"It's one of the most critical pieces on the site of the Deer Creek Station, the pedestal for the steam turbine and generator. Now, it's all enclosed, to keep it safe from the elements. But we got to take an inside look."
(Michael Loose): "It's really complex, all the different stuff, so you can't have a ton of people in here, everybody would get in each other's way. (steps aside to let guy through)"
It's a tight space, inside what will soon be filled with concrete.
(Colin Zwaschka): "They're working on constructing a concrete pedestal that'll support the steam turbine and also the steam turbine generator."
Colin Zwaschka works for a contractor for Basin Electric... and Michael Loose works for Boldt Construction. They say work on the steam turbine and generator pedestal is complex.
(Michael Loose): "A typical, they call this a tabletop, is on the top here, that's what they call a tabletop ... It's all up in the air, for one thing, and then all the different elevations, you gotta try holding the forms in mid-air, to hold concrete."
(Colin Zwaschka): "For the turbine and generator, there's a lot of weight there, as well as a lot of operating stresses from the rotation of everything."
Piles beneath the pedestal go down 65 feet into the ground to support it. Rebar is placed together closely for support. And when a concrete pour is done, it's done carefully.
(Colin Zwaschka): "It's a lot more tedious than just a big open slab. A lot less area to work, but still very important."
(Michael Loose): "If you were to pour it too quick, you would blow the forms apart, and you never wanna do that. You would have hours and days probably just trying to get back to where you were. So, it's a matter of just taking your time, pouring it slow, bringing it up, and making sure everything is square and level. That's very important on this pour."
Plates and boxes for anchor bolts are embedded into the concrete. Each piece must be set within millimeters of where it needs to be.
(Colin Zwaschka): "You also need to make sure that as you're placing concrete around it, that the concrete doesn't push it, shift it. You know, once it's set in concrete, it's a pain to get out."
(Michael Loose): "We'll fill that up with concrete, and then we'll strip that off, and then when we're all done, you're just gonna have one huge concrete tabletop."
Aside from the pedestal, lots of big changes are happening on site. Matt Ehrman, a mechanical field engineer on site, shows us what's what.
(Matt Ehrman): "The lower end we see over here is the maintenance warehouse portion of the building, the tall part there that's not completely sided yet is the gas turbine portion of the building, and then over, you can't see it right now, behind the HRSG casing, would be the steam turbine portion of the building."
Ehrman says the next milestones are setting the gas turbine and generator, moving the heat recovery steam generator modules into their casing, and building the steel around the pedestal.
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