THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, June 12, 1996 TAG: 9606120017
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Virginia Marine Science Museum: Expansion Countdown: 3 days to opening
SOURCE: BY TOM HOLDEN, staff writer
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: 126 lines
No other building is quite like it in Hampton Roads.
Its water treatment plant transforms the murky waters of Owls Creek into the perfectly balanced habitat for ocean-born wildlife. Its IMAX 3-D movie theater has a water-fed cooling system just for the projector, and the building itself is made from almost every kind of material available: wood timbers, pre-stressed concrete, brushed aluminum, copper sheet, thermal glass and forged steel.
More than half the building hangs over Owls Creek and stands on pilings that are deep enough to withstand the most brutish nor'easter or, cross your fingers here, a pulse-pounding hurricane.
Days before the grand opening, work at the 120,000-square-foot Virginia Marine Science Museum proceeds on schedule with contractors predicting the finishing touches - painting, carpeting, installing exhibits and lighting - on most most exhibits will be done by Saturday.
In a region chock-full of oh-so ordinary buildings of uninspired design, the $35 million museum stands out among the pack as a fascinating structure that will be both classroom and laboratory to the community.
But it also is a thing of pride for the hundreds of men and women who built it and who likely will never again have the chance to erect something so unusual.
``I've worked on probably hundreds of buildings and you try to do a good job on each one, but this one will stick in the back of my mind as something different,'' said Howard Joyner, project superintendent for W.M. Jordan Co., the prime contractor.
``Chances are, I won't get to do another one like this again.''
From the tradesman's perspective, the everyday work varies little among job sites. The same codes that apply to a shopping center often apply to a movie house. But rarely do workers get the chance to install the range of pumps, or build storage tanks needed to house a 300,000-gallon aquarium or a river otter habitat.
``A lot of people think that the size of a building means a lot, which it does not,'' said Jim Driver, project manager for Bay Mechanical, the job's plumbing contractor.
``We're helping build the NFL stadium in Charlotte. It's the biggest job we've done but it happens to be one of the easiest. It's just a lot of pipes and plumbing.
``In this project, they have the ability to take water from Owls Creek, which basically has contaminates, send it to the pump house, clean it and store it in one of four underground, 15,000-gallon tanks,'' Driver said.
``Then they can bring the water up to the desired temperature for any of the exhibits and pump it there. The seal pool building has to have chillers for the water. You can pull water from any of the underground tanks and send it to the turtle tank, the Norfolk Canyon, any of them.''
All of that water moves through a maze of plumbing that fills up page upon page of building blueprints.
``It's a unique structure, and a highly technical project,'' explained Ron Rodriguez, president of Bay Mechanical. ``The most interesting part to me is the life support systems. Each one, the seal tank, otters, the Norfolk canyon tanks, is a little different. We build a lot of hospitals, but it's very seldom that we get anything as complicated as this.''
The entire project to triple the size of the 10-year-old museum has been one great learning process for C. Mac Rawls, the museum's director who remembers the days when the most complicated part of the building was the electrical panel.
``We're using a water filtration process called ozonination, which introduces ozone gas into the holding tanks,'' Rawls said. ``Ozone gas has an extra molecule of oxygen attached to it and is toxic to live organisms. We use it to purify the water, cleanse it if you will, of organisms that might be harmful to the tanks.''
Ozone, an unstable, pale-blue gas, has been used as an oxidizing, deodorizing and bleaching agent in the purification of water for decades. But until recently, it has not been commonly used in aquariums.
The process takes about eight hours to complete the treatment of 60,000 gallons of water, he said. The advantage of the gas process is that it eliminates the potential of contaminating the water with chemical residues left over from chlorine. Once introduced, the gas itself dissipates quickly as it moves through the water.
``I've been to about every major aquarium in North America and Europe and I can say that Virginia Beach is getting something quite special,'' said David LaBonne, of the National Aquarium in Baltimore.
``It's something they're going to be proud of.''
The Virginia Beach aquarium uses ozone in a unique way that is more environmentally effective, LaBonne said.
``In Virginia Beach, it's the first major application in the United States of this type of ozone treatment. It's coupled with a technology called protein skimming, which is used to remove animal waste products.''
Aquarium designers use protein skimmers because of the large volumes of water that need to be treated, he said. Consider the humble fish tank found in many homes. Anyone who has owned one knows that at a certain point the water becomes saturated with fish waste, leaving the owner little choice but to change the water, he said.
``That's not possible in very large tanks, so the water must be treated. To do this, major aquariums use protein skimmers to remove waste before it biodegrades.''
They take the suspended and dissolved waste in the water and remove them so they won't be trapped in the filters, he said.
While the Baltimore aquarium will remain the larger of the two, the Beach will have a larger shark tank and sharks have become the most popular exhibit in Baltimore.
The Virginia Beach water turnover rate will be about once every two hours for the entire tank, LaBonne said.
Doug E. Mund, the project architect and senior associate for E. Verner Johnson & Associates, a Boston design firm, said the project had several other unique design features.
``The IMAX building was pretty difficult to site there because of its size. That big, curved wall that forms the back of the building is almost two feet thick and 80 feet tall.''
Building the wall was among the more complex tasks facing workers who were asked to not only apply the architect's vision but build the thing to withstand hurricane winds.
The building itself should be able to withstand a 100 mph sustained wind, Mund said. The aluminum canopies, which would normally act like an airplane wing, are deigned to be immobile in a hurricane.
``The workers have been genuinely interested in how they do their work,'' Mund said. ``I think it's because it's a special place. On other jobs, a lot of workers like to get it done and go home at 3:30.
``Here, they've come up to me with ideas on how to put their interpretations on a job. The majority of them will walk away form this feeling they were instrumental in making it happen. It's a nice feeling for everyone.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo by Christopher Reddick
The newly expanded museum is on General Booth Boulevard in Virginia
Beach.
KEYWORDS: VIRGINIA MARINE SCIENCE MUSEUM OZONE EXPANSION by CNB