Reconstruction of the building

[valentina batanova]

Hi, All
Our administration plan to make the reconstruction of the area (rooms and corridors) adjacent to the microprobe room this summer.
They will change the floor tiles, break several walls and cut through the wall a window and a door. A lot of vibration and dust are expected in the work area. These works will be held behind the wall of the microprobe room.
I plan to switch off completely the microprobe and make isolation for the door of the microprobe room to protect from the dust. Do you think that this will be enough, or we have to make something special to protect  against the vibration?
Thank you in advance
Valentina

[Probeman]

Hi Valentina,
The most important thing you can do is to create either a positive pressure in the instrument room, or a negative pressure in the room being worked on. The latter air being vented externally to the building.

In our research space renovations we've always specified a large portable fan and flexible ducting, in order to create a negative pressure in any room that has ongoing demolition/construction.

This is really important!

Did I ever tell you the story where in the old Earth Sciences building at UC Berkeley (subsequently renamed McCone Hall), where they were hammer drilling in the side of the building to add re-bar and cement support walls for earthquake safety, and the vibrations actually dislodged several electronics boards from the back plane of the old Cameca SX51, causing a number of electrical shorts in the boards?  It was not inexpensive to repair!

The really sad part of the story is that they eventually had to repair all the holes they drilled (with epoxy) because a returning engineering faculty finally noticed the work, and subsequently calculated that the structural effect in an actual earthquake, would be to "pancake" the building!

Needless to say, we hired another engineering firm and we ended up going with a "rigid tower and supporting arms" structure inside the old building, for earthquake resistance.

Just a bit disruptive for sensitive measurements as one might imagine!