King Toronto updates from the past few days. Progress continues to be made on the cladding and glazing - but with the occasional instance of fits and starts. Concrete forming is not an entirely precise process, with wooden forms placed manually in position for each pour on site, in varying weather conditions. Fabrication of the cladding sections is done on a much more precise basis, it's metal work in (relatively speaking) good stable conditions inside a workshop. The two processes are guided by different sets of drawings, both of which are derived from the architectural drawings and specifications. The shop drawings for the cladding components are prepared independent of the forming process - they are not based on the actual as built conditions, with the preparation of the workshop drawings being outsourced to a off-site sub-contractor. Consequently, variations between the formed concrete and the manufactured cladding sections can, and do occur - in particular with the alignment of the respective mounting brackets.
On Tuesday afternoon, the cladding crew was obviously struggling a bit with one section, which just did not seem to want to anchor with the concrete. The next morning, Wednesday, the problematic section was no longer in place. Further along, the cladding crew could be seen at ground level, making adjustments to a cladding section - presumably the one they had been having problems with late the day before. By Wednesday afternoon, the problems appeared to be resolved, the section had been installed, along with several more. Photos below.
Overall - Level 4 cladding and glazing appears to have been completed in much of the internal courtyard (crane and hoist areas excepted), much of the King Street facade, except for the east most section, and much (but not all) of the west facade, above the drive ramp. The major area remaining for the Level 4 cladding is the south (Wellington Street side) facade. Installation of the Level 3 cladding along this section actually went quite quickly with few problems, until reaching the south-east corner sections (from the walk-through to Wellington Street area to the sout-east corner itself, so hopefully the Level 4 cladding will proceed smoothly here as well. Pretty much the entire Level 4 south facade is more typical and repetitive, does not have the one-off conditions that the Level 3 facade had above the walk-through area and on to the south-east corner.
Some additional deliveries of the cladding and glazing components continued to arrive over the past week.
Given the above - assuming no major glitches and that all the required Level 4 components are now on site - hopefully the Level 4 cladding will be substantially complete over the next couple of weeks, and the Level 5 cladding will be starting.
1. Crew struggling with the cladding section that would not install easily, followed by a couple of photos of a section being re-worked in the courtyard:
Wednesday afternoon, with new cladding sections installed:
New deliveries - Both tower cranes were working on Wednesday morning - not too common and event over the past months:
End of the week photos are in the next post.
