An angled, three-chamber walk-in combo, delivered to the Goose Creek Convenience Store in northern Virginia, represents the customized, creative work of the design and manufacturing teams at the Imperial Brown East Coast factory. The convenience store is named for Goose Creek, a tributary of the Potomac River in Fauquier and Loudoun counties.
The combo consists of a freezer with glass doors to display frozen food, a cooler with glass doors to display beverages, and a beer cave with a glass entrance door.
The combo has multiple angles on it, including a T-panel with an angled leg. The construction also included custom-angled ceiling panels.
“The combo was designed to conform to the existing structural building walls,” said Kyle Lewis, East Coast Inside Sales Supervisor for Imperial Brown. “The openings for glass doors were custom fitted in with the existing building walls.”
“Any time there are angles, there are obstacles to overcome,” said Lewis of the custom-made unit. “With angles, there is very little tolerance. You can’t miss by a fraction of an inch, or a couple of degrees, or the unit won’t fit properly.
The combo is 35 feet long, 20 feet deep and 8 feet, 7½ inches tall.
The combo was constructed using both high-density urethane edge (HDU) and low-density urethane edge (LDU) panels. With this type of construction, the issue is mixing panels using two different construction techniques and the difficulty of a proper fit, Lewis said.
“We are very exact with both the design and the construction,” he said. “The HDU is a tongue-and-groove design, and the tongue-and-groove of each construction has to mate together. With LDU, we use an aluminum frame or jig that is essentially a form that does not stay with the panel. With HDU, the framing is unique to that panel and sticks with the panel. The aluminum jig of the LDU has to match the HDU.”
Reid Dickert, Design Manager for the East Coast facility, said that the factory was “very creative with this one.” All of the angles were done with HDU panels. “One of the angles was irregular – a 40-degree angle on the back wall.”
The ceiling panels were designed to eliminate the need for roof suspension. Four of the nine ceiling panels spans more than 16 feet with the partition wall acting as a means of support, Dickert said.
Joseph Varaksa was Imperial Brown’s Regional Sales Manager for the project, working with customer Cato Gas & Oil Propane of Salisbury, MD, a diversified energy company specializing in propane and heating oil projects, convenience stores, fast food restaurants and real estate development projects, and other interests in three states.
