The owners of the new Star Wash car wash in South Jordan, Utah, had two major requests of its Building Team:
1. Design an economical facility that fits its setting at the base of the Wasatch Range, a 160-mile-long stretch of mountains slicing through central Utah.
2. Make the car wash eco-friendly.
Nichols-Naylor Architects, Salt Lake City, gave the 11,600-sf facility (with an additional 3,400 sf of covered canopies) an organic shape with two distinctive arched roofs and open-web bowstring trusses and steel joists that mimic the mountain’s peaks and valleys—and grab the attention of passing motorists on one of the area’s busiest thoroughfares.
Open-web bowstring trusses and steel joists were also used on the interior roof to match the arched profile of the exterior canopies. “Anytime you have different arched chords or use bowstring trusses, the coordination of the job is more difficult,” says Brad Hardy, operations manager with Steel Encounters, the project’s steel detailer.
Of course, it would have been easier for Hardy’s team had the architects and BHB Consulting Engineers, South Salt Lake, designed and engineered one large arched roof spanning the entire structure, but their design instead incorporated two roof structures coming off the building at different angles and at different elevations—one roof is eight feet higher than the other. The Steel Encounters team wound up designing 9,700 sf of arched chord trusses and joists to match the exact profiles the architect wanted. “It was definitely more of a challenge doing it this way,” says Hardy. “Each joist is different, each has to be specifically designed and engineered. You can’t pull one off a shelf and put up the building.”
Fortunately, these design complications didn’t add to construction or erection costs. The open-web steel trusses, in addition to serving an aesthetic purpose, were actually an economical alternative to more costly steel tube trusses. They also helped contribute to the owner’s request for an eco-friendly facility because they incorporated more than 99% recycled material and were fabricated by Legacy Steel, Salt Lake City, and manufactured by Vulcraft, Brigham City, Utah, two firms located within 100 miles of the job site. Steel erection was performed by C&C Steel Erectors, Springville, Utah.
The recycled steel was just one of several green elements used in the $1.2 million project. Eighty-five percent of the wash water used in the two interior wash bays is recycled, 60 photovoltaic panels supply 15% of the building’s electricity, and the facility’s heating comes from burning waste oil from an oil-change facility on the property.
The Star Wash car wash was recently named a 2010 Design Award Winner by the Steel Joist Institute (http://steeljoist.org), which ranked the project tops in its “Unique Application” category.
Related Stories
| Nov 16, 2010
Architecture Billings Index: inquiries for new projects remain extremely high
The new projects inquiry index was 61.7, down slightly from a nearly three-year high mark of 62.3 in September, according to the Architecture Billings Index (ABI). However, the ABI dropped nearly two points in October; the October ABI score was 48.7, down from a reading of 50.4 the previous month. The ABI reflects the approximate nine to 12 month lag time between architecture billings and construction spending.
| Nov 16, 2010
Brazil Olympics spurring green construction
Brazil's green building industry will expand in the coming years, spurred by construction of low-impact venues being built for the 2016 Olympics. The International Olympic Committee requires arenas built for the 2016 games in Rio de Janeiro meet international standards for low-carbon emissions and energy efficiency. This has boosted local interest in developing real estate with lower environmental impact than existing buildings. The timing couldn’t be better: the Brazilian government is just beginning its long-term infrastructure expansion program.
| Nov 16, 2010
Green building market grows 50% in two years; Green Outlook 2011 report
The U.S. green building market is up 50% from 2008 to 2010—from $42 billion to $55 billion-$71 billion, according to McGraw-Hill Construction's Green Outlook 2011: Green Trends Driving Growth report. Today, a third of all new nonresidential construction is green; in five years, nonresidential green building activity is expected to triple, representing $120 billion to $145 billion in new construction.
| Nov 16, 2010
Calculating office building performance? Yep, there’s an app for that
123 Zero build is a free tool for calculating the performance of a market-ready carbon-neutral office building design. The app estimates the discounted payback for constructing a zero emissions office building in any U.S. location, including the investment needed for photovoltaics to offset annual carbon emissions, payback calculations, estimated first costs for a highly energy efficient building, photovoltaic costs, discount rates, and user-specified fuel escalation rates.
| Nov 16, 2010
CityCenter’s new Harmon Hotel targeted for demolition
MGM Resorts officials want to demolish the unopened 27-story Harmon Hotel—one of the main components of its brand new $8.5 billion CityCenter development in Las Vegas. In 2008, inspectors found structural work on the Harmon didn’t match building plans submitted to the county, with construction issues focused on improperly placed steel reinforcing bar. In January 2009, MGM scrapped the building’s 200 condo units on the upper floors and stopped the tower at 27 stories, focusing on the Harmon having just 400 hotel rooms. With the Lord Norman Foster-designed building mired in litigation, construction has since been halted on the interior, and the blue-glass tower is essentially a 27-story empty shell.
| Nov 16, 2010
Where can your firm beat the recession? Try any of these 10 places
Wondering where condos and rental apartments will be needed? Where companies are looking to rent office space? Where people will need hotel rooms, retail stores, and restaurants? Newsweek compiled a list of the 10 American cities best situated for economic recovery. The cities fall into three basic groups: Texas, the New Silicon Valleys, and the Heartland Honeys. Welcome to the recovery.
| Nov 16, 2010
Landscape architecture challenges Andrés Duany’s Congress for New Urbanism
Andrés Duany, founder of the Congress for the New Urbanism, adopted the ideas, vision, and values of the early 20th Century landscape architects/planners John Nolen and Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., to launch a movement that led to more than 300 new towns, regional plans, and community revitalization project commissions for his firm. However, now that there’s a societal buyer’s remorse about New Urbanism, Duany is coming up against a movement that sees landscape architecture—not architecture—as the design medium more capable of organizing the city and enhancing the urban experience.
| Nov 16, 2010
Just for fun: Words that architects use
If you regularly use such words as juxtaposition, folly, truncated, and articulation, you may be an architect. Architects tend to use words rarely uttered during normal conversations. In fact, 62% of all the words that come out of an architects mouth could be replaced by a simpler and more widely known word, according to this “report.” Review this list of designer words, and once you manage to work them into daily conversation, you’re on your way to becoming a bonafide architect.
| Nov 16, 2010
NFRC approves technical procedures for attachment product ratings
The NFRC Board of Directors has approved technical procedures for the development of U-factor, solar heat gain coefficient (SHGC), and visible transmittance (VT) ratings for co-planar interior and exterior attachment products. The new procedures, approved by unanimous voice vote last week at NFRC’s Fall Membership Meeting in San Francisco, will add co-planar attachments such as blinds and shades to the group’s existing portfolio of windows, doors, skylights, curtain walls, and window film.
