11TH-H0UR SOLUTION SOLVES CABLE-PROTECTION HEADACHE

摘要

Stantec Architecture was stumped, having gone down several dead ends trying to design a system to manage the 48 ft of flexible conduit in the crawl space under FLEXLAB's rotational green-systems test building in Berkeley, Calif. The team worried about the conduit slack, which allows the turntable to rotate without ripping out the electrical service, snaking around on the concrete slab and getting tangled up or damaged. Without a solution, construction had begun on the $15.7-million FLEXLAB, which stands for "Facility for Low-Energy Experiments in Buildings." Finally, Geoff Adams, Stantec's project architect, approached mechanical engineer Tony Zavanelli, a Stantec principal. Zavanelli-who engineers building mechanical systems, not widgets-saved the day. He devised a trolley-in-a-tray system that, like a lawn hose as it retracts into a reel, manages the flexible conduit. "The cable never slides. It is always going across a rolling surface, so there is no external wear," says Zavanelli.