Voting Records Santa Barbara

Type: Governmental, Warehouse, storage

Building method: Steel building on post tensioned slab with wood framed mezzanine

Location: Santa Barbara, CA

The voting records storage building in Santa Barbara, CA. is on the campus of the County of Santa Barbara’s facilities maintenance department. The challenge of this project is that the County wanted to make use of about two acres of flat land in the middle of their maintenance campus but the problem with the site is that it is an old trash landfill with about 30’ to 40’ of decomposing trash between the surface and solid ground below. Nevertheless the County wanted to figure out some way to use this site since it is so convenient to their maintenance operations. Since the problem with the site was that it is a landfill and, by definition, the soil is unstable what kind of building would survive that environment. The solution was a Pre-Engineered Metal Building because it has two attributes that accommodate a site with soft soil… 1) A steel building is very light weight and; 2) A metal building is flexible. So, The final solution was to basically “float” the building on the sea of trash by placing the steel building on a 12” thick post tensioned concrete foundation. In order to divert the methane gas being generated by the decomposing trash the building was placed on a specially designed impervious membrane with a system of perforated pipes and fans to vent the methane out from under the building and out into the atmosphere. So.. since this is a storage building if the foundation moves around a little the building will be okay and won’t crack as would a masonry or plaster building.