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Intech Construction Hires Surface Specialist to Correct Substrates at the Chemours Headquaters Fitout in Wilmington, DE
Intech Construction was awarded the Chemours headquaters fitout project in Wilmington, DE. This building is part of the Hotel Dupont that fronts 10th St. The building was built in three sections back in the early 1900's and takes up the entire block in the heart of Wilmington.
Intech had to fit out two of the building's wings from the third floor up to the top floor on thirteen, approx. 280,000 SF and turn the space into a twenty-first century Class A office building leased by the Chemours Company. During the demolition of the interior, Intech immediately realized the many challenges that faced them. The concrete substrates in the building were an array of different elevations and textures that all needed to be restored to a flat substrate for the flooring finishes and in many areas the substrate had to be brought to a high standard of "level" to accept the numerous glass wall partitions that were to be installed.
Intech looked to Surface Specialist to do the work that was broken into three main objectives.
- To infill deepfills of up to two to three inches on every floor. The deep fills were created when old mud-bed bathroom tile floors were demolished.
- To make large areas on each floor flat and smooth for carpet finishes. After all of the room dividers, interior walls and large mechanicals were removed from the demolition, the vast interior space on every floor looked like the surface of the moon.
- Determine where glass wall partitions were to be installed from the finish plans and pour those areas flat and level to within 1/8" in 10 feet, non-cumulative (within 1/8" plane throughout the length of the glass wall run)! Also, new Bathroom locations had to be surveyed, pinned and poured to create very flat surfaces for the large format bathroom floor tiles to be installed.
Surface Specialist went right to work fitting their objectives into the work schedule set by Intech. "Starting on the thirteenth floor and working down, we loaded the building with bags of underlayment material and used our latest "dust free" mixing devices called the Hippo and the Pelican" said Andy Bailey, Project Manager at Surface Specialist. The Hippo, a large enclosed, motorized mixing container with a Hepa-filtered vacuum attached to it, blends large 4-5 bag mixes and dumps the blended material into the Pelican that runs the material from the mixing station to the work area.
The first couple of months were spent focusing on the deep fills and smoothing out large areas so that interior walls could be built. Once the walls were built Surface Specialist could concentrate on the detailed work of leveling below glass wall lines.
Despite the many hurdles Intech faced on this project, they were very pleased with the outcome of the substrates, and the flooring installers were also grateful for the superior final finish Surface Specialist had installed.
The Dupont building in Wilmington, DE spans an entire block in the heart on the city from 10th to 11th streets and from Market St. to Orange St. Built in three sections starting in 1908, the building houses the exquisite Hotel DuPont that at that time was one of the finest hotels in the country. In 1913 the building expanded by adding two wings along 10th and 11th streets creating a U shaped building and the final side, along Orange St. was added in 1923. This was the headquarters of DuPont until 2015 when Dupont completed their move to the nearby Chestnut Run Plaza and Chemours, a spin off of DuPont would take over the balance of what was not Hotel DuPont.