Little Giant Ladder

I once carried a ladder, shovel, and rover a quarter mile across a field so I could get across the fence and locate the monuments on the other side. When I got there I realized (a) the gate was not locked, and (b) there was a dirt road on the other side and I could have driven to the monuments.

I have a knock-off that I bought at Sears about 25 years ago. It's a 15' model, and not light nor small enough for me to want to haul around in the truck. It works fine for around-the-house applications, though.

The Little Giants are pricey. Which model did you use?

I'm not sure (borrowed) but, holy heck, you are right. They are hundreds of dollars :-(.

A few weeks ago I had to get over a chain link fence with barbed wire on top (the gate had been unlocked the last time we were there). I found a drainage ditch that goes under the fence so I did that. That ladder would have made it easy but granted there isn't a lot of room in the truck for it.

For Forest work there is hardly ever a fence but sometimes we have to survey fire stations which can be more fences around.

I have been accustomed to jumping fences to gain access to monuments on commercial and industrial sites for years, but lately I've run into several that have motion detectors around the perimeter or cameras linked to their security office. The only thing that wastes more time than getting permission is explaining yourself after you've triggered their alarm system.:-P

I love that the chain link security fence with the barbed wire didn't keep you out because there is a ditch that goes UNDER the fence. Something of a security lapse, what?

Don

Erich and Chris told me they talked to you this morning. Just so you don't think I'm one of those remote-control surveyors that don't go out to the jobs, I got out there about 8:30 and found that the control points closest to our job were wiped out by construction so we had to go a little further out for street monuments. They checked within 0.06' so for staking a setback line for a new bathroom addition, I decided to go with them.

Oh, Dave, BTW, you'll be getting a small invoice because you told me all the centerline pipes would be there in your subdivision and the ones we needed were destroyed. Just kidding.

This is another in a theme of get-it-surveyed-first. The whole point of our being there was that the architect had designed a 9-foot bathroom addition to a house and the property owner wanted it to be 2 feet wider if possible. When we determined the distance from the setback line to the existing house, it was only 7 feet, so not only can the new bathroom not be bigger than they thought, it has to be completely redesigned because a 7-foot-wide bathroom is really not that desirable. As soon as I walked in the office, the phone was ringing. It was the architect claiming that he had gotten the "plot plan" from the County that showed the setback being measured from the curb. I don't know what they gave him but I think he was looking at the right of way line on the assessor's map thinking that was the curb. Duh!! I don't really mean duh because I spent half an hour looking at all the data and maps to make sure I hadn't looked at something wrong, which I'm now 100% sure I haven't.

I told him that in the future, if he ever needs the maps for setbacks and right of way widths, we have those in our computers and hopefully this will be a lesson to him to ask somebody before he assumes things.

Well there are a bunch of white circles out there. I didn't walk up the street in question but I didn't see a white circle down there at the EC so SHOOT I guess a lot of them have been eaten by contractors.

The County does storm drain upgrades and of course the pipe trench has to go right through where the centerline pipe is, it absolutely can't go anywhere else. Hundreds of feet of street either way with no centerline pipes but NOOOO, can't put it there ;-).

Spink did pretty good in the mid-1950s in my experience.

Don I like the padlocked gates and all you have to do is

undo the nuts from the other end of gate where end supports ,slide out the attaching support and swing the gate on the padlocked end....

RADU

I did what annoys me...

I stopped, rolled down my window and talked to them when they were in the middle of the street. Afterwards I thought, I hate it when people do that. I gummed up the traffic on my street so now the neighbors are probably complaining to each other about the idiot in the F150 who stops in the middle of the intersection.

For some reason no matter where I go people think I'm the expert on where everything is in the area although usually I'm hundreds of miles from home (they don't know that). A guy two weeks ago in the hills of San Diego County wanted to know how much to survey a half acre. I have no idea and it seems to me Ian Wilson said some of those areas in the hills are a real mess. I told him I work for the State, get out the yellow pages and call a local surveyor.

Like has been said already, they are heavy. I would never use one in the field. The old TV commercials where the guy is setting it up in all kinds of configurations are misleading. The guy doing it must be a serious strong man. I used one at Taso's house one day and it about wore me out to set it up in the upside down V configuration.
I did appreciate the width of the rungs however. It was a lot easier on the foot arches than regular ladders. That was good sense I was working on the vaulted ceiling of his sitting room stripping wall paper and patching sheet rock.

Don I like the padlocked gates and all you have to do is

I had to do that once when my I-man and I (as well as our truck) got locked into a construction site at the end of the day.

One guy held the flashlight while the other worked on the bolts.

I did what annoys me...

> A guy two weeks ago in the hills of San Diego County wanted to know how much to survey a half acre. I have no idea and it seems to me Ian Wilson said some of those areas in the hills are a real mess. I told him I work for the State, get out the yellow pages and call a local surveyor.

You work for the State....hell-o it should be free then.