Back in the day, we just had grid and plain old ceiling tile, and once in a while we’d throw in tegular grid. Now we’re doing the plank system, off-modular layouts, wood ceilings and linear ceilings. With a mighty field staff of 40, 5 Angle is staying busy in northwestern Ohio with commercial space in offices, schools, hospitals and municipal buildings.
Thirty-five years ago, 5 Angle Construction Inc. was founded in the village of Columbus Grove in northwestern Ohio. The name was chosen because the owners had plans of securing jobs in five areas: (1) interior and structural metal stud framing, (2) all types of insulation, (3) drywall, (4) acoustical tile ceilings and (5) Exterior Insulation and Finish Systems (EIFS).
Back then, things didn’t always go as planned.
“When we first started, we would sometimes have to go with anything that would pay a buck,” says Randy Schumacher, one of two owners at the helm today. The company is on solid footing now and in his role as project supervisor, Schumacher oversees many of its jobs that range from a $1,000 residential to $2 million commercial.
Schumacher is co-owner of the merit shop firm with Jeff Schroeder. They carry an office and field staff of about 40. Most of their work is commercial, typically in offices, schools, hospitals and municipal buildings, but they also do residential work. Ceilings represent up to 35% of 5 Angle’s work.
While many of its contracts are in larger centers such as Lima and Findlay in northwestern Ohio, one of its projects that featured a striking ceiling for Vaughn Industries was in the village of Carey, Ohio. The work included a 20×40-foot conference room with a coffered ceiling composed of wood tiles with a dark grid. Getting it right was not straightforward. “Accurate shop drawings were critical because the tiles were pre-cut by the manufacturer to precisely fit the space that included bulkheads lining the perimeter walls and an odd-shaped bulkhead intersecting the coffered ceiling in the center of the room,” says Schumacher.
In the office building’s lobby and cafeteria, 5 Angle installed “curved and angled” acoustical cloud ceilings comprised of regular ceiling panels. As the grid is exposed, the cloud panels are suspended on stainless steel aircraft cable. Two-inch by eight-foot long sound baffles on the ceiling also were specified.
“Nothing was square,” says Schumacher, adding that measurements were taken, and sent to the manufacturer to produce shop drawings for the space. “Once we approved them, they put it out for production and numbered it for us to install. There was a fair amount of lead time and a lot of head-scratching.” The Vaughn Industries’ contract required anywhere from two to 10 workers, depending on the day.
Recently, at Wilson Sporting Goods Co in Ada, Ohio, 5 Angle completed a contract for metal framing, drywall and insulation and acoustical ceilings and baffles for the company’s new 80,000 square foot building. The most unusual segment of the Wilson project, which produces 2,200 footballs daily, many of which are for the National Football League, involved the construction and installation of a bulkhead designed to look like an oversized football (about 15×20-feet) over the conference room ceiling, says Andy Schroeder, project superintendent.
Starting with CAD drawings, 5 Angle “laid it out on the floor, shot lasers up for points to work from. It took close to four days to complete the layout.”
The football-shaped bulkhead is framed in steel studs and covered in drywall. “We had the challenge of radiused beads and expansion joints,” says Schroeder. To eliminate “flat spots and get the curve right,” the contractor used mud, additional drywall or tinkered with the frame angles.
The facility is used to test the products Wilson makes, including basketballs. To meet the specifications required for a test hoop attached to a wall, 5 Angle had to reinforce the metal stud frame with plywood and black iron cross bracing to prevent the 28-foot high wall from shaking that could lead to drywall cracking. “It wasn’t in the plan; we engineered it on the fly,” he explains.
The scope of work on the Wilson contract also involved hanging acoustical ceiling panels and about 1,800 sheets of drywall. In some areas, two-person crews operated from lifts extending to heights of up to 35 feet. In the gift shop and lobby area, 1×8-foot ceiling baffles were hung in cloud formations about 25-feet high. “The challenge was hanging wires from the ceiling to get everything square, straight and level without hitting the ductwork,” Schroeder says.
5 Angle is nearing completion of a contract at Ohio Northern University that includes walls and ceilings for offices and a large library that is roughly 60-feet wide by more than 150-feet long. “The library ceiling had to be laid out before the walls were framed to make sure they were square, straight and lined up with bulkheads. Fine line grid (9/16ths wide) was specified instead of conventional 15/16ths wide grid to ensure a precision fit of the 2×4 and 1×4 ceiling tiles,” says Schumacher.
The 5 Angle crew ran strings (30-pound fishing line) from one end of the large library space to the other and then “lasered off the lines” to keep the mains, which are recessed and staggered, running straight. Because the mains are hung every two feet off wires instead of every four feet as is typical, installers had to be careful not to damage the tiles on the many wires. The work was carefully planned with the HVAC contractor to ensure no ductwork clashes with the ceiling. “We had to make sure our wires were straight, not angled. You could not do any of this quickly.”
From the outset of the university job, there were scheduling challenges with other subcontractors because all materials and supplies had to enter the building through a second-floor window opening. At times, waits were long because of material conflicts with other contractors but deadlines had to be met before the school year started at the end of August.
At Marathon Oil Company’s headquarters in Findlay, Ohio, 5 Angle installed a ceiling of wood planks gapped and turned on their sides and held together with dowels. The feature ceiling is part of a remodeling of a three-story marketing building at the company’s sprawling complex in the heart of Findlay, a city of 40,000 residents.
The contract, which also included 1×8-inch plank wood walls, was complicated by a new, wide staircase engineered to go through the middle of the second floor to the third floor. “All of our layouts had to come off of that area,” says Beau Pester, project manager.
Wood planks on the third-floor ceiling had to fit around a large central skylight. “We had to cut them in a way to make sure all the dowels still matched up and that they appeared to have come from the manufacturer that way.” That contractor experimented with different cutting tools to eliminate marks on the wood surface. A miter saw used in tandem with an oscillating saw to finish the cut proved to be the best solution.
Before starting the wood ceiling, the contractor installed sound absorbing fiberglass panels suspended from the grid. Keeping the panels straight and rigid was paramount, Pester says. ”We ended up pre-making metal boxes out of 2.5-inch studs and attaching them to clips on the ceiling so we could screw the panels to the framing.” The suspended framing allowed other subs to use the space above for conduits, ducts and other servicing. “There were a lot of moving parts to this contract.”
Schumacher says advancements in tools and technology have made the work easier for projects like Marathon Oil but the evolution has also been a springboard to more detailed, complex designs. “The first laser we had (34 years ago) was in a great big suitcase-like box that you put on the wall with a battery pack on the floor. It took a bit to set up but now we just carry line lasers in a 3×3-inch tool box to do the same thing.”
The co-owner and project supervisor says that work in the region is steady and it appears it will remain that way for the foreseeable future. “We have a pretty good backlog of work. In the print room and on the bid board, things look pretty solid in our area.”
Schumacher’s partner Jeff Schroeder sees good reason why northwestern Ohio will remain busy. “What’s going to help us over the next few years is Columbus has a $20 billion Intel semiconductor chip plant going up. Even though it is 90-minutes to two hours from us, it’s going to reduce the number of contractors coming our way to compete for work.”
Will future work in northwestern Ohio include an increase of specialty and custom ceiling contracts? Schumacher thinks it might. Larger centers around Columbus Grove only have populations of 20,000-80,000 but they are “always expanding.” Some of the new construction will incorporate fancier ceilings, even if only as focal points in conventional projects, he says.
“Back in the day, we just had grid and plain old ceiling tile and once in a while we’d throw in tegular grid. Now we’re doing the plank system, off-modular layouts, wood ceilings, linear ceilings.”
Schumacher says while 5 Angle doesn’t have a structured training program for new workers, its experienced installers mentor new employees. “Not very often but sometimes we also rely on manufacturers’ field reps for help when we are using a product for the first time. We try to identify problems and long lead-time areas before we get into the job.”
5 Angle, like other successful subs in the region, has done things to keep that steady pace. Operating a tight ship is a case in point. “At one time, we had 60 guys and it took a lot of work to keep crews busy but now we have about 40 and we don’t need as much work to keep them busy,” says Schumacher.
Among the keys to retaining skilled workers are good wages and benefits but Schroeder adds that 5 Angle offers its personnel flexible hours where possible. “We don’t monitor our crews. If someone has an appointment in the afternoon, they can start earlier in the day. As long as the jobs are getting done and we feel the production is where it should be, we let them do their jobs to their schedules.”
