"Grassy Fields -- What a concept!"

The Trinity Students wasted no time getting to the wide open grassy fields we've been growing since July. Fortunately, our weather has extended the growing season for Bermuda grass way past our expectations, and our fields are continuing to fill in nicely. For the past two days, children were seen playing soccer, football, or just enjoying sitting on the soft cool surface.

We will soon be overseeding with rye to make our fields even hardier and to keep them green through winter (when bermuda goes dormant and brown). Grass is beginning to pop up all over the rest of the campus, as the days get a little cooler and the rains more frequent. Please keep praying for a good climate for the grass on campus!

UPDATE: The fields are quite grassy. No more rain prayers, please!

Trinity Playground Opens

A team of parents and volunteers have been planning the Trinity playground for quite some time, and the first phase of their design opened to eager lower-school students this morning. The playground is behind the lower school, and nestled in the corner of two hills. It currently sports four different play sets and a large cement patio for basketball and other games.

Soon work will begin on the next phase of the playground. I'll be writing more about the playground design soon, but I can tell you that once it is finished, Trinity's playground will be widely recognized as having one of the most unique and welcoming designs of any school playground anywhere.

Opening Day Goes Greeted with Excitement

First, I apologize for the "blog drought". I misplaced my camera yesterday, but thankfully, I found it again!

Our first day on campus was greeted with excitement by parents, teachers and students. An upper school assembly burst into spontaneous applause several times as Mr. Lee assigned lockers, explained that no doors locked automatically, and shared other wonders of the new campus.

A faculty briefing after the first day showed things went remarkably smoothly. There are many items we will be continuing to work on, but it's clear that we've moved to a good home.

ITS OFFICIAL!!!!!
CLASSES START AT NEW CAMPUS ON MONDAY!!!

After concluding a successful inspection with the NC DOT today, we recieved confirmation from the City of Raleigh that we were cleared to have school on campus, effective immediately!

While nearly all furniture has been moved into the buildings, we can still use a lot of help cleaning the rooms and the surounding campus, so please join us tomorrow to help get ready for Monday's classes.

Progress Made on Street Improvements

The first layer of asphalt for Baileywick road went down just as planned yesterday morning. The second layer will go down this morning, and the lanes will be painted this afternoon. We have already scheduled an inspection with the NC DOT for Friday morning.

Surgeon General Determines Helping Trinity Move is Good for Health!

Okay, it was actually the Surgeon Lieutenant, but that's close enough, isn't it? Besides, look how happy all these people are to be helping Trinity move in.

In this one, Tami looks so happy to be cleaning the refrigerator, you'd think we'd gotten another sponsor to Trinity's Golf Tournament (sponsors and foursomes still needed, by the way).

Here, Cathie Henry and her son work out their quadriceps and balance while moving a piece of furniture. Cathie is also coordinating our move-in help, so she's extra cheerful.

Much like how the Karate Kid developed his martial arts skills by doing "Wax on, Wax off", Trinity Varsity Basketball player Grant Fitzgerald is performing the task "Move the Chairs". When Grant looks back on his pro basketball career, I think he'll credit this move as a key point in the development of his skills.

I think this final picture speaks for itself. Yes, students who help out enough in the move might actually learn to fly.

You still have a chance to take advantage of this new health fad. Come help us move this week!

Good site for finding cheap gas

Some enterprising entrepreneur built a site called www.raleighgasprices.com that tracks the cheapest and most expensive gas prices in our area and lets you report on your findings too. For instance, in North Wake County, the Wal-mart gas station, Murphy USA, has gas at $2.56 right now (they also have one of the fastest pumps in the area).

Trinity to Open Next Monday

Our fire inspection finished perfectly this morning and we have now passed final fire inspection on all buildings. Unfortunately, the NC DOT denied our request to open school prior to the final paving of our frontage of Baileywick road and so we will not be able to have school at Baileywick until this work is completed later this week. I talked with the administrator of the inspections department this afternoon, and he confirmed that they are ready to grant us occupancy as soon as the DOT is satisfied.

While I know everyone is eager to get on campus, the extra few days will give us some time to do some more landscaping, address more of the punch list items, and start on the playground (watch for an article on the playground coming soon!). Also, had we opened tomorrow, we would have had our first carpool line at the same time we were laying hot asphalt on Baileywick road.

I'm certain that this project is prayed-for enough that God's best for us is to start on Monday, even if it's not what we were hoping for, and so I hope you can be at peace with this news as well, and remain in prayer as we continue to prepare Trinity's home.

Monday Update: Almost There!

First, I apologize for the thin updates the last few days. Believe me, It's a sign of more activity, not less. For instance, in the last few days:

-- We finished moving furniture into the new buildings and have most of the classrooms ready for use.
-- We've poured all of the sidewalks and are one day from having all the decks finished
-- We have running water in all buildings and all sinks, water fountains, and commodes are working.
-- We've cleared all the debris from around the buildings and landscaped these areas
-- We've done a comprehensive punchlist of the items to be fixes on the campus and have several teams working on these items

There are many more milestones than these met, this is just a small list.

In the area of inspections, here's the score:

Electrical: Final inspections passed for all buildings
Plumbing: Final inspections passed for all buildings
Building: Final inspections passed for two buildings, the others will be passed when decking is completed tomorrow.
Landscaping: Final inspections passed for all buildings, though we have given a written commitment to do a lot of planting when the weather is more hospitable.

Our Fire inspection began today in a way that would make Murphy's Law proud. The system had been working perfectly, but when the inspector set off the first smoke detector, nothing happened! After spending a few minutes to see if it could be solved quickly, the inspector went on to his next call and agreed to come back later that day. Our fire alarm team was able to find the problem in short order after he left, and when he came back, the system performed flawlessly. The inspector was able to pass the Middle school and the Admin building yesterday before the day ended, and is returning this morning at 7am to test the rest of the system. Hopefully we will have passed this inspection by noon.

That leaves one last inspection to pass before we get occupancy. This inspection concerns our right-of-way at the street and the necessary road widening and new lane-painting there. Last Friday, I was told that the NC Department of Transportation was insisting that we cover Baileywick Road in front of the school with another layer of asphalt before we open the school. I knew that we would have to eventually add this layer, but didn't have it as a "must have" item for occupancy. We were able to get our paver to make room in their schedule to start this work tomorrow. I plan to meet with the DOT tomorrow to see if they are willing to work with us, given we are doing the work this week. If they aren't willing to work with us, this item will keep us out of the campus until Monday.

At this moment, the only items I know of that must be resolved for us to start school are the completion of the fire inspection tomorrow morning and the resolution of our right-of-way obligations with the DOT, which will be completed later this week. Please be in prayer for these items.

Also, please pray for our faculty and staff who are having to pull double-duty -- running the school and moving into the new campus -- this week. I'm sure they'd appreciate any encouragement and/or grace you can show them.

Fire Inspection Postponed

Our fire inspector was unable to make it to our site yesterday. Half of the inspectors were in a class this week, and that left them very short-handed. We expect to see them Monday morning, though.

On the positive side, two of our buildings have completed their final building inspection, and the other two were just waiting on a stretch of sidewalk which we poured yesterday afternoon. The Building inspector promised come by monday morning and sign off on these other two.

We also received results on our water tests that said all our water is clean. We now have water to the buildings, and will have our plumbing inspection as soon as we can get our backflow valves tested and certified monday morning.

This weekend we are cleaning the admin and high school buildings, moving furniture into these buildings, completing the building skirting, and landscaping around the buildings. Thanks to all the moms and dads who are volunteering to do this work!

Inspections

Today is a big day on campus. We will be having our fire inspection today -- usually the most difficult inspection in a project. The inspector will be here most of the day and will probably test all 100 smoke detectors as well as many other aspects of our site.

In addition, we will have our final building inspection today and hope to resolve a couple other administrative items that need to be done to get our occupancy permit from the city. Please be in prayer for all this to go well.

Water Almost There

The final water test for our campus is in process and we will receive the results today. We have already run and buried to piping that runs to each building. We are hooking the water lines to the buildings today. If all goes well, we will have running water in all our buildings this afternoon.

Possible Delays

This evening, Dr. Littlejohn sent parents an email explaining that we might take a few more days to get onto the new campus. At the moment, we are on a schedule that makes a monday opening possible, but there are a lot of factors that could take us into next week. For instance:

- If the rain gets too heavy, we could lose a day of decking, sidewalk construction or pipe-laying
- If we dont' pass our fire inspection this week
- If our water sample doesn't pass inspection the first try
- If some overlooked item gets flagged by an inspection too late to correct this week

There are many of these factors (and there have been many others that we have been able to overcome in the last few weeks). Whether school opens at Baileywick on Monday or shortly afterwards, I have a complete peace that we have done our best, and that the work ethic and commitment of every one of our contractors and volunteers is something we can be proud of.

Thanks to everyone for their continued prayers for this project. Several of the inspectors I've talked to were blown away by how quickly things have come together on our campus, and I know that's because we're not limited to our own power or abilities.

Finally, thanks to everyone who shared their appreciation with me at the picnic last week. The planting of Trinity's campus has truly been a worthy adventure, and like Eric Liddell when he is running, I have felt God's pleasure this season.

Middle School/High School Sidewalks Poured

Our sidewalk team worked through the rain today to get cement poured for the sidewalks to the middle school and upper school buildings. The rain won't hurt the cement, in fact the slight drizzle we got on and off today actually helps the cement cure.

Tomorrow, the team hopes to complete our sidewalks with a run to the Administrative building and the completion of the lower-school sidewalks.

Blowing the Pig

This morning, we finally sent water through the on-site large water line. Believe it or not, the technical term for this operation is "Blowing the Pig"! The "pig" is a plastic stopper that is inserted in the line to keep dirt and contaminents out during construction. When the line is activated, the water pressure pushes the pig through the pipe and blows it out of the end. This line feeds the fire hydrant near the elementary building and will eventually supply the permanent buildings. We still have one more small copper line to complete, but these smaller lines don't use the same blocking device, so its safe the say that Trinity has blown its last pig for some time.

"We Need More Power Scotty!"

I'm happy to share that Trinity has passed its final electrical inspections on all buildings, and we now have power to all buildings on the site. When a last minute problem prevented us from being able to be inspected yesterday, our inspector generously agreed to reschedule us for first thing this morning.

The inspectors check over all the wiring panels and pull on all the wires to make sure they're securely fastened. Fortunately, they found everything in order and signed our inspection card. Our friends at Progress Energy were there minutes later to connect the other two buildings to our transformer. With the buildings powered up, we are able to test lights, air conditioners, and locally-powered components of the fire alarm system. We were pleased to find that nearly all these components worked perfectly!

Fire Hydrant Line Run

Mammoth finished running the cast-iron water line that will supply the fire hydrant near our elementary building. This line will also eventually service our permanent buildings. It was difficult to run because of the size of the pipe and the number of buried lines they had to avoid when digging it.

Like the water line we ran down Baileywick road, this line will still need to be pressure tested and sanitized -- which will happen over the next couple days.

The last remaining water service needed is the small 2 inch line that will actually be run to our current buildings. That work begins tomorrow and should only take a couple days.

Electrical Inspection Tomorrow

We have called for the electrical inspector to check the wiring of the High School and Admin buildings tomorrow. A successful inspection means we will have power in all four buildings and can ready those buildings for a fire inspection later this week. We expect this inspection to go well because we've already passed inspection on two buildings nearly identical to the ones being reviewed.

'Wick at Nite

The parking lot lights are on now. Light sensors turn them on at dusk and off at Dawn. We've used fixtures designed to reduce light pollution, but it keeps the parking lot well lit.

21 Questions to Ask Your Child Every Year

When my oldest daughter was about to start school, I sat her down and videotaped an interview with her where I asked her a series of questions. I have asked the same questions of her and her brother now every year just before they start school, with the goal of being able to edit together a neat montage of their answers for when they graduate. Some of them will have to be pulled off videotape, but now I record them on my digital camera and save the file on disk. In case you might want to try this too, here are my questions to get you started:

1. What’s your Favorite Color?
2. Who are your close friends?
3. What is your favorite TV Show?
4. What do you like to do with Mom?
5. What’s your favorite song?
6. What’s your favorite food?
7. What are some of the favorite things you did this summer?
8. What’s your favorite subject in school?
9. What do you like to do with Dad
10. What do you want to be when you grow up
11. What annoys you?
12. What do you like to do with your brother/sister?
13. What’s your favorite game?
14. What kind of animal would you be?
15. If you could spend a day with anyone, who would it be?
16. What do you think you’ll like about school this year?
17. Have you set any goals for the year?
18. What’s something you like about God?
19. What do you think you won’t like about school this year?
20. Where would you like to live when you grow up?
21. What would you do if you had $1 Million?

Do Dad (and Mom) weekend IV

The site benefitted again from the work of many volunteers inside and outside the buildings putting up skirting, cleaning floors and getting the rooms ready. One particularly exciting project is a coatrack for the lower school that was build and installed by some of our Dads. Having the ability to hang coats in the hall will make for much tidier rooms.

Thanks again to everyone for putting so much time and energy into our campus!

Parking Lot Ready for Business

Our parking lot had the spaces painted this weekend. The parking lot lights are also running now. With the exception of planting trees and shrubbery in the islands of the parking lot -- which we will do when the weather gets a little cooler -- the parking lot is finished for this phase.

If you've noticed that some of the curbing and light posts look a little strange, its because eventually there will be another whole row of parking added to the parking lot (when the modulars buildings are removed). When this happens, the light posts will need the second light, and what is now the curb near the buildings will be converted to another parking lot island for trees and shrubs.

Sidewalks Poured

The sidewalk crew made tremendous progress Thursday. They arrived first thing in the morning and started setting up the forms for the concrete. By 11am, we were pouring our first sidewalks. About half of the sidewalks from the parking lot to the buildings are now poured and the rest should be finished soon. Some sections are being left unpoured until we finish running buried water lines. Eventually, there will be a sidewalk running along the entrance drive to the street, but some of that work will occur after school starts.

Meet Jimmy Edwards

From the time that we first purchased our property on Baileywick, Jimmy Edwards has been working with us to make our campus a reality. Jimmy and his firm, Edwards and Associates, have served as as our architects from our original site design, through its many iterations to our current campus. Our layout and the way it will use the natural beauty or our woods and pond is due to the countless times Jimmy walked all over our land and, in a sense, let it tell him what it wanted to be.

But to credit Jimmy as our site's designer is to only scratch the surface of his service to Trinity. Jimmy has spent hours and hours walking our plans through the various departments in the city. He's worked with virtually every contractor on the site and overseen and tweaked their work to see that we get the best result possible. He's patiently explained various building and beaurocratic processes to me and the board to help us make good decisions.

He's been very generous with his time, often meeting with me after hours and on weekends to resolve last minute issues. For example, a couple weeks ago, we were walking around a local school's modular buildings at 10pm to check some ideas we were discussing about how to do ramps and decks.

Finally, Jimmy has been a good advocate for the school. When working to build good will with our neighbors, Jimmy visited many of them door to door to answer their questions and explain our plans. When our time came for a public meeting with the city on our site plan, we only had one neighbor present and she came to speak in support of our project. I believe this remarkable result is due to Jimmy's kind and patient nature.

Thank you, Jimmy, for all you are doing to help make a home for Trinity Academy!

"I love the smell of asphalt in the morning! It smells like... victory!"

At 8am this morning, the trucks started rolling in with hot, steamy asphalt. The parking lot will be fully paved today and the parking spaces will be painted in tomorrow.

Work has also begun on the sidewalks (yes, there will be sidewalks to all buildings). Watch this space for updates!

A Watery Milestone

After several complications, we were finally able to connect our water line to the city's system. To make the connection, we tightly strapped a "saddle joint" to the 30 inch water main at Baileywick and Strickland roads. Next we attached a valve (the red thing in the picture) to the saddle joint. Then a specialized crew attached a high power boring drill to the valve. Once the saddle joint, valve, and drill have been checked to make sure their connections are water tight, the drill bores a hole in the city's water pipe to allow water to flow to our pipes. Once the hole is bored, our valve is closed and the drill removed without any water spraying out of the system! The whole process went like clockwork and was done in about an hour. After the last couple sections of pipe are connected to this joint, we will be able to open the valve and start sending water through our entire pipe system.

Campus Delay Opening Explained

By now, Trinity parents should have received this notice from Dr. Littlejohn explaining that school will meet off site for the first week:

Dear Trinity Families,

I want to thank you for your patience as we await the completion of our new campus on Baileywick Road. It has been very exciting to watch as "nothing" has become a school.

Last Friday, around 5:30 pm, an unexpected glitch in the construction progress made it clear to me for the first time that we were not likely to have everything in place in time for the Inspections Division to grant us occupancy for this Friday, September 9. Despite truly valiant efforts on Chris Evans' part and on the part of numerous subcontractors, many of our school staff and many parent volunteers, the present delays are simply beyond our control. I believe at this point that we need to begin school at an alternate location and remain there for one week. It is our best judgment that after one week, all four of our buildings will be inspected and ready for occupancy. See our blog at trinityrising.blogspot.com for more details.

Three churches have graciously offered their facilities as a short-term solution to this challenge. We are most grateful to Christ Baptist Church, Crossroads Fellowship and Providence Baptist Church for their kind hospitality. However, each of these possibilities has certain limitations. Rather than belabor these, let me tell you that after 36 hours of learning and weighing the possibilities and limitations, I want you to know what I know.

We will begin school at our new times (8:00, upper; 8:15, lower) on Monday, September 12. The lower school will meet at Providence Baptist Church and carpool and room arrangements will be very much as they have been in years past, with classes meeting on the first floor. We are waiting to hear if the upper school can also meet at Providence, using the third floor for the week, but we have confirmed the use of the very nice facilities at Crossroads Fellowship should Providence not be available.

This Thursday's parent meetings at Providence will be held on schedule as will the all-school picnic/barbeque on Friday. However, the K-6 Meet the Teacher scheduled from 11 am to noon on Thursday at the Baileywick campus is being cancelled. More information will be available at both of these events and I look forward to seeing you both nights.

Again, I appreciate your patience. These changes are not what any of us would have chosen, but we have much to be thankful for and I am encouraged, as I have said before, that God is not surprised by any of these events. I am confident that with just a little more patience, we are in store for a very exciting school year.

Sincerely yours,
Robert Littlejohn, Ph.D.
Head of School
Trinity Academy of Raleigh

The decision to move off campus was the result of a couple factors related to our water service. The first is that on Thursday I was told by our contractor, Mammoth, that it would be late the following week (9/15) before they would have all the water line operable. They have laid over a half mile of pipe down Baileywick road and have now connected it, but it will take a day to pressure test and get the air out of the system, and then another couple days to sanitize the line. Since they are not finished with the on-site lines that connect the water from the street to our buildings, we will have to spend another 2 days sanitizing those lines too.

When we pressed them on the urgency of our situation, they agreed to put additional men on the job and to work over the Labor Day holiday. Unfortunately, our close call when connecting the water line meant we could make no progress on the off-site water over the holiday weekend. A further setback occurredured Friday afternoon when we realized we couldn't pinpoint the location of a buried power line well enough to safely bury our water lines until a service could mark its location this afternoon. This meant that no work on our water could be done this weekend.

At this point, the only thing I know of that would keep campus from opening is the lack of water (and fire regulations block any creative solutions we considered). Friday, we should have all other inspections completed, as well as sidewalks, paved parking, decking, and other infrastructure. By deciding to meet off-site for a week, we believe it is possible to have all four buildings ready by the time we open the campus for school, which should make classes run more smoothly and make it easier on our faculty and staff.

When we started construction a month ago, there were about 100 things that had to go right for us to meet this goal. About 98 of them did, and I feel much of that had to do with the faithful prayers of our community. Thanks for everyone for their encouragement and support. Finally, thank you for your patience. We'll be home soon!

Do Dad's Needed Saturday Morning

Bob Hinton and the rest of the "Do Dads" will be continuing to put vinyl skirting around the buildings. Bob tells me he can use all the help he can get, so please drop in tomorrow morning to help if you can.

Parking Lot Ready for Paving

The parking lot has been curbed, and the dirt surface has been heavily packed and rolled. Starting this morning, a continuous stream of dump trucks delivered piles and piles of stone -- enough to cover the entire parking lot 8 inches deep -- to our site.

Bulldozers then spread the rock evenly across the parking lot, and a roller packed them down. Finally, water was sprayed over the surface of the lot to help make it into a hard, dense surface that will be ready for paving on Monday.

At this point, there are two important rules for anyone visiting the site:

1. STAY OFF THE PARKING LOT!!!
The lot is curing and needs to remain untouched until the asphalt is poured in Tuesday.

2. STAY AWAY FROM THE DRIVEWAY ON TUESDAY!!!
Work on the parking lot was slowed when the dump trucks had trouble maneuvering around all the cars in the driveway. There will be many trucks of hot asphalt on Tuesday, so please do not drive through the campus until after 6pm that night!

Thanks for your cooperation and understanding!

A Close Call

Our site developer has finished laying the water pipe down Baileywick road and was preparing to connect the line to the water main when one of their workers accidently hit a buried high-power line with his backhoe. This line services everyone on Baileywick road and carries of 18,000 volts. The line was several feet away from where it was supposed to be, and was a complete surprise when we hit it.

Fortunately, the line wasn't broken and the hot part of the line wasn't exposed. More importantly, nobody was injured. However, this situation means that we have to put off connecting this line until after the weekend to give Progress Energy the time they need to repair the line.

Thanks to everyone who has been praying for the safety of the people working on the site. I truly felt God's protection yesterday helped us to avoid a potentially deadly situation.

Moving In

Our faculty and staff showed up in force this week to help move our books, furniture, and supplies to the site. With the help of some professional movers, we brought the contents from 3 tractor-trailer rigs and 4 panel trucks into the buildings.

5 weeks later...

5 weeks ago, we finally received our building permit and started building on the property. Here's a visual recap of what's happened since:


5 Weeks Ago:

4 Weeks Ago:

3 Weeks Ago:

2 Weeks Ago:

1 Week Ago:

Today

This week alone saw the construction of decks, the addition of power, preparation of the parking lot, addition of driveway and parking lighting, furniture move-in and several other items.