Thursday, May 10, 2012

Questions

Perhaps I should answer some questions tonight here in the main blog....   If things go as they are scheduled, the completion of the house should be the second or third week in July.  The contractor begins to loose money if the build is drawn out beyond his scheduled dates.

If even one sub fails to complete his work on time, then that puts the next sub off in his scheduled arrival date.  That causes a domino effect as all work from that point on is delayed.    When subs have to go on to other jobs to fill in, then you have to wait for them to become free again to circle back to your job.

This becomes a big hairy mess for the job foreman.....  The good part of this is that the construction company has many houses sold this year, so these subs are working almost totally for our company.  But it still becomes a giant mess.

The dry wall contractors were about a week behind their scheduled arrival, and the foreman didn't take my call when I inquired as to where we were.  All I needed was to be told that we are behind about sooooo much....  I would have been good with it from there.  Again, I have more time that they do because they are paying the construction interest bill and not me....  I understand that the finish crew began to mud and tape the walls and the painters are in the wings now.

About the air conditioning for Speedy, it is no longer common practice in most Arizona communities to allow the AC units to be mounted on the roofs of new construction.  The evaporative  coolers that were used years ago have a nasty habit of rusting themselves out in a fairly short period of time.  Therefore, housing associations now for the most part, prohibit them from usage.

Even in older sections of town, the so called swamp coolers are being replaced with normal freon compressor units, even though they are still mounted up on top of peoples roofs.   While they still aren't particularly good looking, they are not rust buckets...  So swamp coolers are out!

Our day here included my younger son and I riding the scooters up 10 miles back into the older part of town where he needed to renew his motorcycle driving license.  Since he had allowed the old one to lapse, he had to do the driving part, and our little red 200 Kymco was just the ticket for the cone weave part of the skills.  That took about 2 hours or more to actually ride.  But we were in preparation and after ride discussion for a couple of hours more.  He passed on the very first try!

Grandma had one of the grand children here for most of the day, so she was loaded with responsibilities like going off to McDonalds to play in the play zone.....   Tough work, but someone has to do it!

And for Upriverdavid, try using gasbuddy.com for finding the cheapest gas or diesel prices in a particular area.   I just enter the zip code of the campground that I am traveling to and it returns the local prices.   Stopping thru a larger town on the way, enter its name and bingo those prices are displayed as well.  And best of all there is the phone App that is available for Android, and though I haven't tried, I'll bet its also available for the Iphone too.

Retired Rod

4 comments:

  1. Hi Rod..I live in the Glacier Peak Wilderness in Wa..No cell service..28K internet.I use tracfone for my cell when we travel...So you know my limitations. When I am on the road and find good service, I'd rather read all you bloggers and use the tools you have on your sites to find campgrounds and fuel prices. It's much more entertaining! I enjoy reading everyone's posts!
    Thanks to all of you!
    Upriverdavid

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks for that information. I was raised in West Texas and I remember the "Swamp Coolers" When I was a Drill Instructor at Ft Bliss we had a water cooled AC unit and it would get down right cold at night!! I could not believe how cold those things would get.
    Good looking digs there. Maybe Sherri and I can come and see you next year.

    Joe and Sherri

    ReplyDelete
  3. Had a really horrendous storm go through yesterday. 50 mph winds, small hail, rain. We survived just fine so hope your house did also. One mobile home near 60 and Ironwood was blown to pieces. Nobody hurt though.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I've heard of Swamp Coolers but have never seen one. Never a need for one of those up here on the coast. Great idea to go for a ride on the scooters before the cone test. I didn't and knocked the last 2 cones over (years ago) but the tester just laughed at me, rolled his eyes and passed me anyway!

    ReplyDelete

Anonymous comments had to be eliminated.... For the most part this has removed unwanted responses.. If you can't post your comments, please email me and we will make other arrangements...