Whistler, B.C.
October 2022
Role: Lead Designer and Lead Project Manager
I had the pleasure of working with a member from Whistler Ski Club on this unique project. The purpose of the building is to time races on Whistler Mountain. This Containers final resting place would be half way up Whistler mountain. Whistler mountain is part of Whistler Blackcomb ski resort which is the largest ski resort in North America and a place I have spent many weekends taking in the views on my snowboard.
The Build
The Container
The container is a 25ft long container which is quite a unique size container and not something you see everyday. Along with being 25ft long, the Container it is also extra tall and extra wide. This size of container causes some logistical problems as it requires a permit declaring it is an oversized load. I worked with the client on what aspects were most important and they really wanted the ability to look up the mountain at races, hence the windows being so close to the roof. Due to its final location the container would have to get extensive insulation in the form of spray foam. We decided to build a subfloor for the container and spray foam this section, along with the walls and the celling. After spray foaming we lined the container with plywood to be painted at a later stage. The floor got tongue and groove plywood and was sealed with a polyurethane spray giving it a nice black finish (also acting as a waterproof layer). In terms of electrical features the client wanted as many outlets as possible. We achieved this with the use of quad box receptacles in many locations. Other standard features we added were heat and lights, the heat being provided by 3 baseboard heaters and lights in the form of three 48" LED lights. We used a 60A load center located inside the container with a trailer box located on the outside for easy hook up to mains electricity. The clients requested a custom paint job and they opted for a matte black finish which I think perfectly contrasted the white snow of winter.
External Roof & Internal Arches
Due to it's final location, the container needed extensive snow load reinforcement. We would usually weld some 2"x2" HSS tube to the underside of the roof corrugation to act as snow load, but we didn't see this a viable option on this project. So I worked with our Structural Engineer to design a custom external roof. Their was a couple of design parameters to consider when we looked at the scope of this part of the project. The roof first and foremost, needed to be easily installed on site due to cost of manpower and machinery on the Whistler site. We concluded that due to the weight of the external rood we would have to put some internal supports in the container. We did this is the form of two arches on either end of the container. This would transfer forces down through corner castings and to the containers anchor points. We decided to use 4 container casting at the four corners of the rood structure. This meant that we could use twist locks to lock the roof in place once on site. The roof consists of two W sections both 25ft long one taller than the other to give us our desired sloping angle. It has 19 cross members, the cross member were originally suppose to be standard C channel with a cope at either end. I made a decisions that this would take too much manpower and opted to design a formed part that replicated a C channel put had the cope already lasered into the flat pattern before folding. I achieved this by using in context referencing in Solidworks, converting the entities of W section onto the formed part and ensuring to also offset the entity to give desired weld gap before cut extruding. In terms of spacing the cross members I designed them at 16" centers to suit the plywood which would cover the roof. Our structural engineer was worried about racking when lifting the structure so we made the design such that it had 3 x-braces, one at either end and one in the middle. I was impressed with our workshop at how fast this roof went together. The client had requested an engineers stamp on these structures which was provided by our structural engineer.
External Stairs
Due to the complexity of the earthworks on site we had to change the stairs midway through fabricating. The stairs at first was designed to run perpendicular to container but due to some tough bedrock we had to change it to run parallel alongside the container. The stairs was a complete in house deign and fab like the roof structure. We decide to mount the stairs to the container using a ledge and securing with bolts on either side. I decided we should also add a knee brace to the two upright legs for some added support. We ran some FEA analysis on the stairs to check different design parameters were being met. Once complete the stairs was sent for galvanizing and transported separately to whistler.
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