Portsmouth, NH. – Northeast Rehabilitation Hospital Network  is currently adding another Hospital to their Salem and  Nashua, NH. locations as well as outpatient services in Windham, Plaistow and Pelham. The New Hospital will be located on the Pease Development Authority campus across from the backside of the Lonza building. Currently Super Tom Hanley of North Branch Construction is laying out the job for sitework contractor DBU. Northeast Rehab was started by a Army Neurosurgeon (Howard Gardner) in 1984 who saw the benefits that rehabilitation offered Army Soldiers. The site is fairly open and dry, and loam should be coming up in the next week or two. This new facility will be a 2 (two) story, steel and masonry construction building.  Stay tuned!

Portsmouth Regional Hospital – Portsmouth, NH. Located at 333 Borthwick Ave.. The Hospital has been upgrading and expanding for 2 years now with different contractors and different scopes ranging from an entirely new entrance to specialized treatment fit ups.

DeStefano Associates Inc. (Portsmouth) has taken on the job of retrofitting an existing procedure room to house a brand new state-of-the-art Vascular X-ray system that is replacing a similar machine.Tim Breau, the construction supervisor on this project, has many out of the ordinary tasks to complete in order to be able to install the Toshiba’s Infinix VF-i/SP that will give the hospital the ability to service a wider array of customers going forward – you can read more about this amazing machine at www.medical.toshiba.com- back to the project though and what materials and practices will have to be performed to complete this project. While visiting the jobsite as part of the normal day marketing of my company, Matrix Concrete out of Farmington, NH www.matrixconcrete.com was hard at work turning the ordinary room into a platform for the Infinix VF-i/SP machine. Typical slab on grade construction was saw cut and removed, as well as 3’ of the sub grade material. Jon Jenkins and Don Fuller, the owners of Matrix, were hard at work coring and installing Zap Screwlok Bar Splice mechanical rebar splices. After the existing slab was removed they had to core a 5” hole around every single concrete encased bar and remove the material within the core so that these couplers could be installed. To install, one end of the coupler is slid onto the existing rebar and set screws are tightened until the head of the screw shears off – developing nearly 150 ft lbs of torque. Using this system to tie the new rebar “cage” to old supporting rebar, increases the strength of the connection to 125% of the strength of the bar itself. After all of the prep work has been done and the electrical and plumbing has been put in place, it is time to pour the 3’ thick slab of concrete that will support the new Infinix VF-i/SP. All of this work is being done due to the fact that there can be virtually no vibration when the machine is in use. Bar Splice has been around for over 20 years and is responsible for the design of the original concept of mechanical bar splices. A second generation family owned company headed by Frank Casella is located in Dayton, OH – not far from where they originally started over 20 years ago. Their products are used nation wide, from the Portsmouth Regional Hospital to the new Freedom Tower being constructed in the same real estate that once housed New York’s Twin Towers. For more information visit them online at www.barsplice.com.

- Joe Elliott -