RE: Daily Dose of Sultnpapper 10/11/18> Just what I needed… not really.
Well, that just guzbucking sucks. I've gotten the 'Don't know how we're going to get along with out you, but come tomorrow morning we're going to find out." notice twice in my career.
I might should have guessed what you do. Irrigation. I've kinda sorta always had that as a fallback. I was 13 when we drilled our first irrigation well and I learned much of the business from the ground up.
So I'm going to suggest you find the Architect that is designing schools and public buildings and offer your practical service. Every blueprint I've ever seen has been guzbucked big time in the irrigation department. I had a contract at a High School that has an 'as built' binder that stretched to 500 pages. It was awful. But I was there about 10 years ago and the system was still working as built. Not as designed. The family that owned the contract under bid pretty bad, the change orders bailed them out. Completely. I bought a new MC with that bonus :)
I sincerely believe that a guy with your reputation and status won't be 'unjobbed' very long. Getting water as needed, where needed is getting more critical every day.
I have a cd with Rainbird's design software on it. Things haven't changed much since 1995 have they ?
Let me know if I can do anything. Reference letter or the like.
You might want to consider moving to Arizona or California. The Colorado river compact expires in 2022 and the battle is already joined. That water is allocated by the drop and efficient irrigation is going to be very valuable. Already is, matter of fact.
Man, I don't know how to finish this. I want to say 'thoughts and prayers' but that is almost a joke today. I'm on your side.
Thanks Tom. I actually have been designing for an engineering firm here on the side and on the down low for the last 16 years. When the Houston Texans came into the NFL, I sold the irrigation equipment on their newly constructed practice facility to the field contractor. It was a company out of Ohio that was doing the construction and I had worked with them on another project they had in Houston a year earlier at the University of Houston and really bailed them out of jam late in final phase of that project. The project superintendent for them said if they ever do another project in Texas, that I was their man for supplies.
So the Texans project was their next one, they sent me the construction drawings and said, "do the take off and have materials on the site May 1st".
I went thru the plans and saw that it wasn't going to work, the plans weren't worth the paper they drawn on and had no chance of even popping the heads up out of the ground let alone watering any area. So I sounded the alarm with my contractor. In turn the raised the flag with the engineering firm and the engineering firm said, "there is nothing wrong with the plan, install it as drawn." The construction contract had a clause in that said "contractor responsible for complete coverage". So I told the girl in Cleveland at the home office of the contractor to draw up a letter and send the engineering firm in which I detailed all the problems and that they would not be responsible for engineering problems noted in this letter and send a copy to the engineers and the GC and the Texans, this project was on a tight schedule and this was February practice was to start in August.
The engineers got the letter and asked , "who is telling you are plan is no good, we want to speak with them?" So she gave them my number and the man came over to my office and we went over the plans. He told me that due to the "politics" of the project he couldn't use his normal designer and was forced to use some landscape architect. But he admitted the issues when I showed on paper it wouldn't work.
Ten days before the materials were to be on site, the engineer called me said they had a plan ready that I could pick up and I went and got it. It was an awkward situation, because he asked me if I was going to tear this plan apart too. I told, if I need too, I have to protect my customer.
I knew there wouldn't be time for another re-draw from them and the plan did have issues but I made changes on the set of drawings that I had taken and got copied. All the nozzle sizes were incorrect, the pump was undersized and was pumping off the city main which is illegal in Houston. I could fix all the problems without delaying anything except the pump and it wouldn't amount to much change in cost for the contractor. So we moved forward and got the materials ordered and delivered right on time.
I up sized all the pipe two sizes to accommodate what I knew would have to end up happening and then as it was going in started telling them the pump was sized to small. Their design called for a 5hp pump. I told them they needed a 50 hp pump. They came back and said a 15HP would do it. I said, yes it could, if you can water 18 hours a day. Then it started to sink in, no one but me was paying attention to the watering time window, six hours was the max that they would realistically have. More importantly the first test of the system, was set to be conducted and their system was a total failure with the heads nozzled like it was designed. The owner of the Texans and all the chiefs were there, it wasn't pretty.
Two hours later I got a call from the engineer, "You have any ideas on what we can do?"
I told him yea, I have a couple. "Number one, never do test at 3:00 in the afternoon in Houston in the summer time for starters. Number two change all the nozzles in the heads from 40 to number 45 nozzles and that should take care of the problems.
He responded back he thought about that, but the pipe sizing is to small and the pipe is already in and buried. I told him, yes according to your plans the pipe sizing is to small, but I knew this day would be coming so I redesigned the piping system to handle the flows, it was easier to that then argue with you.
He couldn't believe me, so I told him meet there in the morning and I showed him the plans that it was installed by and the sizes, we changed out nozzles on one zone and it worked perfectly.
So that still left the pump as an issue, and since his designer and I had a difference of opinion, I suggest he call in the local pump station builder in Houston that worked with them on the U of H project and let him tell him what pump he needs, he agreed and called David from Carroll Childers Pumps. David looked over the plans and pipe sizes, area of coverage and factored in the water window and determined a 40 hp station would do it but right on the edge of the water window and that a 50hp is what would really be needed just to be sure and to have a little cushion. So I was right again, and this engineer was starting to take notice of just how much I actually knew and how I was trying to help him despite how negative he had been being towards me. The job ended up with a 20,000 gallon storage tank and a 50 hp pump station it has operated flawlessly all the years.
A few weeks after that project was completed the engineer called and asked me if I would meet him for lunch and at lunch he offered me all their future athletic field irrigation design work. I took him up on it at did projects for them for 8 years until he retired. When he retired he and his partner closed up their practice but the partner went over to another engineering firm and he drug me along as his "contract" designer. He just retired a year ago, but that engineering firm is still using me to do their drawings for athletic fields. I have not stamped my license number on any of them in years because of the other job I have held so the engineers stamp them. But they are my designs and I have been getting compensated for them, not nearly as much as they have been worth but I held no liability either since my stamp wasn't on them. But every plan has worked perfectly, the only problem is so many high school and college facilities are going to synthetic turf now that is fewer and fewer irrigation designs being needed.
I may look at doing work for some other firms as well, I just have to see how things go and what opportunities are out their for me.
Things have changed from 1995 so I'll pass on the disc , but I appreciate the offer and the good wishes.
I don't have time at the moment, but I also ended up designing the irrigation for inside NRG stadium and for the holding facility for the grass trays as well on that Texans project. But I am pressed to get going. Maybe I will tell that in a Daily Dose.
Ohhhhh, man. I get it. The biggest contract I took from the landscape company was designed by a top flight architect out of a big firm in Seattle. The buildings were as close to flawless as you can get with a project that size. The irrigation was a freaking nightmare. There were courtyards where pressure, flow and wind had to be considered. Not so much. There were 4 football fields (the game field and 3 practice) 3 soccer fields (the game field could go either way.) 5 baseball fields and 5 softball fields. I didn't start the project, so I didn't have any part of the ordering or look at the design. I came to the project to bail out an electrical nightmare in the wiring. The guy before me dropped a 116 wire bundle of wires that were rumored to be cut to length for the valves as designed. Literally dropped them. With out labeling on either end. I got that figured out in time and we used almost all the wiring that he dropped. I argued for radio control valves, but that technology was brand new and every freaking one is hard wired. Oh yeah. 4 common wires for the whole bunch, cut the same length as the longest control wire. The wires were already bunkered when I got there so no change possible,
I told the company owner at one point "This f@#$% project makes me wish I could still drink. I'd get a bottle of JD and head for the back side of the lake. When I woke up I'd have an idea what to do next."
Anyway, long story short (I'll probably let Cleo tell some of this) it turns out that the Architect had his daughter the engineering student at UW draw the irrigation plans for 'practice'. Teach the girl for not going to WSU. There was a huge lawsuit and everybody with a piece of the irrigation got a nice hunk of change from the General. The General Foreman loved me. I'd show up for coffee every day early and show him what I was going to do to bail his ass out of the fire. That guy would sign a change order for me with out looking.
I'm glad you have a fallback, or even multiple fallbacks. Always a good idea even with the perfect job.