Behind the Scenes: December 2021 Update
A close-up view of the lifting of the belfries onto the bell towers, and a special invitation to see the largest bell (~7000 lbs) being cast ... in France!
The project is on schedule, with the whole structure nearly completely enclosed and dried in. Learn about all of the progress in our latest personal tour at The Immaculata Project site.
Welcome back to the Immaculata Church Project here in St. Marys, Kansas. Today we would like to give you an update on construction progress since October.
In our last video we talked about the thermal slab being completed. This area here had all the orange piping down; that's all poured now. We did talk about starting the scaffolding, as you can see behind me here this is about 50% set up. They’re all the way up to the cupola. This scaffolding will go 8-feet from the ceiling.
As you look up at the ceiling you can see in the last eight weeks we've gotten an enormous amount of sheeting on and it's almost complete. That's pretty much all we're going to cover on the interior in this video. We're going to go outside and focus on the exterior.
So in our last construction update video, when we were talking with Kris Koenig our superintendent, I asked him what is the strategy going forward here into the winter months. Today is a cold day, it's 23° this morning. He mentioned we need to get the building envelope closed in. In that last video a lot of that clerestory area was still open, no sheeting on. The brick was maybe 40%. As you can see that the south transept brick and cast stone is all done. They're now starting on the entrance area.
If you look over here by the Regina Martyrum chapel, they’re almost done with that brick; they have the water table on Saint Joseph’s chapel and within a few weeks we'll have most of that masonry done.
In our last video we also talked about the south lot, getting some of that paved before winter. As you can see over the last few weeks we have this all final graded. We do have the curb machine that they're setting up as we speak and we will start pouring curbs in a few hours. After that we will pave that and we will have a south (parking) lot before winter.
So we're going to roll around to the backside and show you some things back there. On our way we can see the cast stone staged here, we do have all of the cast stone for the project on site to get the job completed. We talked about the sheeting on the south side and how that all was finished these last few weeks. If you notice up on the cupola, the cupola is not sheeted yet. That was a little more of a strategic set up for the scaffolding. The scaffolding is now all set up and over the next two weeks we will ship that and that will get waterproofed and get ready for stucco. All right, coming around to the back side here, we talked about the cupola. Below that you can actually see, that area is sheeted, the waterproofing is on, and it's ready to accept the steel lath that the stucco will be applied to.
So our windows have shown up on the project, they have some installed back here. Let's get a little closer look. Let's go out here to get a better look at this northside. On our last video we were in the (crane lift) basket with Drew Deters and we were talking about that last critical path item of drying this project in with the roof. As you can see now they did get most of that roof on, they just have a little bit to finish up on the west end, which should be done here in the next few days.
So moving west here as you can see, they're wrapping up the last of the masonry on this northside. This is our north covered staircase. Once that's complete the entire north façade masonry will be done except for the towers. These guys here you can see are working on that clerestory area getting that waterproofing joint material in and it won't be long, a couple days and they'll have that all waterproofed and that will be ready for stucco.
All right here on the west side as you can see the both belfries are assembled and sitting here waiting to be installed. These belfries are 17-feet wide, 20'10" tall and 7,600 pounds apiece. They will be lifted atop the towers, when they're resting on the towers they’ll be 97-feet from the plaza here to the top. We do have the crane coming today to set up and tomorrow these will both be installed.
Now that we have our belfries in place, those will provide a home for our bells for this project. Some of those bells were cast over the last few months and on December 16th the largest bell, our bell entitled The Maria Immaculata, is going to be cast in Annecy, France. We will provide a livestream for that on our website.
We would like to thank you for all your prayers and support of this project. At the end of the videos we normally ask you to pray for the project -- your prayers have worked! Over the last eight weeks, we have had great weather, we're on schedule, so please continue to pray for the project and if you want any more information you can visit our website aNewImmaculata.org
