Baker Installations - Tribute to Fallingwater Fiber Optic Project

Tribute to Fallingwater Fiber Optic Project
Baker Installations is in and out of thousands of homes each week, but it is not everyday that we stop at a home like Fallingwater.

The History
Fallingwater was the country retreat for the Kaufmann family (Kaufmann department Stores). They commissioned world renowned architect Frank Lloyd Wright to build a house near the family's favorite picnic spot. Wright proposed a house not facing the falls of Bear Run, but rather a house which was nearly suspended OVER the falls.

In 1963, Edgar Kaufmann, Jr. gave Fallingwater to the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy. the conservancy opened the house and grounds to the public and is dedicated to preserving its natural beauty for generations to see.

The Challenge
The Conservancy, was looking for a contractor to provide a state-of-the-art Data Network for the eight building Fallingwater campus. This contractor would provide an underground fiber optic backbone between all of the buildings on site and Category 5 to the Personal Desktop Computers. The final piece of the puzzle would be a T1 line to connect the Conservancy offices in Pittsburgh to the network at Fallingwater.

The Proposal
Baker Installations was selected from a group of six contractors hand-picked to bid on the job. While Baker Installations' proposal was not the least expensive, the Conservancy was impressed by our people, references and proposal to use directional bore technology to minimize the impact of the project on the beauty of the site.

The Work
The underground installation, completed by Baker Installations' SCPA crew, was done using directional bore technology to bury 2' schedule 40 conduit in the ground between the building sites. This task proved a unique challenge to the crew because of the terrain and unique locations of the bore sites. Brad Smith provided the leadership to get through the rock and leave a minimal imprint on the landscape. Brad Deeter, Sam Sharp and Tracy MacDonald used quite a bit of finesse in getting under and around many obstacles. Clean-up and minimal environmental impact required a unique attention to detail and planning. Because of the rock, the boring fluids had a habit of oozing out at the most inconvenient and unlikely spots. there were a few areas where the bores were impossible and some trenching had to be done. The crew was successful in the long run and did an admirable job.

Next our WPA crew, led by John Barczak, installed the fiber optic cable through the buried duct. Seven of the eight buildings on the Fallingwater campus had a six strand fiber installed. The last had a twelve strand fiber installed. One of the pulls was over 1200' with no intermediate pull boxes, quite a feat. In all approximately 2,000' of fiber was pulled. Then came the Cat. 5 cabling. There were only 34 outlets on this project, but it was interesting due to the various types of buildings involved. The servants quarters, where the Conservancy now maintains offices for the Director an curator at Fallingwater, is a National Historic Landmark so great care had to be taken an dall work had to be preapproved to preserve the landmark.

The final phase was to install all of the cabinets and equipment and terminate and test the finished product. The WPA handled the cabinet installation and Cat 5 termination. Fiber termination, testing and documentation of both the fiber and Cat. 5 was done by Travicom, assisted by WPA. Travicom is a fiber specialty sub-contractor working on many Baker Installations/ECI teledata projects.

The Conservancy, BANI (Bell Atlantic Network Integration- which did final engineering and project management) Barry Hoffman, Baker Installations/ECI, are all very pleased with the completed project. Clayton Walker, MIS Director for the Conservancy commented, "if the Conservancy had another project to do today, they would not put it out for bid, Baker Installations would get the call."

The Conclusion
Our only regret at Baker Installations is that by the nature of the job, now that we are finished at Fallingwater, you can't even tell we were there.