Sitting here this morning sipping my coffee and looking through my emails, the contractor calls.?ÿ "Something is wrong with your layout, the footing pins don't line up with the stakes".?ÿ Of course, that kicks me into check and rechekd mode.
I recall having had staked this particular house out months ago and a few weeks ago a restake was ordered.?ÿ For the restake, I sat with the Survey Tech I am training to calculate layout.?ÿ The plan was very slightly revised, he set it up according to the revised plan with me sitting right beside him, walking him through the process.?ÿ The house was staked then, I walked him through generating a cut sheet.?ÿ As was great.
After getting the call, I pull up the plot plan, bring in the as staked points and bring in the field locates footing pins set, everything worked within 0.01' to 0.02', thecontractor was on speaker phone with me while I went through the checking process, insisting that my footing pins are off by 0.5', side to side.
I explain to this guy that I am looking at the phisically field located points that were set, overlaid on my calculated locations and they matched well within tolerance, he keeps insisting that I'm wrong because his string line tells him that I am.?ÿ On comes the banging my head on the wall part while trying to get through to this guy who is not having it.
Needless to say, to prove my point that two different crews with two different instruments set the stakes and footing pins, they agree with each other, agree with our survey and agree with other things we have done on the same lot, I now have to send another crew out there to verify what we arleady know.?ÿ I made it clear that he will be billed T & M for this needless effort.?ÿ?ÿ
Nothing like eating up time on stuff like this.
I got a call from a guy that said my 20' offset was wrong; it was at the top of a 1:1 slope...
I went to the site; he hooked his pocket tape to my hub, made his way down the slope, and proceed to tell me; see, it's almost 23 feet!
When I told him it was a horizontal distance, and asked him; what makes you think it is a slope distance? He asked; how am I supposed to measure that!? I asked him; how have you staid in business this long...
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Chris, fill us in with the rest of the story when you feel like it. You know, string lines and 0.5????
A buddy of mine works for a residential foundation contractor and gets to the job with pinned corners. First thing he does is grab whatever someone gave him as the latest plans and starts pulling tape. If it agrees, all is well, and he proceeds.
But sometimes it doesn??t, and it is almost always because the surveyor is working off outdated plans.
Communication is 99% of construction.