Fire Training Tower

Ninyo & Moore was retained to evaluate the physical condition of the concrete in an existing fire training tower. The approximately 60-foot high, reinforced concrete tower is used for training purposes and is exposed to repeated cycles of setting and extinguishing fires. There are specific "burn" rooms within the tower that have been design with refractory concrete to help insulate the structural concrete from the extreme temperatures employed during the training exercises. The purpose of our study was to evaluate concrete in the burn rooms and included visual observations, core sampling of the roofs, floors and walls, and laboratory testing of both the refractory and structural concrete materials. The results of our materials evaluation were incorporated into plans to rehabilitate the existing training tower.