Cast Plaques & Time Capsule Placement

Placing Your Time Capsule and Plaque

Recently a customer ordered one of our Easy Packages (the ones that include time capsule, kits AND plaque, and he had a few questions:

1. Will you center and properly size and format the text that we want on the piece?
2. What is the best mounting system if we want to mount on a piece of concrete that is embedded in the turf/soil.
3. Additional advice to achieve successful preservation for 50 years underground in Minnesota where the temperature and humidity varies significantly?

• Proof. For the plaque, we certainly will center and format the text that you send us. We send you a proof and specs sheet for you to sign off on and then we submit it to the foundry. That process usually takes about 4 weeks. Since you sent us the wording for your plaque, we are working on that proof for you now and you should receive it by email within 2 days. If you like certain fonts, let us know - quite often we have something similar on our equipment. It’s important to talk about the mounting method now, since if rosettes are needed, they can be planned for ahead of time.
  Usually, with a mounting as you describe, the mounting is a blind mount from behind and no rosettes or holes are seen from the front.
• Mounting. There’s a good example of that process on our website under ‘ceremonies’ in our gallery. We took some photos of one of our plaques being installed in Hollywood. Here is the link to the WAMU Hollywood Ceremony and their Installation of the new Hollywood Time Capsule and Plaque. With this type of plaque you get (usually 4) long screws that go in from behind. You can cut the screws to the length you want. In this way it is anchored to the concrete as it's setting up.
• Time Capsule Placement. I do recommend that you seal the area above the time capsule well (see the example below). Doing it in the way shown, with a covering and freshly poured concrete will help seal it from above ground environment. Once it’s buried, though, the temperature should remain stable unless it’s very close to ground level or if you have permafrost. Should you choose to use an enclosure of some kind, be sure it allows for any water to go through and not be held to the time capsule in any way. Do NOT wrap the capsule in plastic - please!  Don’t do anything to the time capsule that holds water to it. In the case of the 4200 Capped Cornerstone Time Capsule, place the time capsule so that the cap is on the top. In the gallery example, they are using a different style time capsule than the one you ordered (they had the Bolted 3000).

Example of a Time capsule Enclosure - this one's in a sidewalk. If you choose an enclosure, be sure it allows for drainage of normal precipitation coming in from above. If you are below sea level, other precautions must be planned.

You never want to pour concrete over the bare time capsule! Here a sheet of plywood is placed over the shoulders of the enclosure and seated before the pouring.

Before this pouring, the men applied removable red tape to the plaque and inserted the mounting hardware from behind. The screws are long - 4" - but can be cut to desired length.

Inserting the plaque into the prepared concrete surface.

Making sure the plaque is straight.

Making sure the plaque is level.

(c) 2013 Janet Reinhold. No liability is assumed with the recommendations given in this blog or on our main site at www.futurepkg.com. Updated to reflect new URLs from our new site 2015.