Wow, I'd like to see that setup. Its massive.
Ignore if you don’t care about generators or water tanks!
We’re not going to make our goal of getting all of the new 5000 gallon water tanks in by Halloween because our new power engineer and his team decided we needed to install a couple of walls on the far side of the “trench” to house 4 side by side 1000 gallon propane tanks and move the natural gas/propane generators off the top of the parking deck.
This is not a job for the faint hearted because it’s taking some major rewiring and timing so we’re not left vulnerable and without back-up power if “S” were to “HTF” during this process.
Firstly, let me apologize for not knowing what I was talking about.
I apparently “heard wrong” (something I seem to be doing more often this year?!) about the tank layout. We are only installing a total of fifty vertical 5000 gallon water tanks. I have NO idea where I got 75 but I was assured that that many would NOT fit in our trench!
Maybe originally they were looking at smaller tanks, anyway, I definitely got it wrong. Sorry!
I looked at the original and also the current plans today and on paper, I can see it “looked like” we could install walls to isolate the new propane tanks and their ventilation system and still fit all fifty 5000 gallon tanks to their right in 25 rows of two with about 3 foot spacing. Fortunately I’m not the one doing the measuring, calculating, and ordering because I thought “sure it’s all going to fit!
“ It doesn’t! I thought I remembered that the trench dimensions were 20 feet wide by 300 feet across parallel to the shelter wall, but it’s actually 25 feet by about 340 feet. I guess I tend to round a lot to make things easier to remember.
The problem is that each propane tank is almost 16 feet long. Just looking at it, it looks like you could easily fit a generator between the shelter wall and each 16 foot tank, but I didn’t realize the required spacing or that the newest generator has almost a 10 x 5 foot footprint!
By turning the 16 foot long propane tanks to 45 degrees, they only take up about 11 feet of the 25 foot trench width, but in turning them, instead of occupying their 4 foot diameters plus 3 feet on each side (3+4+3+4+3+4+3+4+3 = 31 feet) or about 31 feet they NOW occupy twice the left-right space at about 59 feet !!
(3+11+3+11+3+11+3+11+3 = 59 feet)
Aggh, so that meant ALL the water tanks they already carefully spaced and filled many (!) had to be moved over so that their spacing is now about 2 feet between rows instead of 3 feet!
Those tanks are heavy as hell even without water and now had to be emptied in order to move!
So before looking to add the propane tanks, the spacing was:
26 x 3 ft spacing + 25 x 9 ft diameter tanks = 303 feet with about 37 feet to spare !
To add the propane tanks (and generators)
Water tanks had to be shifted to the right (parallel to the shelter wall and access doors)
26 x 2 ft spacing + 25 x 9 ft diameter tanks = 277 feet
plus we need 59 feet for the propane tanks at 45 degrees = 336 feet
so we now have only 4 feet to spare ! (And the wall will eat up some of that.)
So when everything is in place, the isolated and super (redundantly) ventilated propane tank room will be about 58 by 15 feet and contain the four 1000 gallon propane tanks at 45 degrees. Then there will be another wall with an access hatch parallel to the shelter, creating another super (redundantly) ventilated room about 58 by 9 feet and contain the 4 natural gas/propane generators that by default will use natural gas unless that is no longer available, then they can be switched to propane. The largest on the left is 150kW, and then the 100 kW, the 60 kW, and the 30 kW generators.
To the right of these rooms, on the other side of a 25 ft wide wall, is the fresh/gray/black water tank room with
two rows of 25 (9 foot diameter) vertical 5000 gallon tanks with approximately 2 foot spacing. The room will end up being about 280 feet by 25 feet.
They started the moving process about a week ago. It was sort of like the stupidity of being told to move that pile of gravel over there…now move it back, but necessarily, so we would never be without water, they left the two far right tanks in place and filled, and then while the next two tanks were emptied, they filled the two farthest left tanks so we didn’t get caught without water. They were going to pump it, but we ended up just wasting it, but they did get to see that our 24 inch drainage pipes would handle a burst tank in short order. After each pair of tanks is moved, it gets refilled (if it's supposed to.) As of this afternoon, they have moved most of the water tanks to the right already. The forms for the concrete walls (with lots of steel inserted) also got removed today, but they have to wait a bit to cut the hatchways to give the concrete some time to cure. I think next week, they’ll lower in all four propane tanks and then move and lower the 150 kW generator and have it completely wired, hooked to natural gas, and have the far left propane tank filled and piped, then test that generator and the transfer switch BEFORE they start moving the rest of the generators. Meanwhile the water tanks that are supposed to be filled will be filled and the other 3 propane tanks will be filled. I’m guessing this is going to drag out until November…I could be wrong, but I seem to be mistaken a lot recently!