Only The Best

Our fishing trip was in the fall of that year and pretty soon winter time descended on the jobsite. And Reno can become quite cold. Snow and ice were soon part of our normal work day.

And that work day began when we would leave Janesville very early in the morning and make our way, carefully, over the 75 miles of two lane highway into Reno. I say 'we' because my daughter, Alicia, had agreed to work with me as my 'secretary'. We had an old construction trailer pulled onto the site and hooked up to some power; enough for some lights and a miniature heater. My boss didn't want to spend any money on fixing the old wall furnace that was in the trailer, and so while I was out on the jobsite all day, Alicia was stuck in the cold trailer, doing my filing and copying tasks, while never straying far from the heater. We closed all of the other rooms in the trailer in an attempt to keep it above freezing in there.

At this point, the basement walls and slab had been poured. A most difficult task as there was an underground river flowing through the site. There was layer of clay about 20' down and the river ran on top of that clay. They had to drill a dozen de-watering wells around the foundation and keep the pumps going 24/7. Once the walls were poured, the pumps would be shut down and a very large sump pump in the basement would take over. This pump was on a dedicated circuit, one that could never be shut down, as at this stage; the basement would 'pop' up out of the ground if the groundwater was allowed to accumulate under it. Only after the weight of the entire building was resting there would it be safe for an occasional power outage.

Some info on the 'river'. The existence of this water was not known when the plans were drawn and it was only when a D9 Caterpillar broke through during the excavating, that it was discovered. The driver of the 'Cat' got off just in time as it dropped into the river in the desert. It then took two Cats to get it back out!

Back to the drawing boards. Besides adding a huge sump pump and an ingenious landscaping plan that utilized the water to create a myriad of streams across what was once sagebrush and alkali, the new plans required a lengthy delay. This is why we were doing this prelim work in the winter. Ah! But the plans…very lovely and quite expensive. You see; the basement could have been abandoned as its only function was that of the executive parking lot. A nicely heated and undercover parking garage. Snow should never fall on a VP's head. And besides, the rate payers would be paying for the building anyway. Wouldn't they want the very best for the executives that labored in this building?