You may think you’ve seen it all, but not if you haven’t seen trackhoe waterskiing.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=so5m–nOoDA]
I don’t care who you are, that’s funny.
When I was in my late 20s, after working in a few construction and engineering jobs, Calvin G. High hired me to be the first project manager for High Construction. I’d never been a PM, but he liked my local background and my work ethic. He thought he saw some potential in me.
High Construction was building $8M of work a year when I was hired and we grew to almost $40M in 3 years. I learned to be a PM by just doing it, figuring things out as I went. We had a great team of field supers and trade contractors and we worked together to build lots of fine looking buildings quickly.
Cal was a wonderful mentor for me. He wasn’t prone to much praise, but I knew when I did something right…and when I screwed up. As a devout Mennonite, Cal was committed to giving “Good Measure”. Yet he once asked me if I knew how copper wire was invented? Apparently it was two Mennonites fighting over a penny.
I developed the 10 Calmandmants, in honor of Calvin G. High and have considered them important guidelines to remember throughout my career.
1. Thou shalt never joke about money.
2. Thou shalt shudder when any price is given and ask if that’s their best offer.
3. Thou shalt never go time and materials.
4. Thou shalt pay attention to the details.
5. Thou shalt never say an item is “Not on the Critical Path”.
6. Thou shalt be frugal in all design decision, except for a few that are very visual.
7. Thou shalt landscape lushly.
8. Thou shalt wander around and look at things.
9. Thou shalt not mess thy jobsite, thy truck or thy neighbor’s tools.
10. Thou shalt obtain three prices on everything.
Transcribed by Ned Pelger in 1986 A.D.
For the last eight hours, I sat with a dying friend and neighbor. I was there to comfort, to pray and just to be. Up until a few minutes ago, he was breathing, until he wasn’t.
Tom Houck was one of the toughest men I’ve ever met. Over and over his threshold for enduring discomfort amazed people. Whether it was steel chips in his eye, chopped off fingers, third degree burns, 7 cops to subdue him (younger days) or finally this lung cancer, Tom just took the pain and kept going.
The doctors treating his cancer would examine his MRI and wonder to his wife how he could still be up walking around with such limited capacity to breathe. “He’s not just walking around, she’d say, “He’s still working full-time as a heavy machinery mechanic in a factory.” Tom was a man’s man. Every year he’d tell me about how he shot this year’s buck and probably couldn’t quite understand how my success rate was about 10% of his.
I was on a jobsite late morning and got a call from TBW that the Hospice people thought he might pass in the next 30 minutes. Tom’ wife, Donna, requested I come. As I drove home, I thought, “There’s no way he is going to die on someone else’s schedule. Tom does things Tom’s way and he’ll still be there when I get there.” He was.
The next eight hours weren’t like any other eight hours of my life. We were focused on helping Tom be comfortable to die…and to provide some peace to those who would remain. We sat quietly, we prayed out loud, we told Tom our favorite memories of him, we prayed silently. Then a woman with a harp came into the room. She seemed to surprise everyone.
She played beautifully simple songs and sang like an angel. The songs didn’t seem tied to a particular religion, they just felt right. She was from Songs4theJourney.org they play to help folks pass from this world to the next.
Now I’ve known Tom for 25 years and I thought, “There’s no way he’s going to respond to this music by choosing that time to die.” As usual, I was wrong. As the harpist played and sang, Tom’s breathing eventually got slower and slower. Finally, he let himself go.
I guess I’m writing this to sort out my feelings, to get a sense of what I think about this particular day of living and dying. If you’ve read this far, you’ve realized this post doesn’t really touch on construction. And I can’t bring myself to neatly summarize my feelings with some aphorism about living each day to the fullest.
Maybe tomorrow will bring clarity.
I’ve worked in Haiti a couple of times and been broadened by the experience. The first time I saw children playing in the raw sewage stream running down the street, I was nauseated. After a while, I barely noticed. Yet the sights of the brightly colored culture and the roughly built structures stayed with me. Here are a few photos I took to provide a sense of place:
Haiti is poor, but functions. People work, figure ways to buy food for their families, build buildings and enjoy times of celebration. Of course, I have a particular interest in the build buildings part of the society.
It’s not that Haiti has no building code, but the code doesn’t get enforced. An earthquake won’t kill 150,000 to 200,000 people unless lots of buildings are falling down. It wasn’t just the shacks of the poor; the schools, hospitals, churches, hotels and government buildings collapsed like houses of cards. An ENR article explains the Haiti codes and lack of enforcement.
Let me make you a challenge. The next time you work with a Code Enforcement Officer. Take a moment to thank him or her for the job he or she does. Bring up Haiti and what happens when everyone just builds as they see fit. We can become frustrated with building inspectors, but they protect the public, and us, when they do their jobs. So let the next inspectors you work with know that you are glad we aren’t in the free-for-all world of no inspections. Let them know you appreciate the work they do.
Dan Woolley works for Compassion International, a wonderful non-profit that strives to improve the lot of children around the world. I heard their President, Wess Stafford, speak earlier this year about his own horrific childhood experiences and his vow to help other children. To that end, Dan Woolley was in Port-au-Prince hotel working on a film about child poverty.
“Then all of a sudden just all craziness broke loose,” Woolley said. “Convulsions of the ground around us, the walls started rippling and then falling on us.”
As Dan laid there alone in the darkness, he took stock and determined he had blood streaming from his head and his leg. Then he remembered, “I have an app for that!” He took his cell phone and opened the First Aid & CPR phone application from American Heart Association. He used his clothing to make bandages and perform appropriate first aid. Fearing he may be going into shock and knowing he shouldn’t sleep too long, he set his phone alarm to wake himself every 20 minutes.
As he sat in the darkness, he pulled out his journal and wrote the following, bloodstained note to his family, “I was in a big accident, an earthquake. Don’t be upset at God. He always provides for his children even in hard times. I’m still praying that God will get me out, but he may not. But even so he will always take care of you.”
Dan waited about 60 hours until he was rescued. You can read more of the story details at CNN World.
I’ve chosen to invest a fair bit of my time, energy and money into some construction phone apps that should be helpful to many. Reading this article makes me more convinced I’m on the right track.
I’m positive that you have nothing in the next 18 seconds that will bring you more joy than watching this video.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3FZtmlHwcA]
Try not to build like that or live like that.
It just feels wrong to pay more for less. Most people developing green buildings seem to stumble into this trap. The LEED process seems reasonable, but it generally gets executed by tossing money at the checklist. Grass covered roofs (that cost a fortune to build and maintain) or super-efficient toilets (that won’t ever payback their costs) illustrate how to buy some LEED points.
I’ve just seen another, more impressive effort at designing and constructing a green building. My brother Jim moved to Missoula, MT years ago and worked as an electrician. Soon he was taking some small jobs on his own. Over time he took many steps forward, and a few sideways and backwards, to build Rattlesnake Electric into a high quality, high value electrical contracting firm. But he always paid attention to what the other trades, and the design professionals, were doing on the project.
Jim became a developer by starting with a small project (two residential units on one tiny lot), renovating them and selling them for a profit. He gradually worked in larger projects as financing would allow. This process takes gumption, as you have to keep everything on the table to move to the next larger project.
My Dad, son, nephew and I have been visiting Jim, Erin and their 4 kids the last few days (sorry for the lack of posts but snowshoeing, snowmobiling and skiing seemed a better way to spend my time). We checked out Jim’s latest project, an old factory that he demolished and rebuilt as a mixed use 20,000 sf building. Here are some photos.
He took the existing building (an old factory that made specialty dental tools) and used hand demo to save almost every piece of wood or building material. The wood joists and glu-lams were are reused as structure on the new facility. Jim noted, “Not many buildings go to this level of almost total recycling and reuse. We looked for every opportunity, as the job progressed, to incorporate the recycled materials.” The front steel riveted columns were rusting in a steel scrap yard, remnants from an old water tower and Jim saw their potential. The car port below was totally made from the recycled lumber.
This view from the roof top gathering area truly is spectacular.
Jim gave me a list of the sustainable elements in the Factory Project.
1. Build on an existing site with existing city infrastructure and utilities.
2. Complete deconstruction- every use-able material was either incorporated into the new building or donated to individuals or Home Resource building material center. All usable materials were staged on site, re-purposed, and installed into the new design-examples include:
a. Existing glu lam beams were re-installed as major structural elements.
b. Existing roof panels were re-used as terrace structure, framing for storage units, roof for covered parking, deck material on terrace, and fencing.
c. Existing tongue-and-groove roof sheathing was re-milled for soffit material, flooring, and baseboard and door trim.
d. Existing roof membrane was re-used as covered parking roofing material.
e. Existing roof joist/truss lumber was re-used as covered parking framing material, exposed stair framing lumber, planter boxes, and accent trim materials.
f. Our philosophy on this project was to re-use, re-purpose, or recycle as many existing materials as possibly/practical into the new building. Typically more energy is required for the manufacture and delivery of materials on a new building than the building will require to operate for its entire life. We attempted to limit the energy footprint in the construction and operation elements of our building. I could go on and on, but these are the highlights
3. Use all local/sustainably-harvested lumber.
4. All exterior walls and ceiling truss spaces are netted and filled with blown cellulose insulation.
5. All heating sources are high efficiency gas-fired furnaces and boilers with heat recovery ventilators to add fresh air into the spaces without losing heat.
6. Smart framing to minimize materials and maximize insulation values on exterior walls.
7. All native plants in the landscaped areas with irrigation from an existing on-site well.
8. Recycled all scrap building materials during construction: a) ground drywall b) all wood and brush scraps were used for firewood or mulch c) recycled cardboard, steel, and bottles & cans. d) all metals(steel, copper, & aluminum) were recycled or re-used.
9. Low-flow plumbing fixtures.
10.Low wattage lighting with dimmers and motion sensors to lower usage.
11.All low v.o.c. paints and stains.
12.High content recycled carpet and formaldehyde free bamboo flooring.
13.High-efficiency windows.
14.Recycled paper counter tops and butcher block counter tops made from existing roof framing members.
15.All Energy Star appliances.
16.All existing batt insulation stored and re-used in interior fire assemblies.
17.All residential kitchen and bathroom cabinet faces and boxes are made from existing roof framing material.
As you can tell, I’m proud of my brother and this amazing facility that he developed. We need more common sense sustainable building projects to show how the process really does make sense.
I love to see creative design and a house shaped like an egg qualifies. It appears that it was built with sprayed concrete over plywood forms.
So those views seem a bit odd, but the finished photos show a beautiful and unique design.
More info about this wonderful little space is here. Life is good. We get to build fun stuff…maybe not quite as fun as an egg house, but enjoyable nonetheless. If you’re a construction professional, take some time today to be grateful for working in a job when you get to build things.
Whenever I hear someone on the jobsite using the wrong units (they say pounds of air pressure when they mean psi or they say BTUs when they mean BTUs/hour or BTUs/sec), I think two things. One, they don’t really understand what they are talking about. Two, they will be making some mistakes due to that misunderstanding that could be easily avoided. Pet Peeve alert! Learn and use the correct units. It will make you look smarter and save you some aggravation.
So how does energy differ from power? Energy is the ability to do work. 1 BTU heats 1 pound of water 1 degree Fahrenheit. It takes energy to drive your car, heat your house, or charge your battery. Another example: 1 KiloWatt-hour of energy lights a 100 Watt bulb for 10 hours.
I think of power, on the other hand, as capacity. Power is the rate at which energy is used. BTUs/hour, Horsepower and KiloWatts are are units of power. That light bulb has the capacity to use 100 Watts, it’s level of power is 100 Watts. The Formula One race car has the capacity of delivering 1000 HP, while a Ford Pinto powers along at 88 HP. The Formula One race car can use energy faster than the Ford Pinto (unless the Pinto is exploding from a rear collision, then that’s a different calculation).
So let’s do a quick calculation to compare the gasoline usage of the Formula One vehicle and the Pinto. We can easily find that gasoline has an energy value of 125,000 BTUs.
So the energy is in the gasoline (and yes, I know a Formula One doesn’t run on gasoline), but the power is the capacity either vehicle has to use that energy over time. When trying to remember the units, the little graphic above about power (having a W) and watts is helpful.
Since I’m working on some solar energy projects, let’s try an example from that field. The sun’s energy on a given surface is called the irradiance. So that’s the energy portion. The power portion is radiation. The radiation is the irradiance measured over time (just like power is energy measured over time). Solar radiation data is measured in KiloWatt-hours per square meter per day. From solar radiation charts, we find a horizontal plane in Harrisburg PA in March gets an average of 3.3 KiloWatt-hours per square meter per day.
To recap, the most common energy units are BTUs, KiloWatt-hours while the power units are BTUs/hour, Horsepower and KiloWatts. The rest of the conversion units are also available on this site.
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Ned Pelger's blog on construction, design and other weirdness. Email him at ned@constructionknowledge.net
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