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PETROLEUM DIRECTORY: Fabric-covered buildings in Alaska They've found a multitude of applications across the state Alan Bailey Petroleum Directory Contributing Writer
It's interesting to see how enterprising people can sometimes turn a random chain of events into industrial innovation. Take, for example, Alaska Cover-All LLC's flourishing business, selling fabric-covered buildings.
Paul Nelson, a principal of Alaska Cover-All, told Petroleum News that in 1998 a friend of his, Jim Protzman, was looking for a building to cover a riding arena. Protzman checked out the fabric structures manufactured by Cover-All Building Systems in Saskatchewan, Canada.
"He thought they were so good that he told me he was going to be a dealer," Nelson said.
Protzman invited Nelson to join him as a partner. Three years later Nelson and his wife An Fink-Nelson bought the whole company and formed Alaska Cover-All LLC. The Colville River project Meanwhile, in 1999, an employee of Houston Contractors spotted the covered riding arena. At that time Houston Contractors were engaged in ARCO's award-winning horizontal drilling project for the Alpine pipeline under the Colville River. Would a larger version of this fabric building work as a shelter for the drillers?
"Houston Contracting put the building up and they drilled inside it for two and a half months," Nelson said.
Lots of people visited the site to see the innovative drilling project. These visitors also saw the 23,000 square foot, 57-foot high Cover-All fabric building that housed the drilling rig, two mud pumps and 27 flatbed loads of pipe. Soon orders for buildings started rolling in — within three years Cover-All buildings had sprung up across Alaska, from Craig to Prudhoe Bay.
Applications include a hovercraft terminal for the Northstar oilfield, several aircraft hangars and a Department of Transportation equipment shop at Atigun Pass. The original Colville River building has become the so-called "Titan Building" at the Alpine production facility.
Polyethylene fabric Cover-All Building Systems manufactures the covers for its buildings by thermally welding together strips of polyethylene fabric. The fabric possesses great strength and can withstand virtually all weather extremes.
"It comes in 12 foot rolls that are 12,000 feet long," Nelson said. "... this particular material is high-density polyethylene and it's good to -60 or -70 without cold cracking."
Depending on the level of ultraviolet protection or fire resistance added to the fabric, Cover-All Building Systems issues a prorated guarantee for the cover for 10 or 15 years. And if the cover of a building sustains damage or deteriorates, patching or replacing the fabric doesn't present any great problem.
"To re-fabric the building only ends up being 20 to 25 percent of the original cost of the building," said Henry Brown, project manager of Alaska Cover-All.
Galvanized steel framework
The fabric cover for a building fits over a framework that Cover-All Building Systems welds together from galvanized steel tubing. The tubing forms immensely strong, latticework truss-arches that span the width of the building. There are three basic styles of building — a Quonset-style circular arch, a moderately sloped pitched roof and a steeper pitched roof. The style used in a particular situation depends on the nature of the application.
"Basically we ask (the customer) what they're going to do with the building ... how big it's going to be, what they're going to use it for," Fink-Nelson said.
The arches come in a series of set widths, ranging from less than 30 feet for a circular style arch to 160 feet for a pitched roof. Custom built spans can be larger.
"We can do design-build stuff as big as 270 feet wide," Nelson said.
Alaska Cover-All has set up a joint venture with Meini Huser, president of Alaska Dreams Inc., to do on-site assembly of building projects. USKH in Anchorage does any necessary foundation engineering.
Custom designs Although Alaska Cover-All supplies buildings that conform to standard sizes and shapes, the company also works with Alaska Dreams to develop custom designs for specific applications.
"For custom applications we pretty much do that (design work) right here," Nelson said.
For example, Alaska Cover-All and Alaska Dreams recently completed the protective housing for the new Anadarko raised-platform exploration rig. The design of the housing involves fabric panels and steel supports, with a cylindrical tower to go over the derrick.
In a custom project like the Anadarko rig, Alaska Cover-All and Alaska Dreams work with the customer to prepare a design. Cover-All Building Systems then manufactures the custom parts and ships them to Alaska for assembly.
Withstanding wind and snow Every Cover-All building comes with a specified rating for withstanding weather conditions.
"We expand or contract the truss spacing to satisfy the wind and snow loads," Nelson said.
And the recent hurricane-force winds in the Matanuska-Susitna valley proved the strength of the buildings.
"Henry (Brown) and I went and checked around in Anchorage and up in the Valley ... after that big windstorm and basically there were no problems with any of our buildings," Nelson said.
In fact, a state-owned Cover-All building near the end of the Whittier Tunnel has withstood an even more ferocious gale.
"It made it through that 129 mile-an-hour windstorm two years ago that took down a house and two barns about a mile away," Nelson said.
Quick and easy to erect Construction speed provides one of the biggest benefits of using a Cover-All building — the buildings don't require the extensive foundations of more conventional structures, while assembly of the fabric covered framework is quick and relatively cheap.
"From the date you place the order with us to the date you put the building up, you're probably talking four to six weeks," Nelson said.
For example, the huge 110-foot wide, 210-foot long and 110-foot tall Cover-All building that houses the ship dry dock facility in Seward has a wind rating of 135 mile-per-hour but only required a two-week assembly time.
In addition people can disassemble, move and reassemble a building many times without causing damage or deterioration — quite a few companies use Cover-All buildings as mobile shelters or storage units for work sites.
And the buildings pack down for shipping in small aircraft or other forms of rural transportation.
"These buildings break down into very small dimensional pieces," Nelson said. "The smaller arch style building, something in the 2,000 square foot range, is going to weigh 4,000 pounds ... basically the weight of a car."
Add to that the ability to withstand earthquakes and the potential for siting a building on uneven ground and you have a product that seems ideally suited for Alaska.
Successful business "In the four years ... we've done about 142 projects and over 400,000 square feet that we've erected now," Nelson said.
In fact, Alaska Cover-All achieved the 2002 U.S. Dealer of the Year award from Cover-All Building Systems — there are about 70 dealers across the United States.
However, Nelson thinks that high-quality engineering provides the main key to the success of the products. With the backing of Cover-All Building Systems' expert engineers and with stated wind and snow load ratings, Cover-All buildings have established a reputation for ruggedness and reliability — customers know exactly what they're getting. And that's important.
Editor's note: Alan Bailey owns Badger Productions in Anchorage, Alaska.
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