cut it on the CNC at work

After some time we got it in place

With the old support out of the way and a hand rail added it is now much safer and easier to work and access the air handler and attic.

Due to vibrations from the motor we also moved the motor a bit so it wasn't rigidly attached to the air handler.  Not as tight and clean but we did add some red tape to the shaft which I think is pretty neat.

One thing I haven't mentioned is the bearings.  Well the old bearings were quite something

That huge shaft sticking out of the new pulley (with the spiralling red tape) sat in those grooves and had to have oil added fairly often to avoid friction getting the better of them.  We replaced the oil dripping paperweight with a modern pillow block with ball bearings.  Now there is still an original bearing on the inside of air handler which we hope do swap out next summer...

In the mean time we still have the auto-oiler my dad rigged up so we don't need to worry about it seizing up. If that were to happen boy would it get cold in the sanctuary...

Thanks to Tony Fassbind and Paul Marcella for work to make this happen

Church Stage Update

Well how time flies, 6 years ago we were blessed with this beautiful building so our church could finally have a stable meeting place.  Now after many church auctions, baptisms, weddings, the finish of our building campaign and hundreds of events we truly as a church feel at home.  In that time we have en-devoured to be good stewards of the building by making it a historical landmark, fixing much of the roof, improving the building systems and making minor modification to better suit our congregation.  In all this documenting the work hasn't really been much of a priority.  I for one completely forgot about this blog... but we have done so much I wanted to put up a few posts to highlight the efforts of the congregation and present more opportunities for future work.

First up is our improved stage

Initial work began in 2009 after Steve Keyser our 'church architect' came up with a concept to make the stage bigger http://cityregion.blogspot.com/2008/03/stage-upgrade.html...

The prior building owners had such a puny stage and we needed more room... not to mention our own baptistry;) (why use a portable baptistery when our church is no longer 'gipsy').  So after a few designs

We came up with a design that best utilized the space at hand...

This obviously is missing the stairs of the initial design... they were deemed 'Phase 2'.  We began the construction which involved some demo of the old stage 

and building out of the frame of the new stage. 

During construction we found various building features weren't really even, straight, or level... such things I am finding to be true of this old building.  Things always take longer than expected but the new stage not only gives us more room for our singers but it also has a built in baptistery, a place for our audio connectors to hide and a few electrical outlets.

Many people were involved in this improvement: Tony Fassbind, Paul Marcella, Felipe Bouroncle, Scott Lewis, Jay Kelly, and others who I am afraid I have forgotten in the 4 years since.  It is a beautiful addition that blends in so well few people remember it not being original.