Fun Facts

Building a leading edge children’s hospital is no small feat, particularly in the state of California, where seismic requirements and hospital building codes are among the most stringent in the world. When complete, our new inpatient pavilion will provide an extraordinarily safe healing environment for our patients for years to come. Here are some fun facts about the construction of our new building:

• Nearly 45,000 tons of soil was excavated to prepare the site of the new inpatient pavilion. That’s almost the weight of the Titanic.
• The pavilion’s foundation contains nearly 985 tons of steel rebar. Laid end-to-end, the rebar would span approximately 150 miles.
• The pavilion’s foundation alone contains 20 million pounds of concrete. In case you were wondering, it weighs as much as approximately 842,105,263 iPod Shuffles. It took 560 truckloads of cement, and nearly 24 hours to pour it all.
• The pavilion’s steel skeleton is made up of 1,400 tons of structural steel – which is the equivalent to the weight of approximately seven Boeing 747 airplanes, nine Statue of Liberty monuments or 93 big rigs.
• It takes a lot of light and power to run a hospital. The new pavilion contains 3,700 light fixtures, 20,000 electrical boxes and nearly 70 miles of electrical wire.
• The pavilion has 320 doors, its exterior is adorned with 602 colorful aluminum panels, and its steel skeleton contains 14,800 high-strength structural bolts.
• By July 2009, crews had logged more than 735,000 man and woman-hours working on the new inpatient pavilion. An average of 130 trade workers, engineers, construction managers and inspectors worked on the hospital each day.