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The pink paint man
So there I was stuck in traffic and noticed a survey crew (two person) doing a topo along a sidewalk and curb. One guy ran the rover rod and took the shot. The other guy’s job was to put a blotch of pink paint where the shot was taken. It looked like a measles outbreak.
(a) Leaving a trail of pink paint dots along the sidewalk is not professional. (b) You don’t need pink dots to tell you where you took the shot if you are working methodically, and therefore efficiently. (c) If in doubt you could always look at the display screen, assuming you have modern equipment.
Rant over.
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42 Replies
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I’ve seen it too many times to count. Makes people mad as all get out.
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This irritates the H E double hockey sticks out of me! Grrrr
I was taught to 1) pay attention and 2) if something needs to be marked, use keel.
We see this a lot here in Austin it and I can’t stand how ugly it looks not to mention how unprofessional it comes across to the general public. As surveyors, we’re already visible enough, no need to put paint everywhere to draw attention to your work.
End rant
T. Nelson – SAM, LLC -
Chalk works well on hard surfaces and goes away with the next rain.
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Around here crews (even ours) will paint the point number next to manholes and catch basins in 6-10″ high lettering. I guess they can’t keep things straight in their field notes and need the number on the ground when going back to do invert/flowline measurements.
I never needed to do that, even before I started using the fancy equipment with the colorized map, layers that can be turned on/off, GIS maps, and an internal GNSS receiver in the controller that will give you a half-decent location on the map…
As much as I rant about that, the dots are even dumber. If you can’t keep topo points straight in your head with the aid of your DC, you’re in the wrong profession.
“…people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.” -Neil Postman -
And I’ve seen guys in the woods tie a flag for every single topo shot. Slowest field chief I ever worked with
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Around here crews (even ours) will paint the point number next to manholes and catch basins in 6-10″ high lettering. I guess they can’t keep things straight in their field notes and need the number on the ground when going back to do invert/flowline measurements.
This is when we would use keel. We would write the point number on the lid and the inverts were usually done last so it would last through a day or two until we could get back to that point but not nearly as visible as paint.
T. Nelson – SAM, LLC -
A dot of white paint works equally well and is much less obtrusive. I don’t use it too much, myself. As you all say – work methodically and you don’t really need it. Useful for a rookie until things slow down for them. Having a 2nd guy on hand with nothing more to do than place paint dots is what really gets me in this story. Poor resource management.
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Chalk works well on hard surfaces and goes away with the next rain.
We even used spray chalk for a while. Sometimes we would dip the manholes, mark the depths beside the lid, and then come back through locating them. First rain and the chalk is gone.
Andy
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It’s really not needed if a decent sketch is made, showing the structure, intersection, and the next manholes or CB’s where the pipes connect. Unfortunately, I see too many invert sketches with just the manhole, maybe a north arrow, and pipes stubbing out all over. And I’m asking later, what connects to what?
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What gets me about those topo shot spots is the need to shoot all four corners of a water meter and paint each one, or the necessity to paint the top of curb, flowline, and edge of gutter when one dot would suffice for a series of shots.
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Chalk works well on hard surfaces and goes away with the next rain
Dittos on the chalk.
And, if need be, there are differing colors.
And, if need be, I’ve thought of MAKING a big paint pen, out of 2″ PVC and a slice of paper towels, and a good cotton wrag in the end. Just Fill it will water soluable paint, and make a dot, about an inch in dia. Put a cap on the end, that screws in, and make a 1″ hole it it. Add paint an thinner as needed.
Make a dot as you go. Small, and lasts a few months, till it weathers away.
But, chalk suited me BETTER. So, I never made the big paint pen.
N
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Swapped out the paint can after working in the oil and gas industry, it’s so 1980’s anyway. Painting structures got at least a few crews in trouble around here. I watched one crew scrubbing in front of a building after the irate owner called their shop. I bet they never did that again.
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One thing that’s always irked me is crews that spray paint a dot at every turning point when spirit levelling. Ostensibly it’s so they can use the same turning points on the return leg. Doing so is bad practice as it introduces correlation between the forward leg and return leg. Turning points should be completely random.
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What gets me about those topo shot spots is the need to shoot all four corners of a water meter and paint each one, or the necessity to paint the top of curb, flowline, and edge of gutter when one dot would suffice for a series of shots.
OMG – ???? Now that’s just funny! If I ever see someone doing that I will fire them from whatever company they are working for and make them come work for me until I can work the craziness out of them.
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The only benefit of re-using turning points I see is to localize a blunder if one occurs. I don’t see that re-using them has any effect if you don’t tell the software that they are the same point. And even if you do give them the same point number, why is that bad?
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@bill93 If your level is out of adjustment, you could be, say 1.5′ off at the far end of your loop. Then returning using the same turn points likely will reverse the error you accumulated resulting in a loop that closes flat but with the wrong elevation transferred to the desired location. Balanced legs prevent this error from accumulating but unbalanced legs using the same turn points can cause you not to detect the error in your levels.
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I Hate Pink Paint! Nothing line have a newly constructed project vandalized by someone with little regard.
I would use keel along the gutter line to help me create good triangles when shooting centerline.
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One day we went out an asbuilt water in a plat. The boss was not happy when he had to pay for repainting the fire hydrants. That pretty much cured me of painting everything…that was early on.
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I like to call those paint clouds… There are two kinds of topo surveyors: those that use the map screen and those that don’t.
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Not only is it not necessary and pisses of the world. It is a waste of revenue. Paint is not cheap and neither is the time it takes an employee to do all that marking. I mean who can not remember that they shot the PC, MP and PT of a 5’R return.
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