40,000 POINTS - CONSTRUCTION STAKING $?

Sorry...Kent*

yeah,

I think the farmer's ingenuity approach would be profitable. However, once I start building the units, some guy will come along, buy one and start using it for boundary work.

sigh.

I'd have to first suggest this to see if it met their requirements.

Making some assumptions that the site is already level and you are not providing elevations.

40,000 points on a 10' pattern would be 2000'x2000'.

This only works if the pattern is divisible by 2.5'.

Rent a farmer with a tractor with RTK Autosteer on it with a 16 row 30" corn planter. Take the openers and closing wheels off whatever rows are not needed, so it would make 4 marks, or cover 40'/pass. Make 50 passes each direction to make an X at each location. That's roughly 38 miles of driving + turning. Would go slow, maybe 2mph to increase accuracy, so it would take 19 hours to cover it, plus whatever time it would take to turn on the ends, get off and take a leak, stop and eat, etc. He would be covering 184 acres, custom planting rates around $16/ac., ~$3000. Make it $6000 for his trouble. If they want nails, drive nails at the X's. Keep the rest of the money. Probably be as accurate as a tape.

Could come up with something other than a corn planter to get the right spacing, but about every farmer around here would have a planter.

Only works if it's already level, and the accuracy is 2-3 inches.

@ $1.26/pt. you would still have materials (MAG/whisker) being 25%-30% of that bid, correct?

> lets assume hypothetically - you have been asked to set 40,000 points- specs call for setting a pk nail with whiskers/bluetop for a solar panel farm- site would obviously be cleared- account for material costs on the pk's.
> Hypothetically, we didnt get the job based on our number.
> How do would you bid? Figure number of minutes per point to stake and STORE the set position?
> Anyone care to estimate their time per point?

I didn't get a chance to read all the posts and your responses yet, but the requirement for a "whisker", doesn't that usually imply setting to grade? Or, is that just so they're visible?

Otherwise, it sounds doable in 80 days (500 points/day) but with a three person crew, so closer to $3.00 - $4.00 per point, or $120,000 - $150,000.

Takes a tough crew

> The up/down would absolutely be a crew killer for that many points. :excruciating:

I'd make a gadget to set the nail and whisker from a standing position. I've never made one, but it shouldn't be that hard to fabricate something that would work.

The nail and whisker alone damn near cost that.

Even if the money was good, as a solo I don't think I good do it. 40,000 times the same thing over and over and over.................. I'd loose my mind.

Why not just program it up and hand the contractor a RTK GPS if that will set the points within spec. Then there wouldn't be all those points out there getting run over to install the thing.

Is this set out a joke? Maybe a grid at say every 5 or 10 points.

Are they looking for anchor bolts?

I got $20 on Dave! Dial in the line and the pace and there will be no wait time. 2 guys bustin' ass, all day long!

> I got $20 on Dave! Dial in the line and the pace and there will be no wait time. 2 guys bustin' ass, all day long!

After thinking about that one off and on all day, I'm of the opinion that if I were doing that job I'd make a custom chain out of small-gauge stainless steel cable with graduations at only 10 ft. intervals (or whatever the grid interval turns out to be) so that you could stretch the cable for a couple of hundred feet between surveyed points and just walk down it stabbing nails and whiskers without even bending down. For the graduations, I'd think about something chosen for visibility at standing height. It's an interesting problem, but having the line and distance visible for ten or twenty points at a time has to beat robotic hunt and peck.

A more productive variation would be to attach the custom chain to stakes that got driven into the ground to hold the chain taut as TWO people drove nails and whiskers along it, working from both ends.

In 20 years or so, I will invent a nice little machine that I can load with a digitized stakeout plan, that will only need to be uploaded with hubs/nails, lath/whiskers, ink, and electricity at the end of every 23 hour and 59 min work day! Then I will do it for $1 a point($2 a point with inflation), no problem. As a party cheif/rodman, if I could make that kind of money over the course of the whole year, with a 40,000 point load, my life would be made! In some states you don't have to be licensed to construction stake! Screw the money, I prefer free time! I hear that all this changes once you become professional. Is that true?

> I hear that all this changes once you become professional. Is that true?

Well, probably the most important element of professional practice is using means that are appropriate to the desired ends. From the original poster's description, the exercise isn't that much unlike setting nails to mark where fence posts will be placed. That is, the nail and whiskers just mark where the auger for the pier hole will be centered and once it starts to turn, the nail and whiskers are history.

In the finished installation, the important elements are that the lines of columns supporting the solar panels look straight to the eye (just like fence posts). If you can do that more efficiently with a stretched cable than some robotic hunting and pecking, the professional solution is to use the cable. What you think your services are worth is, of course, up to you.

10-4 Kent,

I just like playing the devil's advocate. I was taught that way.

I would rather pay 2 guys to bust their butt all day, then pay them to sit there 9/10ths of the day with their thumb up their ars.

Cheers mate!