Evolve or die, I was not evolving set in my ways, complaining about the situation but never thinking of a solution, just resisting the change that was facing me.
Not a good business model, while this seems to be the theme with the government agencies I deal with the small businesses like me are changing every year, hell, every month, that goes by.
The smack to the head came about 2 weeks ago, I complained to a good customer that this 48 hours turn around is difficult. They responded to my complaint. They took their business elsewhere and I immediately noticed.
I reached out to them and asked why they were not ordering from me, the answer was short and sweet, "You complained that 2 day turn around is too hard".
Damn, I owned myself.
I did not immediately reply, I instead, thought about the problem I had and what a solution would be. I have the people in place to actually make 24 hour turn around happen, why am I not doing that?
This business has changed drastically in the last 10 years, email, electronic signatures etc.. has all made things that would take days to do happen in hours even minutes. I needed to evolve and I needed to do it fast!!
What do I need to do this? How can I accomplish this?
I then emailed back and informed them they misunderstood me, they did I was only complaining. I pointed out I was making their deadlines so there was not a problem I was just not comfortable with the short deadlines.
After tossing some idea around in my head, I jumped off a cliff and further responded to my customer:
As a matter of fact, after you email I had been pondering how I can get you surveys faster than you need them. I am in the process of rolling out a system where you will be able to get your product in 24 hours if needed.
Then they started to order from me again, and man the orders cam pouring in, I got a good client back! Much needed in this time of uncertainty. When the Fed bumped up a quart point in September I noticed house sales slowed a lot, the stupid builders missed the memo and have kept be really busy for the last couple of months as they seemed to kick on an afterburner.
This is not good as they are creating a huge inventory with slow buyers. My work for actual home sales has dropped off drastically. With this second hike last week I am expecting a VERY slow January. This may be the bucket of water tossed on the housing market.
So you may ask, how did we evolve? Great question!! I picked up some new toys, first and most important I added on a new cel phone with 4g wireless hot spot activated. I now have a wireless network in my work truck.
Then I purchased this laptop, perfect for the field, a refurbished Panasonic Toughbook, with all the software I need for work. It is like I am sitting at my desktop when using this laptop. I even uploaded the software I need to make my field data collector talk to it so I can email data points to my drafter, this was a huge problem and bottle neck for me before.
(https://photos.smugmug.com/General-Pics/n-PspN3q/i-98Z4n6Z/0/d0ec471e/L/i-98Z4n6Z-L.jpg)
This thing is a beast, I think I can use it as a bulletproof shield too.
(https://photos.smugmug.com/General-Pics/n-PspN3q/i-5S79Rks/0/42f1895e/L/i-5S79Rks-L.jpg)
Then I decided to completely change how we gather field notes, I picked up a reMarkable tablet, they are expensive ($600) but so simple and made for one task that it does extremely well, worth it. Once complete I can transfer the field noted to the Toughbook as well including them in the email with the points.
The reMarkable is really cool. It only responds to stylus touches to dragging your hand or a template across does nothing. We LOVE it.
(https://photos.smugmug.com/General-Pics/n-PspN3q/i-rRjCqx2/0/ba899651/L/i-rRjCqx2-L.jpg)
Now we roll up to a job site, take the notes on the digital tablet, then shoot the job in collecting the points on our windows mobile device, once back in the truck we fire up the wifi and laptop, transfer the points to the laptop and meail them to the drafter who is waiting for that data to finish the job, he has already started the drafting early in the morning when we leave and just needs our data to complete.
By the time I arrive to the office the drafting is complete and I am just checking it.
Boom!
We told this one client what we were doing. We will roll this out next month to all our clients. This will put us way ahead of our competitors and make our days way more efficient.
Evolve or die.
It also sounds like it will be more efficient for you and lighten your work load too, sounds like a good move and all it cost was some depreciable assets - well done!
Smart move 4.gif.
Quote from: MiniDave on December 26, 2018, 02:39:07 PM
It also sounds like it will be more efficient for you and lighten your work load too, sounds like a good move and all it cost was some depreciable assets - well done!
Expense for this setup was paid for the first day in the field.
Quote from: 94touring on December 26, 2018, 02:53:33 PM
Smart move 4.gif.
Tanks!
I had no choice, we have to adapt. Everything is changing.
Good on ya for doing this! It was really interesting to read your story. Did you know there is a whole industry made up of people who are paid by companies to figure out how to do stuff more quickly and efficiently? Companies struggle at doing this themselves due to the "That's how we've always done it" mentality. Somebody brought in from the outside can usually see what people internally have become blind to.
I know you saved a TON of coin figuring it out yourself! Have you calculated not just the time saved, but how much money that equals saved for your business?
BTW, those toughbooks are rugged. We used those in deployed environments in the AF. 4.gif
Quote from: MiniGene on December 28, 2018, 08:52:42 AM
Good on ya for doing this! It was really interesting to read your story. Did you know there is a whole industry made up of people who are paid by companies to figure out how to do stuff more quickly and efficiently? Companies struggle at doing this themselves due to the "That's how we've always done it" mentality. Somebody brought in from the outside can usually see what people internally have become blind to.
I know you saved a TON of coin figuring it out yourself! Have you calculated not just the time saved, but how much money that equals saved for your business?
BTW, those toughbooks are rugged. We used those in deployed environments in the AF. 4.gif
I will answer more thoroughly over the weekend, I have not calculated the costs. I only know one thing, as far as I know, I am the only surveyor around here offering this service. THAT was my motivation, to offer something no one else is offering.
We put it to the test today, let me get a few fires put out and I can tell a story.
I get an email before 8 this morning from a very good customer.
She forgot to order a survey and the closing was today at 11:00.
I informed her we would practice our new setup on her.
I had one another job before hers then had to stop at City to drop surveys off to the inspection dept*, then finally arrived at the house at 9:45.
I email my drafter Scott the file before I left the office this morning, he was drafting up the platted lot and title block while we were driving there.
At 10:05 we were done measuring the house, I turned on my wifi and send Scott the house notes straight from the reMarkable device, then we set up the instrument and shot it in.
10:15 we were done shooting it in, I downloaded the points and emailed them to Scott and drove to the next house we had to work at, it was a 15 minute drive away.
10:30 Scott sends me an email that says,"Done Motherfucker"
I grab the laptop and head to the porch of the house, it was new construction so no one in it. I check over the drawing real fast, Scott is thorough and requires little review. 10:40 I am emailing the completed survey in PDF format to my customer.
Backing up a little, the realtor showed up with the buyers to do a final walk through before heading to the closing. They arrived at 10:00.
The realtor, like 90% of woman realtors was a chubby middle aged fucking bitch. Instead of being nice, she comes at us like a raging asshole.
"Who are you and why are you on this property?" is the first thing out of her mouth, no good morning no hello nope, straight to bitch. We have tape measure in our hands there is an orange safety cone behind my truck, there is no way in hell we looked seedy.
Mike ignored her, I never looked at her and did not initially respond to her, I just recited a bunch of numbers to Mike I had in my head as she had walked up and interrupted us.
Once Mike had his numbers, I did not stop measuring, I just said to her while measuring a wall, Nancy thought the bank ordered the survey, she realized this morning there was no survey, I am rushing it for her. It will be there for the closing. Then I turned to Mike and said 12 feet, and was measuring the next wall, she yells back at me, NOT 12 its closing at 11!! In a very nasty voice.
Mike was closer to her at this point, he looks at her and points to the wall, and says to her, "No, this wall is 12 feet long and yes, your closing is at 11." Then walked away from her, I was already gone.
As we were emailing the notes to Scott I could hear the bitch on the phone calling the title company to complain to Nancy about the survey not being done.
I emailed Nancy already and warned her about the meltdown. She had the receptionist take a message. LMAO!!
I fucking hate realtors.
* Like most government offices this one is stuck in the 80's. What could be accomplished with a simple email cannot. We have to drive there, walk in and put a hard copy of the survey in a basket for them to take it out of. The same way they have been doing it for 40 years now. I once asked why they do not go to email and save everyone time and help stop wasting gas etc.. The man behind the counter proudly said it would never work he only checked his email once every few days. Oh the irony!!
Quote from: Whee on December 28, 2018, 11:40:52 AM
@Jims5543. Very cool. Thanks for sharing your story! Remember, you'll need to reinvent something else soon too as the world changes!
@MiniGene "Did you know there is a whole industry made up of people who are paid by companies to figure out how to do stuff more quickly and efficiently? " That exactly describes what I sell :)
I have to do it again this next year, with Win7 being phased out I am being forced onto Win10.
Much of my software is not compatible with Win10, while it sort of works, it is unstable and prone to crashing. The Cadd software crashes in a spectacular manner corrupting the .dwg file and rendering it unusable, ever again.
We already changed our accounting over to freshbooks. I will start shopping next year for new cadd software. What grinds my gears is that everything is subscription based. During the housing crash and subsequent years and years of the economy never taking back off, what saved me was low overhead.
Once I go subscription based I am already planning on just going full cloud based with my business. No need for a physical office. I can get rid of this commercial space I rent and run my entire business off a laptop in a coffee shop if I needed to.
I have also toyed with a mobile office, getting a Ford Transit van and setting up an office in it, getting rid of my actual office and current work truck, then using the van as a roving office.
I have lots and lots of idea rattling around this head.
If the economy tanks again I am very sure I will be getting rid of the commercial office space.
If you do that, where will Scott base himself?
Quote from: MiniDave on December 28, 2018, 12:14:14 PM
If you do that, where will Scott base himself?
This is another think outside the box moment. Scott does not sit in my office.
Scott was almost killed 2 years ago by some hack doctors doing a quad bypass on him. He is disabled now and will probably die in about 10-15 years from now. Scott is only 45 years old. He is a candidate a heart transplant, once that happens a 10 year clock starts ticking that signifies his life expectancy. 10 years is what a typical heart transplant recipient has to live. So every year he can stave that off, is another year added to his life.
Scott is my BIL (our wives are sisters) he used to work for me before the housing crash, he worked for me for 9 years, came on board knowing nothing, in 5 years was running my company.
After all the heart problems 2 years ago he was just sitting home, I was talking to him at a family function and he told me he is losing his mind out of boredom.
We hatched this idea he would help me with drafting, I purchased a nice laptop, loaded it up with software and handed it to him.
I pay him for his efforts, in return he uses his mind and is not losing it anymore.
I send him emails either in the evening or early in the morning with the work I need help on. If there is a rush job like this one I give him a heads up so he knows what is going on.
I asked if he wanted more work and he is all for it. It is not stressful at all and he rather enjoys the distraction.
Sounds like a great partnership!
Quote from: Whee on December 28, 2018, 11:40:52 AM
@MiniGene "Did you know there is a whole industry made up of people who are paid by companies to figure out how to do stuff more quickly and efficiently? " That exactly describes what I sell :)
Whee, after seeing the front of your house in the picture MiniDave posted, business must be good! 71.gif Ever think of setting up a San Diego division? I've been toying with getting a Six Sigma cert to help my job prospects out here.
Jim, this entire story is really satisfying! I'm glad that it's working out great for your business. I hope your upgrades go smoothly (even though, working in IT I know hope doesn't mean sheet! Back up all you can! LOL!) How much of your business is walk-in related or from people seeing your business name on your storefront? If your answer is nil, I'd drop it like it's hot and go 100% cloud and mobile!
Jim,
I was like you a few years back not wanting to deal with the expectations of the next generation of customers finally decided to evolve. We are on the third evolution since then.
we moved processes in-house that were outsourced for a faster turnaround. Got a landline that will accept text messages and photos. Have online payment options.
Most recently a complete website redesignhttps://bendrvrepair.com/ (https://bendrvrepair.com/) all of this has cost over 100k but we've made it back and business is good.
website analytics show over 200 calls a month made right from the mobile site call button the phone was slow before the redesign and mobile-friendly site.
I'm always up in the air if I want to keep evolving or scale back on good days it's easy to get pumped up and want to go big then other times I'd just as soon close it up or put it up for sale... But what would we do then?
Bingo Jeff!! Many of my clients are very old and a new crop is coming up to take their places, they want more tech and less fuss.
You seem to have solved that problem and like you, sometimes I want to expand, other times I just want to downsize to a 2 person company (with Scott drafting as 3rd since he is a sub) get rid of the overhead of the office, receptionist (Dori) etc.. and not stress so much.
to answer your question I do not need to have an office space, I get zero walk in clients. I occasionally have a client need to pick up an hard copy of a survey, alternative arrangements could easily be made. There is no reason for a proper commercial space anymore, most of my competitors work from their homes. Many break local community rules regarding that, as in, no employees can report to your home for work, no clients may arrive at your home for any reason. Everyone knows those rules are being broken every day and no one enforces those rules. That is what I am competing with, I used to be proud I have a legitimate office space except no one seems to care, they only want the piece of paper at a reasonable price and fast. My office costs me about $3000 a month to keep. Is it worth it? That is something I am contemplating now, I see no reason to keep it beyond 2019. Come 2020 I may close it.
Internets....Another evolve or die moment.
Since the days of the yellow pages, I have always had enough or more business to make me happy. The yellow pages rep would be dumbfounded when I told them I was not interested in a bold ad that would place me above my competitors. Word of mouth is gold and I had so many great clients that I did not ever need to advertise.
As the age of internet took off, I have had the same mindset, I have no website, do not need one, except now, I am thinking I cam make a website work for me. So that is my mission this year.
I am exploring a streamlined ordering process online (right now all orders are send via email) where a client punches in the information I need, then the website / server, assigns a PO or Job#, generates an invoice and I have the order sitting in a folder ready to be printed, possibly a text message sent an order was placed with the address of the property and due date.
If certain criteria is met, i.e. size of property, location of property etc.. then the invoice will generate, if not then a notification will be sent that the order is received and an invoice will arrive shortly.
I am also toying with a app for a smart phone too. My goal is to make it as easy as possible to order from me.
That takes me full circle back to the office space, one I have a website doing a lot of the work for me, assigning project numbers, invoicing and alerting me when an order comes in, I see no need to have a traditional office anymore.
In 2010 I was trying to go paperless, the tech was not there yet, now it is so I am revisiting that this year.
Quote from: Whee on January 01, 2019, 10:58:54 AM
I was in San Diego just before Christmas for business! I did Six Sigma a while back, as well as Lean and 7 step. I'm not sure the Six Sigma certification itself actually helped me much, but what I learned during the projects I had to run certainly did!
I was very lucky getting into the business I did. I came to the States with about $200 and one suitcase (the rest of my worldly goods were 3 cars I left behind in England). It was at the beginning of the .com boom and I got hired by Microsoft in a low-level job - about the only large company that would hire someone without a degree. I wasn't early enough for the famous Microsoft stock options, but I'm not complaining at all - I made a 17 year career of it there. I'll pm you to see if any of my connections in IT could be helpful.
Whee, I got your PM and replied. Thanks!! Your migration to the states must have been an exciting one. That takes some b*lls to do something like that with only that amount.
Quote from: Jims5543 on December 31, 2018, 09:08:05 AM
Bingo Jeff!! Many of my clients are very old and a new crop is coming up to take their places, they want more tech and less fuss.
You seem to have solved that problem and like you, sometimes I want to expand, other times I just want to downsize to a 2 person company (with Scott drafting as 3rd since he is a sub) get rid of the overhead of the office, receptionist (Dori) etc.. and not stress so much.
to answer your question I do not need to have an office space, I get zero walk in clients. I occasionally have a client need to pick up an hard copy of a survey, alternative arrangements could easily be made. There is no reason for a proper commercial space anymore, most of my competitors work from their homes. Many break local community rules regarding that, as in, no employees can report to your home for work, no clients may arrive at your home for any reason. Everyone knows those rules are being broken every day and no one enforces those rules. That is what I am competing with, I used to be proud I have a legitimate office space except no one seems to care, they only want the piece of paper at a reasonable price and fast. My office costs me about $3000 a month to keep. Is it worth it? That is something I am contemplating now, I see no reason to keep it beyond 2019. Come 2020 I may close it.
Internets....Another evolve or die moment.
Since the days of the yellow pages, I have always had enough or more business to make me happy. The yellow pages rep would be dumbfounded when I told them I was not interested in a bold ad that would place me above my competitors. Word of mouth is gold and I had so many great clients that I did not ever need to advertise.
As the age of internet took off, I have had the same mindset, I have no website, do not need one, except now, I am thinking I cam make a website work for me. So that is my mission this year.
I am exploring a streamlined ordering process online (right now all orders are send via email) where a client punches in the information I need, then the website / server, assigns a PO or Job#, generates an invoice and I have the order sitting in a folder ready to be printed, possibly a text message sent an order was placed with the address of the property and due date.
If certain criteria is met, i.e. size of property, location of property etc.. then the invoice will generate, if not then a notification will be sent that the order is received and an invoice will arrive shortly.
I am also toying with a app for a smart phone too. My goal is to make it as easy as possible to order from me.
That takes me full circle back to the office space, one I have a website doing a lot of the work for me, assigning project numbers, invoicing and alerting me when an order comes in, I see no need to have a traditional office anymore.
In 2010 I was trying to go paperless, the tech was not there yet, now it is so I am revisiting that this year.
I told yellow pages to fuck right off a long time ago their fees were/are stupid expensive. Our phone book is about like a magazine thickness these days so I guess I'm not the only one.
we work on word of mouth as well but I wouldn't compare a website to the phone book at all very different in what it can and will do for you. I won't say I couldn't survive without one but things are much better with the website and if you don't need more business so what just cherry pick the best jobs we've always been busy but being busy and making money are not always the same thing. We have our website company push the areas that we want more work and it works it also can w help discourage the type of jobs we don't want our web gal is amazing if you don't know anyone I can send you her info.
We went mostly paperless and went back it's just easier to have certain things in hard copy right on the desk in front of me. Our customers do however have the option of paperless.
I have also noticed a shift in our vendors starting to no longer accept credit cards or most online pay and requesting a good ole paper check I guess they are tired of the fees/other problems. I get 5% off if I pay with a check to my biggest supplier that adds up.
It's almost strange to me that with all the ways to pay and tech stuff that paper is alive and well swift steel only accepts cash and check they are the biggest steel supplier in the area millions a month but imagine the fees they save I guess I get it.
We are still using much less paper though. I refuse to go to online QuickBooks unless our internet becomes way more stable we invoice from it and it needs to be reliable we also have several add-on's that don't play well with online. So cloud-based is still out for us, for now.
Quote from: Whee on January 01, 2019, 10:58:54 AM
Quote from: MiniGene on December 29, 2018, 07:43:05 PM
Quote from: Whee on December 28, 2018, 11:40:52 AM
@MiniGene "Did you know there is a whole industry made up of people who are paid by companies to figure out how to do stuff more quickly and efficiently? " That exactly describes what I sell :)
Whee, after seeing the front of your house in the picture MiniDave posted, business must be good! 71.gif Ever think of setting up a San Diego division? I've been toying with getting a Six Sigma cert to help my job prospects out here.
Jim, this entire story is really satisfying! I'm glad that it's working out great for your business. I hope your upgrades go smoothly (even though, working in IT I know hope doesn't mean sheet! Back up all you can! LOL!) How much of your business is walk-in related or from people seeing your business name on your storefront? If your answer is nil, I'd drop it like it's hot and go 100% cloud and mobile!
I was in San Diego just before Christmas for business! I did Six Sigma a while back, as well as Lean and 7 step. I'm not sure the Six Sigma certification itself actually helped me much, but what I learned during the projects I had to run certainly did!
I was very lucky getting into the business I did. I came to the States with about $200 and one suitcase (the rest of my worldly goods were 3 cars I left behind in England). It was at the beginning of the .com boom and I got hired by Microsoft in a low-level job - about the only large company that would hire someone without a degree. I wasn't early enough for the famous Microsoft stock options, but I'm not complaining at all - I made a 17 year career of it there. I'll pm you to see if any of my connections in IT could be helpful.
Since you are not in the line of work I would say no, no one cares if there is an office some of my competitors are working out of their houses and doing fine.
One of the larger companies in the area felt the hit from the 2008-2015 era and pulled back into his home from a office front. Nothing changed for him.
No one cares, they care about 3 things.
1. Can you get it to me fast
2. Can you do it cheap
3. Will it be right.
Breaks every rule in the book, welcome to 2019.
Tomorrow I make the call to the salesman so I can make the jump back into GPS Surveying. I suspended in back in 2008 and hoped to get it back up in a couple of years I never anticipated it would take 10 years to need it again.
I also contact my 2 day a week helper and see if he is interested in coming on full time the first week of March.
Oh, did I mention I hired a guy part time? I did, he has been helping for about 2 months now, he is good, smart, hard working and loves the job. Plus he is super easy to get along with.
I keep bracing for another crash, that just will not happen, I was positive the fed was going to cause a housing crash, they have slowed it down a little but it is still cranking along, I cannot keep this lean anymore, it is impacting me on many levels.
Therefore I am hiring at least one guy if not 2 by summer. Plan is to run 2 crews by summer. Training the new guy to possible run a crew.
Glad business is booming. Jen had 5 job interviews this week, things aren't slow in her field either.
Quote from: 94touring on February 10, 2019, 05:14:45 PM
Glad business is booming. Jen had 5 job interviews this week, things aren't slow in her field either.
Yeah, it has been for a couple of years now, I figured by now the Trump bump would end. It has not and things seem to just be getting more steam. Instead of buying gold and bracing for a hard crash I am investing more into the company in an effort to give myself more freedom.
Life changes:
A month ago, my wife left me.... for a week to be by the side of a good friend who is going through a divorce. The friend invited her to come on a cruise she booked. At first my wife said no, because it would leave a lot on my plate, I convinced her to go, it was the second week of January. I am typically pretty slow in January, yeah... not this year.
Anyway, she went, and I realized half way through the week she was gone, we made our lives way more hectic than it should be. Our younger son is 15 and in 9th grade, he has never stepped foot in a public school. His entire life has been in a Montessori pre school, private primary and private High School. The education he is getting is remarkable and if all goes as planned he will be close to a 2 year degree when he graduated HS.
The problem is, the school he attends is 25 miles away. That is why we purchased he i3, to save on gas as we drive 100 miles a day just getting him to and from school.
The week was an eye opener for me on many levels, one was regarding my relationship with my wife, the other was my relationship with my son and also my approach to my business.
Before the housing crash in '08 I had a right hand man, he ran the place like I was there, therefore I did not have to be there as much. I just had to come in and review everything and sign off on it. If I did not like something either it went back to a drafter, or back in the field then to a drafter. I would come in at 9 am and leave around 4-5 PM M-F.
If I wanted to take a vacation I did, I would spend weeks at my vacation home in NC when I owned it, I would spend a week every year in my Timeshare in Atlantis, my only regret during those years was that I did not head over to Europe at all.
After the crash I put on all the hats, I was running the field crew, I was drafting, I was checking I was researching the jobs and processing the orders. I have a receptionist now (Dori) who does an OK job with the orders and barely acceptable job with research, I typically work on that myself.
I still run the field crew and up until a year ago did 50% of the drafting. Now I farm out 50% of the drafting and my son, who works for me drafts.
After me wife left me for a week I realized I have been in a rut for way too long, I refuse to believe the economy is back and will stay. I have to change that mindset.
Therefore I decided to make some big changes. I was using Nick 1 day a week I added him on to 2 days and I am going to make him full time soon.
Nick and I work on Wednesday together in the field while my son Mike catches up on the drafting in the office.
On Wednesdays, I leave the office at 1:30 in the afternoon, if the weather is nice I grab the E30 or E21 and drive it down to get my 15 y/o from School. I joined him up at the local LA Fitness and we have a racquetball membership. We play for about 30 minutes then we do some circuit training for another 30 then leave for home for the evening.
On Fridays, I send my son Mike out in the field with Nick, it is my day in the office. I take my 15 year old to school in the morning then pick him up in the afternoon heading to the gym again.
Again, if the weather permits, I take one of the fun cars.
My reasoning was, this 5 days a week taking him back and forth is insane, I wanted to give my wife a break from it and in the process spend some time with my son.
When my 26 year old was 12-15 years old we spent a ton of time together, I had lots of free time then because the business was running itself. I have neglected the younger guy due to me being so obsessed with the business. I decided to change that up some. We used to go to the park in the evening to play racquetball except the weather would cause a lot of cancelling and on hot summer nights we were not interested. Now we are indoors in AC and loving it.
Sometimes something shaking up the daily routine is good, makes you open your eyes and look around and realize you are in a rut and need to get out of it.
I took delivery of my new GPS setup Friday morning, did a 1.5 hour training session. Then left right after that to go fix a house stake out I messed up on Thursday. The builder moved the house back 5 feet in the lot.
Office Dori never pulled the old plot plan out of the file, as luck would have it I pulled out the old plot plan and staked the house 5' too far forward.
I took the GPS to the property, located the 4 hubs that were wrong, then calculated them 5' further back and staked them out.
The data collector is a Win10 tablet.
(https://photos.smugmug.com/General-Pics/n-PspN3q/i-jPJqD4q/0/fb1833a1/XL/i-jPJqD4q-XL.jpg)
Fixing the house corners in the field. I guess you could say I hit the ground running.
(https://photos.smugmug.com/General-Pics/n-PspN3q/i-nV4rcN7/0/460f27b2/XL/i-nV4rcN7-XL.jpg)
I sat down last night and played with the tablet some, trying to understand everything. My mission last night was to be able to export the points in a text file format that could easily be imported into my cadd program.
I was able to turn on background mapping that over layed my points on the lot I was staking the house one. Pretty neet!!
(https://photos.smugmug.com/General-Pics/n-PspN3q/i-WgbkSWr/0/343d42c8/XL/i-WgbkSWr-XL.jpg)
Yesterday was a hectic day, as mentioned in the post above, I take my son to and from School on Friday, I left the office with a few files that still needed checking. I grabbed my Toughbook with me. I got to the school 15 minutes early, so I spent that time checking and sending a couple of the jobs. Then we were heading to the barber shop, I worked in the waiting area on another job and got it to 90% complete.
Once home I finished it up and sent it before 5PM since it was due Friday.
(https://photos.smugmug.com/General-Pics/n-PspN3q/i-GdcR8rH/0/1c390c39/XL/i-GdcR8rH-XL.jpg)
I am going to use the GPS some more on Sunday, really trying hard to get confident with this fast. It has been 10 years since I last used GPS, so I am a bit rusty plus the interface is completely different now.
Wow, this is a game changer, I spent the weekend playing with the tablet, since it is the one thing that is so new to me. The actual GPS location surveying stuff, been there done that. Gots me a t-shirt.
The interface.... all new and much different. Actually much easier, I keep expecting it to be more difficult, except it is not, and I cannot believe how simple this all is now. It used to be a battle.
I calculated some point to be set at that job I posted above, but here is the crazy part, something I forgot. Since I am always triangulating with satellites, ground bases GPS stations (up to 3 at a time / I pay $1500 a year to be able to do this) and cellular towers, I can attain millimeter accuracy. I can also just walk up to a job site with my calculated points, let me GPS get synched up (takes about 3-4 minutes) then proceed to just go to my calculated points and set them, no need to set points to use later, to coordinate with. This is something I forgot about an a HUGE game changer.
So this week, when I return to locate the formboards on this job site, I can set the property corners the land clearer wiped out.
(https://photos.smugmug.com/General-Pics/n-PspN3q/i-wvGc638/0/adcce718/X2/i-wvGc638-X2.jpg)
77.gif thats really cool stuff. I'm starting to feel like I'm in the wrong business.
Quote from: jeff10049 on February 24, 2019, 07:06:53 PM
77.gif thats really cool stuff. I'm starting to feel like I'm in the wrong business.
Ironic, that is how I feel.
I have received over 40 orders in 5 days. Wonderful great business is great!! Right, well, it just too much not sure how I am going to meet all the deadlines.
Then today at 12 noon one of my better clients emails, informing me they forgot to tell me their financing is FHA which requires well and septic located on the survey. I was actually glad it was not FHA when I was there because it was an older home and they are a PITA tracking down the well and septic.
They ask how soon I can get back. Decided to push them off to Monday. Wrong answer!! They are closing Monday (of course they withhold this info until it is a problem) so I have to try to get to the property tomorrow and locate it. Problem is it is about 20 miles south of me.....
Wait it gets better....
Another client, that has not used me in years, had be do a survey 20 miles north, I finished it 3 weeks ago, it was a rush job they were closing in 5 days, it too was FHA and I knew when I was there. I located the well and the septic tank but could not determine where the drainfield was and told them that. 3 Weeks later, yes... 3 Weeks later which is today, they email and tell us they have to show the drainfield, they hired a septic company to come out and they need me there NOW (3 PM) to locate it.
I was not in the office I was down getting my son from school.
Then they demand they have a revised survey with the septic drainfield whown by 12 noon Thursday. Fine.. I charged them a trip charge and will head there early tomorrow morning before we start our day.
Tomorrow is going to be interesting.
OH and I have about 12 other jobs to do in the field tomorrow, I am 2 days away from running 2 crews it cannot come fast enough.
2 days into running 2 crews, I am hopeful I will have a life again.
Have a meeting over a pint (my idea) with my big builder at 4 today. We are starting a 200 home subdivision very soon.
Best, idea, ever.
I suggested to the guy that runs the local office of my biggest client we meet up for a pint one afternoon and have a long overdue meeting.
We met up last night, very relaxed, we settled in, hashed out all our talking points, came up with solutions, then sat back and told stories for over an hour.
Cool ass dude, he lives on a boat in the local Marina, actually the Marina was 5 blocks from where we were sitting at the bar.
Learned a lot about him and his family, he did about me and my family. When we were done, he commented that my idea to meet up like that was really cool and we need to come up with some problems so we can do it again soon.
He asked if I wanted to take over all the work in Vero Beach (60 miles away) because he is sick of his surveyor up there and would love for me to take it all over. I declined too far away, I would be spread too thin.
I am nervous over our upcoming project, they purchased 300 lots in a subdivision with an option to buy 300 more, the subdivision will have 3 builders in it, and has over 1200 lots in it.
The problem is, it is 20 miles from my office and a good 40 minute drive one way.
I may be hiring again....
I use to fly with a guy who lived on a 60 foot boat. I nearly bought one and did the same thing.
Sounds like you need more staff.
Quote from: 94touring on March 07, 2019, 03:30:23 AM
I use to fly with a guy who lived on a 60 foot boat. I nearly bought one and did the same thing.
Sounds like you need more staff.
I knew a pilot online that did the same thing. Lived on a sail boat.
He was a triple threat, he was a licensed commercial pilot, licensed and up to date aircraft mechanic and a Paramedic.
He worked for someone very very very wealthy and flew his private jet all over the world when he was needed. Sometimes into remote areas where his last 2 qualifications would be very handy.
He owned a warehouse where kept his Porsche and motorcycle Collection.
I think we will be OK, we are only 4 days into running 2 crews, we are averaging 10-15 jobs a day. We are far ahead of the mortgage clients, so much so we are working on things due Wednesday next week now.
I am a little behind with the builders, every day that gets better, by the end of next week we should be caught up to them.
*edit #2*
I am also considering getting a second GPS unit, it is a huge time saver, I am working alone and can crush the work load. I may put an order in next week.
I need a dedicated hotspot modem to use with my GPS, right now I am using my cel phone with my wifi hotspot turned on.
If I want to send Mike out with it, he will need to take my phone, I would prefer a dedicated wifi hotspot for the modem.
The salesman told me about this item from Verizon. Another surveyor is using it and says it has amazing range.
https://www.verizonwireless.com/internet-devices/verizon-global-modem-usb730l/#sku=sku2540056?cmp=CSE-C-HQ-NON-R-AC-NONE-NONE-2C0PX0-PX-PLA-USB730L&cvosrc=cse.google.USB730L&cvo_crid=198324781386
Did some looking around and found this.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07JWGN9TK/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
(https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/31%2BNPeevyfL.jpg)
It is interesting, it is not actually a hotspot that other devices can connect to, it send the internet through a USB port. No one can see it, it is like a cel phone antennae. Lighting fast though I am ordering a second one today.
This GPS is such a game changer that I ordered a second unit, both crews need to be running on it. I am a little sad after using it. You no longer need to know land surveying to be a land surveyor, any idiot can use this and be damn accurate. It has changed a lot in the last 10 years since I last used it regularly.
What I do love is that once you localize, you are accurate to 0.01' (1/8") or less, I have been seeing 0.005" (1/16") accuracy, this is accuracy on the FACE OF THE EARTH. Once I establish a job on GPS, I can walk back to that exact spot at any time in the future and stake that exact point merely by walking up with the unit and asking it to tell me where the point is.
I do recognize the huge amount of time this is saving and I also see the need for both crews to be on the same page. Therefore, I had to order another unit in order to get there. I am just a tad nervous, as I still need to find my IRA's and April 15th is coming fast. I decided to finance this unit, I hate financing anything, with the plan to pay it off by mid summer.
We are 1 week into running 2 crews, there have been some hiccups. i.e. I left the GPS software open all weekend on the tablet, when I got to my first job Monday, the battery was at 6% and fading. my day was cut short due to a dead battery, complete avoidable. I also have an inverter built into the Fj Cruiser, if I had the charger with me I could have plugged in between jobs. I owned myself on Monday.
We are tearing through the orders like no tomorrow. In another week we will be so caught up I expect we will be going out the next day on all orders coming in. Which is what I am after.
Anyone can use it, it's that easy? Great, can I borrow it? ;D ;D ;D ;D
I have a small 2-3 acre I need to sell and I would like to have the accurate plot of it.
Quote from: MiniDave on March 12, 2019, 08:12:02 AM
Anyone can use it, it's that easy? Great, can I borrow it? ;D ;D ;D ;D
I have a small 2-3 acre I need to sell and I would like to have the accurate plot of it.
Yeah, if you saw how much this thing cost you might be a tad bit nervous about playing with it. I am paranoid when using it and about to get insurance on both units next week.
When all is said and done I am into this GPS thing for over 30K. BUT, I see the value in it and the fact that 2 crews running it can do the work of 4 crews if needed.
Our plan right now is to leave around 7:00 each morning and be done by 12 noon all summer so we are not out in the 110° heat index every day.
We are kind of caught up, tomorrow I am taking the FNG out with me for a bit longer day. Friday I am in the office. We are almost caught up.
Quote from: Jims5543 on February 10, 2019, 05:49:46 PM
Life changes:
On Wednesdays, I leave the office at 1:30 in the afternoon, if the weather is nice I grab the E30 or E21 and drive it down to get my 15 y/o from School. I joined him up at the local LA Fitness and we have a racquetball membership. We play for about 30 minutes then we do some circuit training for another 30 then leave for home for the evening.
On Fridays, I send my son Mike out in the field with Nick, it is my day in the office. I take my 15 year old to school in the morning then pick him up in the afternoon heading to the gym again.
My reasoning was, this 5 days a week taking him back and forth is insane, I wanted to give my wife a break from it and in the process spend some time with my son.
Sometimes something shaking up the daily routine is good, makes you open your eyes and look around and realize you are in a rut and need to get out of it.
I have to admit, so many times I want to call my wife and tell her I cannot get off early and to go get the kid instead of me. Then I say to myself, no one ever wishes they worked more.
So I force myself to leave work at 1:30 pm, drive down to get the lad and take him to the gym. We play racquetball for 30 minutes then do some weight training for another 30 minutes.
Some days I take the rest of the day off, others I come back to the office for an hour or two. I am usually back in the office at 4:00 if I need to be back. I am almost done and ready to leave for the day.
Typically I have some work to check in the evening, I break out my laptop at home and go over some jobs later in the evening, usually the 15 y/o is next to me in the kitchen either doing homework or going over something for a test the next day.
So how easy is the GPS to use?
Nick is my new guy, never surveyed before coming to work for me.
I spend 15 minutes this morning showing him the basics of the GPS and the Win10 Tab interface.
Then set him loose all day, he ran the GPS while I worked on drawing up and measuring houses. Which prefer to do alone.
By the end of the day he was proficient running it.
I am pretty sure I could take my 15 year old out and have him run it in the same amount of time. As a matter of fact I am taking him to the 20 acre job tomorrow and plan on letting him run it.
Took delivery of the second GPS unit today, complete game changer. Ironically, the salesman agreed with my sentiment. You no longer need to be a land surveyor to survey land. Any idiot can fire this up and do a good job, it is idiot proof. Which will make my life better as I can monitor the idiots. ;D
That killed 2 hours of my day today, I am WAY behind with a lot of deadlines coming Tues. next week, I am trying to get ahead so I can take a long weekend road trip.
Before... @ around 7:30pm
(https://photos.smugmug.com/General-Pics/n-PspN3q/i-QTBNVbN/0/ad37148f/XL/i-QTBNVbN-XL.jpg)
After.... @ 11:30pm and some whiskey
(https://photos.smugmug.com/General-Pics/n-PspN3q/i-vdwJqDV/0/ca0f098d/XL/i-vdwJqDV-XL.jpg)
Time to get some sleep before the alarm hits at 05:50..
Never assume.
I assumed when I placed an order for 200 pieces of #5 rebar cut in 18" lengths, they would be bundled in manageable amounts, like typically 25 pieces.
How wrong I was, I handed the purchase ticket off to the yard guy, he disappeared in his forklift, then arrived with this.....
(https://photos.smugmug.com/General-Pics/n-PspN3q/i-krKR5wX/0/3aca6b99/XL/i-krKR5wX-XL.jpg)
Lesson learned....
18 March took delivery of second GPS unit.
8 April so caught up to everyone we are a week or more ahead.
Running one crew again tomorrow then 2 again on Wed.
By the end of the week I hope to be beyond a week ahead of my builder.
OK the tablets wee pissing both of us off. They kept turning off the USB port which basically shut off our wireless data. We would have to unplug the wireless cel phone adapter then plug it back in.
Another annoying feature was the tablet going to sleep after 4 minutes. Sometimes you need more than 4 minutes to find a property corner, then you grab the GPS and it is asleep and it takes a couple of minutes to wake it up, connect to the cel network to get GPS data then communicate with satellites and finally start collecting data.
We started diving through the tablets last week and found out we can turn on the USB port so it does not power down until the unit does.
We also changed the power settings so the tablet will not sleep for 20 minutes when I battery.
What a difference, what was 30 minutes a day wasted fighting with the tablet is now productive time. As the 100+ heat index days of sumer slowly approach we are happy to be finishing up earlier.
Man, we are slammed busy, turning away work even with 2 crews.
Still coming to terms with this GPS, I do not know if my salesman is stupid, and my peers the same.
The results we were getting were not impressing me. While just OK for lot surveys and boundary work for mortgages and builders. I was not seeing the precision that was sold to me for tight construction staking.
The salesman was useless as was a friend of mine in the business who just said.. "ooohhh no I would not use GPS for tight work"
I was about to pull the trigger on a 25K robotic instrument, then I got pissed. I just spent close to 50K on something that I was told would do a certain job and it was coming short.
So we changed a few things and to be honest it was eye opening. We most likely were NEVER this accurate when using convention equipment pre-GPS oblivious to that fact.
I changed 3 things.
1. We plumb up the GPS poles every week to make sure the bubble level on them is perfect.
2. We changed the program in the GPS software to give us the ability to collect a random amount of observations then average them. We chose 20, one second observations that are all averaged then stored as onepoint.
3. I purchased two bi-pods for our GPS poles, this takes the last bit of human error out of this entire deal, we plumb up the GPS rod with the bi-pod then collect a 20 second observation.
The results are astounding, we are down to 0.01 to 0.02 feet accuracy. Good enough to do tight stake out work again.
Once again, evolving..
It is insane how busy we are and all my clients are ramping up production.
We are humming along, I fired the useless Marine and I just hired on another new guy, we are running 2 crews solid now. I am amazed we are pumping out more work than 3 crews did in 2007.
This GPS was a godsend.
(https://photos.smugmug.com/General-Pics/n-PspN3q/i-PfL4GXs/0/48bcc02f/XL/i-PfL4GXs-XL.jpg)
I just want to say bi pod.
It is kinda sexy isn't it?
Sorry for the lack of presence here, I am working 14+ hour days and most weekends so not time to goof off.
Thought I would share this.
Quote"I choose a lazy person to do a hard job. Because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it."
― Bill Gates
I was talking a few months ago with a surveyor friend of mine. He mentioned his one party chief is the laziest mutherfucker in the world. Out of his laziness comes moments of brilliance.
This is one of those.
He asked how I recovered paved over reference points, or as we call them, permanent control points (PCP's) confused I replied, I use a chisel and smaller heavy sledge. He laughed and told me how they use a battery powered angle grinder with a diamond masonry blade on it.
I kind of forgot about the convo until about 2 weeks ago where I was having a run of paved over control points. So I shopped for a battery angle grinder that would use the same battery as my hammer drill that I keep in my truck to set nails in concrete.
I finally got to use it today, you could hear my maniacal laugh for blocks as I made short work of recovering a nail and disk under the pavement. What would take me 15 minutes to do now takes me about 1 minute.
(https://photos.smugmug.com/photos/i-VshVBp5/0/d168b9ca/L/i-VshVBp5-L.jpg)
(https://photos.smugmug.com/photos/i-qMDkBZk/0/855e302b/L/i-qMDkBZk-L.jpg)
How do you find them, metal detector? After you uncover them, do you cover them over again, and if so, with what?
Yes a $500 metal detector to be specific. I just purchased this one as my 10 year old one is showing signs of failing.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000KAZPIW/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o06_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
You can see the paint mark, I locate the nail then place a paint mark so I can come back and cut out the nail.
I try to have nothing in the road with me except what I positively need, as the roads are active and I am typically in the centerline.
I never thought of using an angle grinder. That metal detector looks like a modern version of what we used 20 years ago.
Quote from: 94touring on November 19, 2019, 07:37:45 PM
I never thought of using an angle grinder. That metal detector looks like a modern version of what we used 20 years ago.
I think we both used the old school Schonstedt at almost $800 I will pass and go with the new, shockproof, waterproof models from other companies. They rest on their laurels too much.
https://www.engineersupply.com/schonstedt-magnetic-locator-model-ga-52cx-includes-case.aspx?utm_campaign=Schonstedt%205%25%20Off%20Selected%20Products%20%28Q5TkgX%29&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Engaged%20%283%20Months%29&_ke=eyJrbF9lbWFpbCI6ICJqaW1zNTU0M0BnbWFpbC5jb20iLCAia2xfY29tcGFueV9pZCI6ICJMOWJSVTcifQ%3D%3D
(https://www.engineersupply.com/Images/Schonstedt-Instrument-Company/ES157-schonstedt-magnetic-locator-model-ga-52cx-includes-case-new-md.jpg)
The angle grinder is a godsend.
That's the one!
Quote from: 94touring on November 19, 2019, 07:53:17 PM
That's the one!
Frustrated with the sub surface units crapping the bed early. I broke down and purchased two $700 Schonstedts (after rebates $900 new!!) for both crews.
Now the cool part... I upgraded again... more when I have time as I am still working... this is my new co-worker.
I has a robot, more later because it is a hybrid robot tied into my GPS and is like being a super hero.
I have a few minutes, the internet is acting up at work and making uploads horribly slow.
How the robot works.
I paid a little extra for what they call a hybrid robot. It is intertwined with the GPS, as in the software in my Win10 Tablet allows me to jump back and forth between the GPS and robot when needed.
I needed it on a 5 acre job I did this week.
All the front property corners were under heavy tree cover impossible to get good GPS reading on.
So I would set the Robot up in a place where I can see one property corner in direct sight. (or more if possible)
I initialize the instrument and walk away from it 100' or so and tell it to shoot a distance to me, it does, then I take a GPS reading on that spot getting Latitude and Longitude of the point it just located, it can be a random point, just wherever I decided to put down the rod with the GPS on it.
Then I walk to another point about the same distance away, preferably in a different direction (I try to go 90°) and repeat, I have it shoot me, then I take a GPS reading.
With those 2 points having GPS coordinates on them, then the instrument knowing the angle and distance both of them are at in relation to each other. It can perform what is called a 2 point resection and figure out where the instrument is in GPS world, and know where everything I am locating with it is too.
I also did this to locate the house and detached garage, I just plopped down the Robot, initialized it, walked away and did a 2 point resection and it was on GPS coordinates or state plain coordinates.
Here is another cool trick, I can use my tablet to tell the Robot to switch from prism shots to prismless, where it uses a laser to get distances to hard objects. I then run the instrument myself and can take shots of the corners of the house (shoots = locations) I stood behind it and located the house and garage in about 1 minute taking about 10 shots. As fast as I can aim and tell it to shoot a distance was all it took.
On Friday last week at 430 in the afternoon one of my good clients, ordered a 5 acre survey and wanted it by Wednesday this week. I freaked out because we were supposed to be clobbered by a tropical storm Monday and Tues. As it would turn out Monday was a decent day, and Tues was the bad day.
Of course I picked Tues. to do this job. I ended up working in sideways rain while measuring the houses. Then I waited for about 30 minutes in my truck for the bad stuff to pass and was able to get out in the drizzle and finish it. By the time I finished the sun was coming out, of course.
It took me 3 hours to survey this job, in the old days using conventional equipment (Like what I sent Drmini) it would have been an 8 hour job easy running a 2 man crew.
I did it alone.
When I was out in the back of the property I thought to myself I should probably start carrying my gun. Just in case a Panther or Bobcat or Coyote decide they do not like me out in the sticks with them.
I also keep my eyes peeled for rattle snakes. I am probably deaded if one bites me out on acreage, not sure I could hike back out in time.
This robot is a second best purchase I have made for this business, it is a close second to the GPS. Another huge game changer.
Just read through this whole thread for the first time. Surveying classes in college were my absolute favorite part, absolutely loved going out in the field. Now the equipment is smarter than the surveyor most of the time.
Can the robot carry you out if a snake attempts to dead you?
Quote from: 94touring on November 14, 2020, 07:43:30 AM
Can the robot carry you out if a snake attempts to dead you?
Danger!! Danger!!
I should record the Robot going into full retard mode. If if loses me it starts flailing around looking for me. I can switch to control to my tablet, then aim it back at me and let it lock back in.
I can also take a GPS reading where I am standing and tell the robot where I am, it will turn straight to me.
I have to be careful passing around trees and objects that block its view, if it loses lock with me it gets kinda funny.
There was an option to add a $4K radio link to them that keeps them locked no matter what through some sort of witchcraft I do not understand. I opted to pass on it, so far I can manage it very well and feel no need to upgrade it.
Quote from: cstudep on November 13, 2020, 02:31:13 PM
Just read through this whole thread for the first time. Surveying classes in college were my absolute favorite part, absolutely loved going out in the field. Now the equipment is smarter than the surveyor most of the time.
A good friend of mine, who is also a surveyor graduated the University of Florida with a 4 year degree in Land surveying. I remember sitting next to him in a CE class when have a degree was new. The instructor asked if anyone had a degree my friend raised his hand, he was the only on in the class with a Land Surveying Degree. The instructor asked why he chose land surveying, my friend quipped right back, my guidance counselor told me I was too stupid to be an Engineer.
I about fell out of my chair laughing. Some of the old timers in the room were not amused.
My favorite part of my day is working with my toys in the field. I cannot wait to get out and start in the morning. Some days are mundane others are adventures. The cool thing is, you never know what kind of day you are in for. I love that. I love the constant changing scenery.
I am in the middle of my least favorite part of the day and sadly it is long from over... drafting up all the work.
I would rather be outside.
Quote from: Jims5543 on December 26, 2018, 02:31:19 PM
Then I decided to completely change how we gather field notes, I picked up a reMarkable tablet, they are expensive ($600) but so simple and made for one task that it does extremely well, worth it. Once complete I can transfer the field noted to the Toughbook as well including them in the email with the points.
The reMarkable is really cool. It only responds to stylus touches to dragging your hand or a template across does nothing. We LOVE it.
(https://photos.smugmug.com/General-Pics/n-PspN3q/i-rRjCqx2/0/ba899651/L/i-rRjCqx2-L.jpg)
Now we roll up to a job site, take the notes on the digital tablet, then shoot the job in collecting the points on our windows mobile device, once back in the truck we fire up the wifi and laptop, transfer the points to the laptop and email them to the drafter who is waiting for that data to finish the job, he has already started the drafting early in the morning when we leave and just needs our data to complete.
We now have 2 ReMarkable tablets, I let the mortgage crew have the new one, I took the old one.
The new one is thinner and more intuitive than the MK1. It has a stylus that has a digital eraser on the back of it, no more changing icons to erase to clear a line out.. It also has at least 4x the battery life of the OG one. It also lets the stylus stick to the side of the tablet via a magnet which is really helpful.
The crew loves the new one and said the old one is garbage compared to it. Wish they were cheaper I would buy one for me too. I will muddle along with the old one, I tend not to take notes as much as my tasks per day are mostly construction related.
(https://photos.smugmug.com/photos/i-kQv62G7/0/9398605e/X3/i-kQv62G7-X3.jpg)
Is it anything like an etch a sketch? ;D
I guess I will put this here. I had the most profitable year in business in over 12 years.
The crazy part is I am doing that with 1/5 of the staff I had 12 years ago. My gross revenue for the year rivals 2007, before the housing crash, in 2007 I had about 15 employees, now I have 3. Granted I spent close to 100K streamlining and adding tech to do that. My truck alone has over 50K in tech in it, that eliminates the need for a co worker, it paid for itself in less than 2 years.
I have been handing out Christmas bonuses over the last 3 weeks, one to each employee per week. Looking at their faces when they see a bonus that equals over a months income and in some cases, 2 months, is awesome! Best part of owning a business are these moments.
The worst is laying them off, especially when you like them. I really hope I am not laying off anyone in the next couple of years.
Completely unrelated to politics, so do not read into this, purely based on prices.
Vacant lots here spiked at an alarming rate. 4 months ago you could grab a 1/4 acre lot for 25-30K, now they are 60-80K..... not good, this is reminiscent to 2008 for me.
I already started circling my wagons a few weeks ago, I am pretty sure a huge crash is coming, I am glad I have a lot of gold, silver and lead on hand.
The RE market is priming itself for a big fall. There are also a lot of factors in play I am purely looking at house pricing and it is not a pretty sight. Overvalued is an understatement.
Quote from: 94touring on December 14, 2020, 07:10:14 PM
Is it anything like an etch a sketch? ;D
LMAO!!
Ummm no....
Lets recap the week so far....
I had a Monday from hell, I am sure of it.
In addition to Gmail being down (I am reading news Google is down today as well) I had a shitastic morning.
Monday is garbage day, my 0500 task before I leave for the office is to gather up the trash and take it to the curb. We have a pooper scooper setup for the back yard consisting of a scooper with a winn dixie bag on it. Then a baby diaper can that holds the poop until trash day to keep order down.
While getting all the shit bags a piece must have fallen and I stepped on it with my flip flop unknowingly.
I took the trash out to the curb, shit included and drove the office, I did not smell anything foul on my way in, but I did have my window open.
I get to the office walk around turning on things for the work week, getting ready to make some coffee, I walk to the bathroom to rinse out a mug and happen to look down, I see a smudge, like Mr. Hanky and scooted by. I immediately realized it was from my flip flop and then notice the shit over the edge of it. Then I look back across the office and see the dabs of shit from every step I took all over the office.
I spent a good 15 minutes running around cleaning up sit marks all over the floor.
Yay for Mondays!
Tuesday? Worse than Monday? Possibly. At least there was no shit..
- Lost my work phone ( more on that later)
- client orders a survey that requires me to survey 1 square mile and thinks they can have by Friday
- Client I have not heard from in 20 years reaches out and wants me to stop what I am doing to survey his properties in Palm Beach. LOL!! No happening
- Client who I have never worked for before needs to be present when I survey his 5 acres. Needs me to coordinate my movements so he can meet me there on Wed. - I am telling him I need to push his surveyors show off for at least a week, maybe 2.
- Stupid bitch cunt that works for my big builder and handles closings.... we do not hear from her for a month at a time. Then she pops up and orders 30-40 final surveys and wants them all in 10 days.
I just sent her a polite email and told her some of them would be impossible.
- Because bitch cunt sucks at her job, the title company that closes all the houses goes around her straight to us to bail them out when she is doing what she does best, nothing. I put my foot down and told them they need to go through her, its her job to make sure they have what they need.
- My ditz client forgot to order a survey again. Crunch time tomorrow. She orders more from me than entire offices, when she says jump...... I jump.
- The girl that works for her mom and dad called the office today and cried to Dori that a mean lender demands a survey today or else she cannot close a file Monday next week. Unbeknownst to her, it was a previous survey for us, we "rushed" it and delivered it the same day looking like hero's.
- Big builder has pissed of the County and cannot get Certificate of Occupancy on several houses in one community due to drainage problems. The bitch cunt orders finals this week and claims they are closing on Friday the super is frantic and trying to sort all the properties out at once, and thinks I have nothing to do but stand and wait for him. Fuck both of them.... cunts!!
- This evening I am in the process of drafting up 7 plot plans for builders who all want them.... NOW!!
- I have several more boundaries in my office that have to be drafted up before Monday. Weekend Fun!!
- I have another 15 finals to draft up that are all "closing" next week. More weekend fun!!
- A new city rule was implemented on 1 Nov, I have to survey every property they want to put a pool in at. I have a backlog of about 10 pool surveys, some are over a month old.
- There are easily another 40 jobs that need to go out in the field and we are struggling to get to them.
I start to rage them remember 2010, I was sitting in my office watching movies hoping an order would come in and I would have something to do.
This is a good problem.
BTW - I Cannot wait until tomorrow!! I am sure it will bring all kinds of excitement.
Oh and the title company what wants a survey by Friday? After I pointed out the task they put before me... they were very accommodating and gave me 1 extra day.
Woo!
I'm supposed to work tomorrow provided we don't get snowed out.
The client that wanted to meet me at the 5 acre survey brought a side by side with him. I was planning on taking my FJ Cruiser out on the property and giving it a proper 4x4 workout, we got to abuse his machine instead. So, I was stressing over coordinating for nothing. I guess I am just stressed out lately.
Met some surveyor buddies for beers last night, it was nice to blow off some steam with them.
Sounds like prime opportunity to post beers in the drunk thread.
Seems I am ahead of my time.
FloRida passed a $15 Min wage law.
This year in Sept. we bump from $8.30 to $10 an hour min. then bump a dollar a year until we hit $15.
At $15 an hour my robotic total station pays for itself in 9 months. Not my intention but to be honest kind of glad I went this route now.
I am toying with doing another Section 179 next year to get the other crew a robot too.
I am hesitating because I can see the writing on the wall, I will be laying off late in 2021. At least one is going and he is the field helper, I may or may not replace him with a robot. Most likely I will keep the cash in reserve and not spend it and just let him go.
My older son and I were talking, we are going to see an ushering in of robotics in the next 3-4 years. I see many industries changing.
Who would want to work as a plumber making $15 an hour when you can get a low stress gig at Publix or Target for the same pay?
Office Dori already makes over 15 an hour, I have a field helper who I pay 40 hours a week no matter what he works that this will impact. See, he works 20-30 hours a week and get paid for 40. He makes good money when you back out hours worked vs. take home.
When I am forced to pay him $15 an hour he will go on a time clock and only get pad for the hours he works, that is if he is not laid off in a year or two. Same goes for office Dori, if things get as bad as I am anticipating. She will be gone too.
I am so close to erasing my debt from 2008-2015, maybe 4-5 more months. Then I get into protection mode, I learned a lot in 2008-2010 and will not repeat the same mistakes.
Hey Jim,
It's been a while since I've posted on the board--anyway, rereading some of your posts on this subject. More than a year has gone by, I'm interested to hear what your thoughts are with the time that has past.
I did recently read an article about how big wall street firms were buying up parcels of land to build single family homes to own as rental properties (since the market has been pushing a lot of previously would-be buyers out of the market). What's your take?
-Gene
Quote from: MiniGene on February 01, 2022, 12:08:30 PMHey Jim,
It's been a while since I've posted on the board--anyway, rereading some of your posts on this subject. More than a year has gone by, I'm interested to hear what your thoughts are with the time that has past.
I did recently read an article about how big wall street firms were buying up parcels of land to build single family homes to own as rental properties (since the market has been pushing a lot of previously would-be buyers out of the market). What's your take?
-Gene
Sorry, Gene, I took a long break from here. For reasons.
I was wrong on many fronts, I expected a RE crash, that never happened, prices just kept going up up up and up.
I have never seen anything like this in my life, on top of the most overinflated RE prices ever, interest rates are now 3X what they were in 2020.
I thought 2021 was going to be a bad year, I was wrong, it eclipsed 2020. I knew, deep down 2021 was going to be the peak, there was no way I would beat that year and I was right. 2022 was down about 20% from 2021. 2023 went down another 25%, except I decided to start raising my prices in late 2023. Now in late 2024 my business is much slower, but due to about a 50% rate hike, I am still doing pretty good.
In 2021 we were providing 25 mortgage surveys a week to clients for existing home closings. In 2024 we might do 3 a week.
In 2021 we were supporting new home starts to the tune of about 30 houses a week, and yes, it was because large investment companies were buying up new construction homes by the dozens. One builder I was working for, 80% of the houses they built were sold to this one Investment group, when I did some research on why they were, they were based in the PRC.
In 2024 I see maybe 3 house starts a week, if that sometimes we go weeks with no new house starts.
I shifted away from Builders and existing home sales, I linked up with Pool and Paver companies supplying permit surveys for them to remodel driveways, pools and in a lot of cases new pool construction. That now make sup about 60% of me work load.
We also take on all off the street customers (something we did not do in 2021 or 2022) to fill in the gaps from the lack of existing and new home sales.
I also linked up with a commercial title company and land about 1-2 commercial ALTA surveys a month from them, one of those surveys = 10-20 existing home sale surveys. The best part is I charge top $$ for this service and spend 1/4 the time on them. Huge profits from those orders.
Did we crash? Nope, we just trended downward steadily over the last 3 years. I knew in 2021 this was coming so I was not in the slightest surprised by it. I expected a crash, like in 2008, I was wrong instead we have a slow burn, a slow downward spiral.
I accomplished all I needed to in 2020-2022 financially, I could probably retire now at 58 if I consulted with a good FA. Except I don't want to.
I am going to grind 2 more years until I am 60, then I am going to scale back my salary and participation and put my older son in charge, then its his turn to get himself financially set, I figure he can be 100% debt free in about 2-3 years once he is in charge, then I want him to continue to / step up his investing game.
What coming in the next year?
After what I have seen these last few years, I have no idea, nothing makes any sense anymore. I have treated the last 8 years like I was still in the great recession, I will continue with that business model as it has served me well.
The investment bankers buying up all the rear estate has come to an end. I would say that ended in 2022, I can see the housing market was/is slow to react to that. I tend to see things before other trades and the street does. I can say the housing market has died.
I got away from it 2 years ago, glad I did now.
A week ago my one client who orders commercial surveys from me needed one in Merritt Island near the the Space Center.
It was 100 miles from my office. I really didn't want to go that far for one job and was not even sure what to quote it out at.
One of my Surveyor Friends who I meet for beers once a month just opened a second satellite office in Melbourne, which is about 15 miles and 20 minutes from the property I needed to survey.
I asked him to give me a quote to do the field work only and I would handle the drafting. He came back with a quote close to $5K. for the field work only.... I was in shock. I wasn't even going to charge that much for the entire job!
I decided to just do it myself. My wife suggested we make a half weekend out of it. She booked us an Air BNB in Downtown Cocoa just over the bridge from the job site, it was a 5 minute drive from Downtown to the commercial site.
She found a cute little condo on the river a 5 minute walk from the restaurants, shops and bars in downtown.
We got into Cocoa around 6pm Friday, tossed our bags and my equipment in the condo and walked over to a newer restaurant that just opened, its menu was full of southern comfort foods.
https://tinwhiskey.com/?
They had a live band playing, it was a fantastic cool evening here we sat out on the deck and listened to the band for a couple of hours, had some drinks ate some fantastic food. We also learned from the waiter they do not use seed oil in the fryers, only tallow. We were impressed by that.
Downtown has a lot of cool places to visit, tons of shops, this place is a blast we have been here in the past, it has a huge outdoor courtyard and a stage, pretty legit German place.
(https://photos.smugmug.com/photos/i-pGr74SV/0/Mcb8JjJPmV8H8S272qnwzDJS8pQKhTLBJF4LjqDsC/L/i-pGr74SV-L.jpg)
This English Pub is a block over, I believe Classic Mini's United has visited here a few times during their Florida meets.
(https://photos.smugmug.com/photos/i-rswtd6f/0/KSr4ksGzkzKcfXrcHjfKtLcZzvj8JZw3F4v4CVShN/L/i-rswtd6f-L.jpg)
A couple of shots of downtown Cocoa Village, its a cute little town now. When we moved away from this area in 1997 you did not go here it was a really bad ghetto. So cool to see it revitalized.
(https://photos.smugmug.com/photos/i-RBhQDXD/0/MGkhKqdwx64hNwPqvbqM6ZkjmkQ9j9dNvv2HjG5dw/L/i-RBhQDXD-L.jpg)
(https://photos.smugmug.com/photos/i-LQsdmb8/0/MQTxz8FM2CrPCHqXfWBCX3xMQbvFwN8NmvpdZHGFJ/L/i-LQsdmb8-L.jpg)
We had a fantastic evening, another great idea from my wife. The next morning we walked over to a little cafe and had breakfast before leaving the condo, packing the truck and going over to the commercial property. The property was a small strip plaza on a busy road.
I had no idea what I was walking into since i have not worked in this area in over 30 years, I actually learned Land Surveying about 5 miles from this job site, the company I worked for is no longer there.
I gave my wife the option to help me or drop me off and go shopping, she wanted to help me out. Even though my equipment does not need 2 people, one can work just as efficiently.
I got really really lucky, all the property corners were in, everything!! I was stoked to find that. That made my job so much easier, I did not have to set any property corners.
It took us about 1.5 hours to survey this, and I was taking my time. I had Mrs5543 running the Win10 tablet at times, to help expedite the process.
(https://photos.smugmug.com/photos/i-xpQ9Fz8/0/MWk8hrftc4rNm3DC5gcv59mgLkrb4h8L5fN7Q946F/L/i-xpQ9Fz8-L.jpg)
I charged close to 5K to do this survey. I am paying my contract drafter $600 to draw it up, after all expenses traveling staying the night , food, gas etc.. I cleared close to 4K on this and had a fun weekend.
We went back downtown and walked around all the shops there, had lunch in a Mexican place that had fantastic taco's. Then once we were done shopping we stopped off at a fantastic BBQ joint called Cydermans, in downtown and purchased a family pack to bring home and were home by about 330Pm. https://www.crydermansbarbecue.com/
My 25K robot has been nothing but a problem since the day I purchased it. I bought my other crew the next generation robot. It has been problem free.
Mine? It has been in for repairs 5X now and now is in for its 6th repair and I am over it. I cannot afford for this downtime.
I ordered a second generation Robot, since the 3rd generation robot is 2 months from being released and I am not waiting for it, I got a discount on the 2nd Generation model, it is only 24K vs. probably 30K for the new one. Since everything has pretty much doubled in price in the last 4 years, I am happy to pay so little for one. Mine is.
My salesman told me to sell my old one on E-bay, I can ask 10K for it used, they will give me 5K on trade.
So for 14K I get a new problem free unit. I cannot complain, it has made me millions over the last 5 years, 25K is pittance compared to the revenue generated by it.
All weekend plans are cancelled including Mini activities.
My BIL who I use as a contract drafter was admitted into the hospital last night. He needs to have a heart transplant, we have known that for almost 10 years now. He we declining these last few weeks, this past week he could not even get out of bed, he is sleeping 18 hours a day.
Being the stupid stubborn Irish mother fucker that he is, he refuses to admit something it wrong. His wife finally said enough last night, leaded him into the car and drove 3 hours to Tampa General (Highly regarded Heart Hospital) to see his Doc there. They admitted him last night and are running tests, according to a report in the middle of the night last night, they are going to put a stint in to get his blood flow back up. He is running at about 25% capacity at the moment. The best he can achieve with the damage to his heart is 45% and he was there at one point.
Because of that, all the work I have with him is not complete, I had no idea he was this bad, he was keeping it secret.
Therefore, I need to roll up my sleeves, recruit my boys to help my in the office and go to town on all the drafting we have backed up. Its going to be a very long day today and a shit weekend. I hope to be caught up by Saturday so I can mess with the Mini on Sunday.
He is in good hands in Tampa, I am sure they will sort him out.
On top of that my younger son is sick today, he thought it was allergies, as the week progressed he ended up feeling like crap last night.
So he is out today, the older kid is out in the field ATM and I just went on a mad tear on a lot of the drafting putting out many fires.
I have 3 more nagging jobs to bang out now that customers are waiting for, then I need to try to get ahead with my pool companies. I have a lot of proposed pools I need to turn out of here.
As I said before, I had no idea he was so sick, he was keeping in secret. I texted my one surveyor friend who uses him as well, he replied he had no idea he was on the phone with my BIL yesterday and he sounded fine. I then informed him that the BIL is hiding his condition, I am not sure why.
Anyway, I have another dozen jobs I need to expedite through here this weekend.
I am rethinking not having an in house drafter and thinking it is time to hire someone here full time.
The docs are still trying to decide what to do with my BIL. He is not getting a transplant, they want to put that off for as long as possible, since he is in his early 50's. Once you get a transplant you get 10 years of life, some make it 13-15 years and there are rare exceptions of some lasting longer. The average is 10-13 years. For that reason Docs try to keep you with your OEM heart for as long as possible.
The problem here is my BIL does not live a healthy lifestyle, even after almost dying he cannot control himself. He is probably 80 lbs overweight, he drinks alcohol (forbidden by docs) and on many occasions I have seen him get completely blacked out drunk at parties and then he is hung over for a week after that. His body cannot take that abuse. Him and his older brother both are drinking themselves to death. The older brother was recently in the hospital, they wanted to keep him there and detox him, he checked himself out. They warned him his liver is going to fail. So he stopped drinking hard liquor and only drinks beer now. In his head that is more healthy.
It's frustrating watching these 2 guys self destruct, you cannot stop them, they are both stubborn, they have to decide on their own.
My equipment guy emails me today and asks if my robot had been under water. WTF? I said hell no! I told him it had been rained on in some torrential downpours that caught me out a few weeks back but I thought it was waterproof? He confirms it is indeed waterproof then tells me they found water puddled up inside the unit. It might be totaled.
$20K down the drain...
I purchased a new robot for $22K, I was hoping to sell this one for 10K to offset the cost. I may have to eat it now. My other crew has the same newer model as the one I just purchased, I just told them to keep a bag in the truck to cover it with if you get caught in the rain. I am doing the same, they are obviously not waterproof.
(https://photos.smugmug.com/OLD-SURVEY-PICS/i-sRJJ3mt/0/MmGQHjQqQsnqZWmgJv7STs5ckPRwdXv3rjCqVKrPh/L/20241118_151805-L.jpg)
If you want to see the tech pour water out of the unit, click below.
https://photos.smugmug.com/OLD-SURVEY-PICS/i-hLXhZZn/0/LLW8wbsZpQctZZ9QW3R45H3p2Z7J3PNRF4RvrsCcc/1280/20241118_093905_1020585163552392-1280.mp4
Today I learned about IP65 waterproof rating via my equipment salesman.
https://www.budind.com/blog/2014/02/the-mysteries-of-ip65-ip66-and-ip67-rated-enclosures-explained/
My instrument is supposed to be IP65 rated. Supposed to be...
My salesman just called me, we went to his corporate office today to meet with the repair department and find out what is going on.
They were repairing my instrument and were going to hit me with a $3,800 bill for the repairs.
My salesman went off on them. He told them to pull up their website, the pointed me me on there and went on to explain to his boss and the repair department manager how much of my time I have given them for free with no expectation of anything in return. I did a podcast interview, I let a film crew shadow me for a day then interview me for promotional purposes, the picture below is a screen grab from that day they are using as a promotional backdrop at trade shows.
I just wrote a 22K check to them for a new next generation robot, since I am tired of mine being in for repairs every couple of months.
My other crew has the second gen robot and it has been flawless. My first gen? Not so much, it is on its 5th set of servo motors. I suspect it has lost its waterproof abilities somewhere along the way due to it being opened up so many times.
Brent, my salesman went to bat for me, he got them to repair my instrument for free. I may have a buyer lined up for it as well. So I may come out of this mess only taking a 12K haircut.
*edit* I was "covid fat" in that picture, I have to admit, seeing the video of me lugging my gut around inspired me to lose 20 lbs in 2022.
This happens about once a month, my older son just called he had to swing back by a property we surveyed this morning to gather some additional data and set some property corners. A neighbor just walked up to him and threatened to kill him.
It happens at least once a month.
I had another employee I had to let go because he cannot keep his cool in these situations, he did 5 years in prison and cannot turn off the alpha shit and has to assert his dominance, he was a liability to my company so I let him go.
I just got off the phone with my son, I asked if he had time to sit around, does, I told him to call the police non emergency and have an office come out and take a statement and get something in writing about this person.
We are tired of this bullshit.
Florida is now a constitutional carry state, we are both seriously considering carrying from now on. We never had these problems until about 10-12 years ago, we used to just show up and survey properties explaining what we were doing when we got there, it was a rare day we had a problem.
Now we call everyone the day prior and let them know we are coming and we still have issues with both homeowner and neighbors when we arrive.
Imagine seeing a guy walking with the rig I have in the picture above and thinking they are up to no good.
In the 5 years I was a land surveyor back in the late 90s early 2000s, I can only think of a couple incidents with jerk property owners. The only one that really sticks out was just an old lady who was full of insults. No real threat, just obnoxious.
I do not understand the justification for people getting all up into other's business, and then getting aggressive about it too? I mean, stay in your lane, folks! Keep your nose out of other people's bidness.....
Reminds me, I've had 2 incidents with people at the condo. One was another old lady who was the world's biggest bitch. I was moving appliances in through the loading dock and she didn't like that I had the loading door open. I told her to mind her business and she threw a big fit. Then because I was dressed like you'd expect someone who's moving things in and working, she wanted to know who I worked for. Again, none of your business lady! But I live here and own multiple units. The other was a guy with anger issues. He posted a photo of a package left outside the property and I told him it would take less time to move it in where the packages go than it does to post the photo. A little snarky on my part, but I wasn't wrong. He threatened me in a series of private messages till I went to the gym where he was waiting for me to beat his ass. The video footage was amusing.
Quote from: 94touring on November 20, 2024, 11:01:59 AMIn the 5 years I was a land surveyor back in the late 90s early 2000s, I can only think of a couple incidents with jerk property owners. The only one that really sticks out was just an old lady who was full of insults. No real threat, just obnoxious.
It is almost a daily occurance now.
My crew had to pull off another job today. We were hired to mark a customers back property line so they can put up a fence.
The neighbor behind comes out and tells my crew they are marking the property wrong and he is going to rip out the stakes the moment they leave.
My son, who runs that crew looked at him and said, "Then why am I wasting my time, he pulled out the first and only stake he had set so far (5 were going in) packed the truck and left.
We emailed the customer and told him I (the owner and Surveyor) will be coming out when we figure out when that is.
A couple of years ago, the guy I let go got into a huge screaming fight with a neighbor 3 houses away from our job. Why? The neighbor 3 houses down told my employee he was lucky that he did not have his gun on him or he would have shot him. The crime? He was looking for a property corner along the roadway in the front of his property.
My employee cam unglued and threatened to beat the snot out of the guy bowing up at him daring him to take a swing. It was at that moment, I knew he was a liability and I needed to let him go.
We are deep diving into the dog asshole, we have some info on him. After the holidays he will start getting random things mailed to him to fuck with his head.
A bag of dicks is not off the table...
https://bagofdicks.com/
The Dog asshole is known by the police BTW - it seems he threatens everyone telling them if he lets his dogs out they are dead. Part of what I discovered is that he is 58 years old which tells me a man that age behaving that way is not mentally stable.
I pity his neighbors.
Moving on, my BIL is on his way home from the hospital, they adjusted his meds and want to see him in 3 weeks again to further adjust them.
They also told him that is he does not get in better shape he is going to die, I hope that motivates him to get his shit together.
What is killing me is he kept this a secret from me for 2 weeks, I noticed he was not sending work back to me, I asked and he said he was fine and needed to catch up (a lie) he could not get out of bed, we found out he was sleeping 18 hours a day fatigued and exhausted.
I am so behind with my clients it is not funny, I did not want to use him as an excuse, I just told them we had a drafter turn ill and we are short handed. We are not THAT far behind, they are just spoiled by our fast turn around times.
This entire ordeal has me rethinking how I am running this place, I think I want a full time drafter in house, then toss the larger projects to the BIL. Keeping my in house drafter freed up to turn out the smaller jobs faster.
The only problem with that is finding someone worth a shit, the last time I looked around for help the pool to choose from lacked chlorine.
I am going to toss my feelers out. Right now, I am just going to put in the hours again to keep up.
I wish I remembered how to run Cad, it would give me something to do sitting in hotels.
We hardly use 2d cad anymore in my world. We used to do some pretty awesome shit in 2D autocad with blocks and menu/lisp routine automation. Been living in the 3d cad world for a little over 20 years now and it has really curtailed my 2d cad skills, still use it but not like I once did. I have developed some pretty mad 3d cad skills though so at least there is that I guess.
It's been a real long time since I have done any surveying work, I always enjoyed being out in the field but have always enjoyed the cad side as well.
Quote from: 94touring on November 21, 2024, 09:39:36 AMI wish I remembered how to run Cad, it would give me something to do sitting in hotels.
I already have a remote guy with my BIL when he is not broken. I really just want someone handling everything I do so I am no longer doing any drafting, just checking and signing. I used to have a full time drafter, when I did, I did not do any drafting at all. I am just wearing a lot of hats now, I am still in Housing Crash / Great Recession mode when I do not really need to be, or do I?
More and more news articles stating the housing markets (at least in Florida) are crashing. I have been seeing it for close to 2 years now, as I have said in the past Land Surveyors feel it first, then everyone catches up to us. I will probably muscle through this hiccup and wait to see what happens in the next 3-6 months before doing anything.
Quote from: cstudep on November 21, 2024, 05:47:07 PMWe hardly use 2d cad anymore in my world. We used to do some pretty awesome shit in 2D autocad with blocks and menu/lisp routine automation. Been living in the 3d cad world for a little over 20 years now and it has really curtailed my 2d cad skills, still use it but not like I once did. I have developed some pretty mad 3d cad skills though so at least there is that I guess.
It's been a real long time since I have done any surveying work, I always enjoyed being out in the field but have always enjoyed the cad side as well.
The tech in land surveying is changing a lot, what I do? 2D is perfect for me.
I have friends who work in big corporations using amazing tech. Drone tech is insane now. The Drones now have Survey accuracy GPS and Lidar cameras, I watched a field demo from a company where the drone flew over us on some county property while we watched a big screen TV and could see it mapping everything in real time in 3D.
Then a cad tech comes in and cleans up any "noise" that may have confused it.
The investment into something like that is too rich for me, we are talking over 100K possibly 200K. I didn't ask because I know I cannot afford it. LOL!
OK another big push Friday, I have about 60 files on my desk many are just stupid little things, a lot of revisions, as in oh, I want to change the design of this pool type of stuff.
I lied, I had about 40 files, my BIL emailed this morning and wants to work, I set him loose on 10 Plot plans for a builder reducing my work load from about 50 files to less than 40.
After kicking ass for the last 4 hours I am down to 4 files. + what he is working on.
I was looking for a drunk pic for Mudhen with no joy, and I found these pics from when Topcon sent a film crew to shadow me. I felt special for a day. LOL
One of my friends who saw the video, I need to find it its on you tube somewhere. Said it was endearing to see an older pickup with some dents on it in the background indicating a real down to earth small company and not some big corp.
And that was exactly what my Topcon salesman said to me, he said it came off great because I actually use the gear. My hands on experience translates through the video and you can sense I actually use it. A couple of other interviews they did the Surveyor who oversees the Corporation, who never works outside, wanted to be in the video so they pretend to use the equipment not really knowing what they are doing and it shows.
I never thought of this as a big deal, I just thought it would be fun to do an interview. My one surveyor buddy pointed out that I am now on the internet in perpetuity a cool legacy to leave behind. Imagine if there were video's of my Grandfather online right now I could go look at? I never thought of it that way. So pretty cool opportunity and experience. Good thing they did not interview me 3 weeks ago. LOL!!
Quote from: Jims5543 on November 22, 2024, 10:55:11 AMI My one surveyor buddy pointed out that I am now on the internet in perpetuity a cool legacy to leave behind. Imagine if there were video's of my Grandfather online right now I could go look at? I never thought of it that way. So pretty cool opportunity and experience. Good thing they did not interview me 3 weeks ago. LOL!!
That's why I think it's cool to start putting stuff on YouTube. A couple of years ago I started two channels. They're both pretty small and nowhere near being in YT's partner program, but maybe they'll be out there for a while for my kids to look at long after I'm gone.
BTW, I've been lurking here semi-recently. This is my first post in a very long time. Good to read and catch up on things. :)
Quote from: MiniGene on November 30, 2024, 08:18:27 PMThat's why I think it's cool to start putting stuff on YouTube. A couple of years ago I started two channels. They're both pretty small and nowhere near being in YT's partner program, but maybe they'll be out there for a while for my kids to look at long after I'm gone.
BTW, I've been lurking here semi-recently. This is my first post in a very long time. Good to read and catch up on things. :)
I honestly had not considered that until my friend mentioned it, I have 2 channels, I am not about monetizing it, although I have considered putting an effort into creating car content and see if I can make some money doing something really fun, playing with cars.
I just walked in from surveying a house for a pool, while I was there, the 20 something year old son comes home. I am in the back yard doing my thing, he comes out of the house and sits on the back screen room on his phone. then I smell the devils lettuce and hear him coughing realized he is getting baked right in front of me. It's legal here (medically) so no real taboo, just thought it was wierd.
The crazy part? right after he finished blazing his MJ, he jumped back in his pickup truck and drove away. I thought that was stupid.
This is a community I work in once a week, all the buildings you see are 4 plex town homes. Everything you see in these pictures are for sale and not sold, some have been sitting for 6 months to 1 year.
I was talking to a super out there and commented on how many for sale signs there were, he told me they only have for sale signs on half the empty houses. Corporate told them to pump the brakes on new house starts. This includes single family homes they have a lot of those sitting empty too.
I am getting orders for maybe 2 closings a week, which means the RE market has dried up. If it were not for the pool companies I aligned with, I would have nothing to do. 60-70% of my work at the moment is pool work.
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I ended up doing a free survey this morning for the nicest man.
An attorney I work for sent him to me due to a property line dispute. The felt the neighbor behind was on his property up to 5 feet. He hired the Real Estate attorney the uses me to sort this out who in turn told him to hire me.
He was 81 years old and spry as could be, he had a 2020 440i in his driveway, we got talking cars, he used to be into drag racing and ran an Olds 442 with a 2 speed Hydromatic in it. Anyway, the more we talked the more interesting he got. He is a retired engineer, he moved to Florida from Uruguay when he was 24 years old he was recruited by NASA and worked at KSC until he retired. He still has family in Uruguay which is crazy as I sold my E21 BMW to a guy who grew up in Uruguay who always wanted an E21. Him and I still text our car antics back and forth from time to time. His is in the midst of swapping a BMW V12 into a E30.
There was nothing wrong out there, I felt horrible charging this guy just to tell him that so I told him I would not be charging him and it made his day. He wants me to wing by and show him my fun cars. I have a new car guy friend. LOL!!
Interesting side story about the Real Estate Market as well. Last week we had some issues with a seller not wanting to open his gates for our crew, I drove out to the property Friday morning and met the Realtor there he was shadowing me while I worked and we chatted. I asked how business is, was he selling any houses? He said all of the sudden everyone wants to buy a house, he said for the last year, hardly any sales, now in the last few weeks he has people fighting for the nicer houses again.
I noticed, the last 2 weeks, an uptick in existing home sales orders. Things appear to be taking back off again.
I am not sure how I feel about that, I am starting to turn away off the street customers again, I just do not want to be that busy anymore.
I must be a masochist. I could have had a nice day today and been back in the office by noon, instead I got back at 430.
The one big builder I work for is expanding out to Okeechobee. Its about a 1.25 hour drive from my office. I assumed they purchased a block of lots in a new subdivision. Wrong! They purchased scattered lots all over town.
I just got back from surveying 9 lots out there. I have no idea who would want to live there unless they lost a bet.
I almost got attacked by 2 pit bulls on one street that were running loose. On another street I was chased by a territorial mutt that did not like me.
Lesson learned, we are now a constitutional carry state, time to strap on the 9mm. The Pit Bulls really rattled me, they were not nice dogs and would not let up, they follow me about 100 yards and would not let up.
I was going to punt this away and let them find a local surveyor to Okeechobee, now I wish I had. I may back out of this still. It is making my life hell.
The only thing keeping me from doing that is I am up-charging these, my prices are doubled in order to absorb the drive time.
On top of that the flood gates have opened up wide and orders are pouring in, I have not seen this kind of action since 2021 when everyone was moving to Florida. Interest rates and prices slowed that down over the last 4 years, to my amazement, everything is ramping back up.
Our email is on fire, orders pouring in, its so bad I just made the decision to stop taking on all off the street customers.
Okeechobee is a giant trailer park, minus the trailer homes, it is just white trash land, garbage everywhere, the only place I see garbage all over the sides of the roads and in yards like is in the ghetto.
Houses still have hurricane shutters on them all over town, despite hurricane season being over for almost 3 months now. I guess they are ready for next season in 5 months.
No pride in ownership everything is run down, houses need paint and roofs and landscaping upkeep, 70% of the houses out there look abandoned. It was a very depressing afternoon out there.
I have probably already worked 40 hours this week and its only Wednesday afternoon. I have been coming in early, staying late and still cannot keep up with all the orders pouring in.
I was not expecting this at all, I expected at least another year of slower business.
This has me pondering hiring a field guy to take some of the load off me, the other crew is already loaded, I have been working longer hours to help keep up.
How about some pics!
This is the mutt that was hounding me. He finally gave up as I walked up onto a vacant lot away from its "territory". Notice the lovely landscaped yard in the background with cars all over the place. Pretty typical out there.
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Lost count as to how many of these trucks I saw in driveways out there.
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These ducks started following me around, again notice the lovely yard. They were a welcome break from the dog, grateful they were not bloody ducks. You can see the front bumper of a pickup parked in the back yard.
I wish I had time to take more pics, I walked 5 miles today working out there lugging my equipment around.
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Tomorrow I have to survey 5 acres, then all over the place again, will be lucky to get back into the office by 3pm.
What am I doing????? I promised myself we would back off and here I am balls to the wall again. There is something wrong with me.
Hire another crew for cripes sake! :great:
Good thing you didn't come across any rabbits.
I was most fearful of the ducks, thank god it did not turn into a Monty Python moment.
Dealing with local Government building departments and their inept staff has to be one of the most infuriating things I have to do.
I spend about an hour a day dealing with "rejections" from various building departments.
One I just deal with makes me wonder what the hell kind of people are reviewing these permits.
They rejected my survey because I had a wall dimension wrong on a house, I look at the survey vs. the house plans and everything matches. I cannot figure out what is wrong, turns out they were reading the house plans wrong. I wish this was a one off, this is a weekly occurance.
Then they reject my survey because they want to know the road centerline elevations, they are on there, it is VERY clear where the centerline of the road is, BUT, they force me to write the words "Centerline of road" and point to it.
Then we raised the elevation of the house slightly because it is on septic, after I reviewed the approved septic permit I deducted that the house needed to come up about 2 inches higher.
That was just rejected, they forced us to drop the house down 4" except, now the house is in violation of a county building code which requires it to be 18" over the centerline of the road, the elevation the forced us to is now 17" over the road centerline and I am not sure we can make the septic system work dropping it down 6" like that.
I wonder if they will realize what they did and force us to raise it back up?
This is one house, each rejection was dealt out one at a time, I have now gone back and changed this survey 5 times in one day.
This happens all the time on many jobs.
I used to love this job, the last few years, these municipalities have made it hell getting anything permitted anymore.
2 local County Building Departments are hell to deal with, my prices in the last 4 years in those areas have more than doubled due to dealing with them. My competitors have done the same, we are all on the same page, if we are going to deal with this relentless bullshit, we are getting paid for it.
/rant
Sunday at the AX event my BIL came out and hung around for a little while, I was driving when he showed up, then I had a break before I had to work. He does a lot of my drafting for me.
Come Monday, he fell off the face of the earth.
A client reached out to me Monday and wanted to know if I could handle updating a 1 year old commercial survey for a closing this Friday. I said sure, it entailed more than just updating the survey, I had to go back over the title commitment and plot out / adress any changes to the title work, it changed a little too.
I emailed my BIL Monday afternoon and told him about the job, tossing the old survey to him and the title work. I asked him in the email to let me know if he had time to do it and if he didn't to let me know asap.
I didn't hear from him all day Monday or Tuesday, I started to worry he was really sick. I texted him on Wednesday around noon, askign if he was OK and to answer my emails. Dead air.
I asked my wife to text he sister and see WTF is going on, just hoping maybe his phone was lost and really dreading he got sicker.
Turns out he is feeling like crap and has been in bed since Monday with no energy. His stubborn Irish ass thinks, "tomorrow I'll feel better so I will just keep quiet until tomorrow", tomorrow turns into 3 days.
SIL confirms he is bedridden and cannot work. Fine, I just need to know WTF is going on.
We had promised 2 jobs to clients Monday, on Tuesday I drafted one up and on Wednesday drafted the other up. Then I had this commercial job to deal with on top of the dozens of jobs on my desk. I took that home last night and plotted the title commitment I started at the office at 0600 yesterday and did not get to bed last night until Midnight.
I got into the office this morning at 0615, then I took off and visited the site this morning, checking for changes and re-flagging the property corners.
I just delivered the commercial survey, now I have about 10 pool permitting surveys I need to draft up and send by tomorrow.
I just wish he would let me know when he is down, the 2 days of silence killed me.
Oh and I went to pick up 200 cut rebar I ordered last week, these are the property corners we set. I asked for 8 bundles of 25.
I arrived to find 2 bundles of 100.
No one is picking that up. I had to break them apart and load them into my FJ by the handful. What a PITA.
I went back inside and told the person I ordered from, I need these in bundles of 25 we toss the bundles in our work trucks and cannot deal with bundles of 100.
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What's a bundle of 100 weigh? 200-250lbs?
Quote from: 94touring on March 27, 2025, 04:37:54 PMWhat's a bundle of 100 weigh? 200-250lbs?
Grok (AI) to the rescue.
QuoteTo calculate the weight of 18 inches of #5 rebar, we need to know the weight per foot of #5 rebar and then scale it accordingly.
#5 rebar has a nominal diameter of 5/8 inch (0.625 inches).
The standard weight of #5 rebar is approximately 1.043 pounds per foot, according to the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) specifications for steel reinforcing bars.
Now, since 18 inches is 1.5 feet (18 ÷ 12 = 1.5):
Weight=1.043 lb/ft×1.5 ft=1.5645 lb\text{Weight} = 1.043 \, \text{lb/ft} \times 1.5 \, \text{ft} = 1.5645 \, \text{lb}\text{Weight} = 1.043 \, \text{lb/ft} \times 1.5 \, \text{ft} = 1.5645 \, \text{lb}
So, 18 inches of #5 rebar weighs approximately 1.56 pounds, rounded to two decimal places.
Explain rebar sizes
Steel density variations
156 lbs.
20's Jim would have laughed and threw it in. 50's Jim with a back injury? Tossed them in a handful at a time.
The younger spawn rode with me to my storage and helped me unload it. I then tossed the FJ in storage and grabbed the E30 for the weekend. I spend Fridays in the office. Woot!!
Quote from: Jims5543 on February 28, 2025, 03:21:58 PMDealing with local Government building departments and their inept staff has to be one of the most infuriating things I have to do.
I spend about an hour a day dealing with "rejections" from various building departments.
One I just deal with makes me wonder what the hell kind of people are reviewing these permits.
They rejected my survey because I had a wall dimension wrong on a house, I look at the survey vs. the house plans and everything matches. I cannot figure out what is wrong, turns out they were reading the house plans wrong. I wish this was a one off, this is a weekly occurance.
Then they reject my survey because they want to know the road centerline elevations, they are on there, it is VERY clear where the centerline of the road is, BUT, they force me to write the words "Centerline of road" and point to it.
Then we raised the elevation of the house slightly because it is on septic, after I reviewed the approved septic permit I deducted that the house needed to come up about 2 inches higher.
That was just rejected, they forced us to drop the house down 4" except, now the house is in violation of a county building code which requires it to be 18" over the centerline of the road, the elevation the forced us to is now 17" over the road centerline and I am not sure we can make the septic system work dropping it down 6" like that.
I wonder if they will realize what they did and force us to raise it back up?
This is one house, each rejection was dealt out one at a time, I have now gone back and changed this survey 5 times in one day.
This happens all the time on many jobs.
I used to love this job, the last few years, these municipalities have made it hell getting anything permitted anymore.
2 local County Building Departments are hell to deal with, my prices in the last 4 years in those areas have more than doubled due to dealing with them. My competitors have done the same, we are all on the same page, if we are going to deal with this relentless bullshit, we are getting paid for it.
/rant
Yep it's bullshit here too, The libtard shit from salem trickles down to us they are a special kind of stupid. I wanted to extend a building I had 20' in length, and an issue of drainage field line proximity came up. The drain field line was 6" too close to the back/gable end of the building. Keep in mind the line runs away from the building, not across the back, but straight away. The very tip was 6" too close.
So no watershed or effects from the building at all. I asked for a variance and got the stupidest answer, he said if I do it for you everyone will want it WTF? how about do your job dumbass. If my line ran parallel to the downhill side along the watershield from the roof, I wouldn't even ask for a variance or expect to be denied. Each case is different. Use your head, my situation is a non-issue. But seeing as I have way more drain line 30 feet more than needed by code, I said, well, I'll just cut a foot off the end, and we're good. Nope, gotta apply for an alteration permit and may not get one because of all the alleged septic issues that don't actually exist in the area (another story of corruption).
So, a different approach is that a slab has different rules than a building, so I apply to pour just the slab for parking, but with footings for possible future building expansion. No problem, so we do the slab next summer. I bury the test port at the end of my drain line, stick a dummy pipe in the ground a foot back, and apply to build the addition. The issue never even comes up again lol so I pull the pipe and uncover the original after the final. The sad part is that a non-issue cost me 6 months trying to work it out. Inept is a nice way of putting it.
You don't even want to know about the new sidewalk and swale rules, let alone water meters being placed in the street. Keep in mind that this is snow country, and things in the streets don't hold up to road graders very well. Especially the many gravel streets we have but they won't hear any input from the local folks who know how to design stuff around here because some dumbass behind a desk in the valley knows whats best.
It's seriously depressing and stalls progress and growth for the town. The cost to do anything is becoming astronomical, you could be looking at well over $100k just in SDCs and permits to break ground on a single-family home.
The work around you came up with was brilliant. It is almost comical dealing with these municipalities.
I just signed off on a new driveway permit survey, the amount of BS I need to place on there is insane. Much of it is repetitive as I am copying it off a county diagrams already on file, for some reason the diagram is not enough, I have to copy it onto my survey.
I am conflicted by these insane regulations. While I find them annoying, stupid and unnecessary, they are good for business. LOL! My mental health suffers as a result dealing with these wonderful people. The bottom line is, it is very good for business.
One city I work in, the City Engineer and I became friends, I remember in 2017, she emailed me and gave me a heads up over new regulations. She informed me pool companies were no longer allowed to plot out their own pools, they had to have a survey done where the surveyor plots the pool after surveying the property. She then said to me, congrats! This should be good for business. That stuck with me.
When I met my surveyor friends for beers they were all bitching about the new rule and how much they hate plotting out pools. I said, send them my way I love doing pools.
Now 50% of my business is pool work, one company that does pools is also a Paver company that does patios, driveways and walkways. Existing home sales dropped off a cliff in 2022, that was followed by new home construction starts dropping off too.
The pools have stayed consistent. I am happy I jump all over that 5 years earlier.
Many years ago I was helping this guy permit a detached garage on his land, it was a 12 car garage / shop. He was a vintage muscle car guy. As we were fighting our way through permitting he told me he wished he just built the fucking thing and paid the fines.
Seems he did just that years earlier on another property he owned, he just built it, got caught after it was done, then pulled all the permits after the fact paying fines.
He told me in hindsight, it was faster and cheaper than doing it "the right way" with all the delays and BS he had to go through.
Yep, they force you to do things under the radar. I'd rather do it legally, but they make it unreasonable, if not impossible. I tried to put a unit heater in my garage years ago, and they wanted R22 insulation everywhere. At the time, there was no actual way to bring a garage door to R22. That and I only have 2x4 framing, so it's hard to do there as well. They also wanted me to dig out the footing of the slab and install 2" foam board all the way around the slab. All because of energy laws that apply to a conditioned space. Now, a wood stove or portable heater does not fall under these regs, nor do commercial buildings, so you can waste all the energy you want that way. But if a feller wants to occasionally hobby on his classic mini in his home garage, hell NO! NO WAY! FU.
But they told me that if I don't heat it over 50, the regs don't apply. I thought about it and figured, ok, that's not too bad. I mean, if it's -10 outside, I'm pretty happy to put on a sweatshirt and work in 50 degrees. So I said ok, that works for me. How do I do that? The answer was we don't know, so I found a thermostat with a lockout feature, and they said no, that won't work. Ok, so I found a thermostat that only went to 50. No, you could just change that out, ok fine, how do I do this? Same answer, we don't know, but if you can figure it out, it's legal.
WTF I give up, just put the heater in, pull some strings to get an LP tank set, and I have heat. I figure if we ever sell and it comes up, I'll just remove it. Best part is my insurance was fine with it, so long as a qualified person did the gas work. Luckily, I am a master fitter and just provided them with that info, and we were good to go. Either way, I could have also just had a fitter run the line.
I was going to say - how would they know if you put one in? Does it get hot in summer too? Would the same rules apply if you wanted to put a mini-split in to cool and heat both?
I guess I don't know how they'd know you have heat and air in your shop unless they do pop up inspections. Particularly if you have portable units. Either way sounds annoying.
...
Quote from: MiniDave on March 29, 2025, 11:38:05 AMI was going to say - how would they know if you put one in? Does it get hot in summer too? Would the same rules apply if you wanted to put a mini-split in to cool and heat both?
In this case, the LPG line needs to be signed off before a tank can be set, so that's why I started down the permit road. But we made it happen, turns out I was only hooking up a preexisting line that must have been installed at some long forgotten time in the past, just need a pressure test and good to go :lipsrsealed:
In the case of a mini split, if you bought it and installed it yourself, no one would know, and I doubt any issue would ever come of it. The same energy laws do apply to a/c anything permanently installed and automatically controlled that creates a conditioned space, and then you have to follow the rules. I don't know if there's a temp limit on the a/c side to get around the rules, but since they have no idea how to do that, it would not matter.
That's why they said I could install a wood stove. I need to be present to stoke the fire, and I can't just set a thermostat and walk away; it does not fall under the energy laws. Nor do any portable units even if they are controlled by an automatic thermostat.
I actually thought about mounting my unit heater on a stand with wheels and creating a new label that said Dayton Portable Unit Heater and telling them I need to install a gas line to connect my portable unit heater when I wish to use it LOL.
Funny story, and a lesson learned*. Last year I was working with a home owner permitting a detached garage on his 1 acre property.
I got it through permitting just fine.
He was doing a complete owner builder deal on this garage. As he was placing his form boards based off my building lay out, he decided to raise his forms up 4 inches higher as he felt it worked better with the land around it, I did not disagree.
The county however, had a meltdown and forced him to create a new drainage plan because he raised the slab on the 20x40 building in the middle of a 1 acre lot 4 inches. If he had raised it 3 inches there would not be a problem, the 4th inch was the problem.
He was livid, why does a new drainage plan need to be created? Nothing is changing regarding drainage. The clerk who rejected him dug in and held her ground.
When I met with him to give him his new drainage plans he was still hot and told me he dives into peoples backgrounds as part of his job, he is in cyber security of some sort. We did not get into specifics.
What he did tell me is that the girl that rejected him has zero construction background nor education. He degree is a Bachelors degree in "art and science" from FSU. He knew her GPA her SAT scores the clases she took, I am willing to bet her credit score too. LMAO!!
He was pissed, he said to me how does someone who never built a single thing in their life tell me how to build things? I told him, because she has a checklist she is going down and that change set off an alarm.
*that is what I learned, they have no idea what they are looking at when they review my survey, they are only looking at a checklist and then checking off the items as "present" on the survey. They can be completely wrong, they just have to be on there.
Sometimes pool companies come to me to perform formboard tie in surveys on jobs I did not permit. I charge extra money to take these on, many are happy to pay my premium because the company they started with will tell them it will take 3-4 week to get to the form board tie in, when I am 3-4 days because common sense tells me a formboard tie in is holding up a concrete pour.
I then get a copy of what those companies submitted for permitting the project, I then get to see the level of BS, or should I say, their apparent knowledge that no one is REALLY looking at anything. They are just looking to see you put it on there.
One pool permit I looked at had the pool deck 20 feet over the roof of the house, no one batted an eye at that and passed the permit application.
As long as the item is on there, they do not care if it is right or wrong they just want to check the box.
I would never buy a house built here in the last 5 years.
As Covid was hitting all the competent old school employees in the building departments all retired. The result is a crop of Gen X and Z kids that have no idea what they are doing but are experts if you ask them.
That has been something I have noticed changed in the last 5 years making permitting any project hell on earth.
It is amazing what kind of tech is coming out.
This past Tuesday I met my surveyor buddies for beers. One of the guys that comes out with us is a very smart equipment salesman.
He mentioned he purchased a new Tacoma, we went out to check it out after we were done. Then, this brilliant man busts this out, its a wearable, and mountable (as in mount on your vehicle) Lidar/GPS locator.
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Right now, when I used my GPS and Robot, I have to set up the robot in various places, then physically walk up to each item on the ground that needs to be located (walkways, pads, utilities etc) then stand behind the robot and locate everything else (house, fences, power poles).
With this lider, I take a stroll around the property, it maps it all out. Then I mount it on a survey pole and locate my property corners.
A job that is taking me 60-90 minutes in the field can now be completed in 10-15 minutes.
I am trying to get the salesman to come and give me a demonstration start to finish, then I am putting my younger son, who works for me through the classes to train him to post process the field data.
This is a huge game changer. The timing of this amazing little tool coming into my life sucks. I just purchased a used Tacoma 4X4 to replace Bernie (the PriusV) It has a V6 too which was important to me. The 4cyl models are pigs.
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2 weeks ago I looked to see how much A.R.E. Tonneau covers were. They are over $2300 now, last time I purchased one ages ago, it was $1200.
The equipment guy above had a Rough Country Tonneau on his Tacoma, I looked into it, they were around $700, plus I like this design better, it is easy to fold it back out of the way if you need an open bed.
The younger son and I installed it last night, it took about 45 minutes to install. Then I spent another 45 minutes screwing with the alignment.
Last night I learned, these new pickups do not have metal beds anymore, I thought there was a bed liner in this one, that is the actual bed, the entire bed is plastic now.
I remembered from my Mini Pickup, the side rails are somewhat flimsy, the same here with this Tacoma, there was obviously a tweak or something going on with the side rails. I had to mess around for a while to get the topper to close correctly. Its still not perfect but it works.
It will keep honest people from stealing, a person with no moral compass could get in there in a minute or two if they wanted to.
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Plastic bed? That's a surprise! Never have to worry about rust I guess....
Toyota Tacomas have had plastic beds since about 2008.
I assumed liner. My 03 tundra is metal.
Quote from: 94touring on April 11, 2025, 09:45:20 AMI assumed liner. My 03 tundra is metal.
I also have an 05 Taco, it has a metal bed with a liner. I have not owned a Taco newer than 2005 until now, I was amazed it was made out of plastic.
2022 was a bad year, I made some adjustments, moved away from builders and existing home sales and tried to succeeded in transitioning into more high end recession proof clients. I was glad to see the writing on the wall and transition like this, at the same time keeping close contact with my sleepy existing clients just in case they wake back up.
They have not woken up.
In 2022 I laid off Nick the Stoner, he was working in the field and was not really a hard worker, just a pulse that showed up every day. I did not replace him.
Then in 2023 Office Dori left and I did not replace her. My wife works part time with a subcontractor service filling in the rest.
This made me even more efficient.
I am so efficient that I turned my best profit ever since 2008 in 2024. So unexpected, I had to write an additional $11K check to the IRS this week. My wife, got the initial call from our CPA giving the "bad news".
After hearing her freak out in a phone call to me I reminded her. People would kill to be in our shoes. In these situations I always remember Howard Stern talking about Wesley Snipes when he went to jail for refusing to pay taxes. Howard said, everyone in this country would LOVE to be in his shoes, where he makes so much money he has to pay millions in taxes. That is hitting the lottery in life.
I ALWAYS remember that, I paid more in taxes this year than most make in a year, am I mad? Nope! I am grateful that I cracked the code to be in this position. I have no solid number regarding how much I personally paid this year, I will in a couple of weeks when my CPA gives me my returns. (In Florida, for whatever reason, we have until 30 April to file, we have an extension, I am assuming because of the hurricanes last year.)
I called my CPA and my first words were "I heard the fantastic news!!" she laughed, I then told her, there is no bad news here, only good, we crushed 2024 and I am not even slightly upset over the additional taxes, that means we are doing very well.
My company turned a 153K profit last year, I can honestly write a 153K check to myself tomorrow without penalty if I wanted to deplete the business account. I will not do that. I will take maybe one third of that after I bounce back from the Tacoma purchase. I like to keep a substantial amount in my business account. My CPA told me I am an extreme minority, most of their business owners bleed the place dry and panic when a 11K tax bill comes due. I have no idea how these people stay in business.
After the housing crash I realized I need to make sure I am taken care of by ME. When all my credit was pulled in 2009 I stopped carrying any credit. Hence my keeping large balances and not using credit at all, and also insuring (not investing) in Gold and Silver. Only buying things when I can pay cash, etc..
I obviously am too efficient so I pulled my older son aside yesterday and told him I am spreading the love. I upped his salary $200 a week or about 10k a year and told him, do not get used to it, use it to pay off debt because I might drop it if things go south.
He still gets over 10k a year in bonuses 2X 5K+ every June and December, if this trend continues, I might double that. My goal is to have him 100% debt free in 5 years. Then work on the younger kid and get him set up too.
I could leave money to my kids after I die, OR I can help them get set up now, and enjoy watching them prosper as a result while I am alive knowing I helped them.
No offense to boomers, the whole wait until I die is a greatest generation and boomer attitude, I am Gen X, I am not interested in waiting until I die so my kids can get a windfall.
How much fun is it to watch them get set at a younger age and make their lives better while you can see it? My goal is to have my 2 sons set up in homes paid off before I die. The older one is 90K away from that. The younger is saving while living at home, he has enough now for a down payment on a home. He is completely not a bother, actually he is a delight to have here, he is a fantastic cook that makes dinner for us once a week and is fattening us up with his fetish for home based deserts which he is very good at, those Heath Bar cookies on the counter right now are calling me. LOL!
I told him to stay home and save until he can pay cash for a house, he has his own side of the house and is not bothering us at all.
With house prices being bonkers, we/he are in a holding pattern until we can figure out what the right move is.
I agree with you about giving it to them while young enough, especially if they're using it to make real progress in their lives like yours are.
Two of my grandchildren already own homes, and a third is about ready to pull the trigger on one, along with another great-grandchild on the way.
I wish I could do more for them, cause I know it would really enhance their lives......
I really wanted to move away from here about a year ago. It did not come to fruition. Covid ruined this state, everyone moved here driving prices into the stratosphere.
Homes here are in the 400-700K range for nice homes and 300-400K for fixer up homes. No way a 21 y/o will be able to afford that.
we were looking to move up by St. Augustine to an area called Palatka. Houses are 100K there, the hook is, the areas is currently gentrifying.
The downtown area was adorable, it made me not want to buy acreage outside of town but instead buy a 1900 era home in downtown and live where you can walk to everything.
Still on the table, I might buy something as a rental until we are ready to move there.
The Air BNB we stayed in was built in 1855. It was so freaking cool. I wanted to just find another older home and buy it to fix up.
We were exactly 30 minutes SW of St. Augustine on the St. Johns River.
Palatka is a cute little town where everyone knows each other. I liked the vibe and was ready to just drop everything and move there.
there are 2 land surveying companies there, one has a 1 star rating, the other 5 stars. The common reviews said they are overloaded.
Good place to be.
Some pics this is the house we stayed in.
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View in the morning from the front porch on the St. johns.
(https://photos.smugmug.com/photos/i-2BjJTp3/0/Lmf4PkxS3MDMZJwgB33nbT2Tzm32BmBknxMZfMTmv/XL/i-2BjJTp3-XL.jpg)
The owners pulled a floor board so you can see the joists under the house. I am 99% sure this is all Dade County Pine which is very rare and special.
(https://photos.smugmug.com/photos/i-zS8rQfg/0/NLKD8n9WT276cSCfhhgvL52kSP35hJfNZfjh5q6hq/XL/i-zS8rQfg-XL.jpg)
We really dug this town, it may be our reality in the next few years.
Real quick....if you and Renee travel once a year on some badass vacation, you really should utilize one airline credit card. Particularly since you run a business and have a lot of cash flow. Have it set to automatically pay the balance every month. Maybe you already do this. All my international vacations are freebies because of points. I have a hotel card too. United and America have the best points deals.
Our trip to Breckenridge was free.
Airline miles paid for the Delta Comfort+ seats round trip.
Bonvoy paid for the hotel in Denver the 1st night.
Converted Delta points paid for the Hertz rental.
Only money we spent on that trip was food and drinks. And weed. Giggity.
Well, these last 2 weeks have been interesting. I noticed a uptick in exhsiting home sales last week, and thought it was just an odd one off thing.
3 days into this week, that trend is continuing. It makes no sense to me, but, what do I know. I am not a financial expert by any stretch.
My only guess is that the markets are so volatile right now people are seeking safe haven in RE again. I could be way off on that.
We normally have 2-3 surveys a week for existing home sales, last week we had 12.
Three days into this week, we already hit 12.
My equipment guy texted me yesterday, he is coming over Friday morning to demo the Lidar, we are going to scan my office building then post process the data and import it into my cad.
I hope this functions like I think it will, all I am doing since learning about this is dreaming of having it and making my job much easier.
Here is a demo video of the Lidar unit, if anyone is interested. I have to laugh, when I got into this field, we had 3 man crews, long metal tape measures called chains to measure with. A distance meter had just come out, we had one crew with it, it took about 5 seconds to make a measurement and we were ecstatic by the time savings. LOL!! Now I am a 1 man crew, I can collect 300 data points in less than an hour and think that is amazing.
This collects thousands of points a minute.
A Porch Company emails us and wants us to help them with a permit survey for a covered porch. They have been calling all over town and no one will help them.
We have done this before and know the drill. We accept the job, give them a price and time frame then ask for additional information. These trailer parks do not have property lines between the units since they are renting the land under them. We ask for a key map and the lot number. They can only provide the lot number, #25.
We again ask for more information so we can make sure we are on the same page, they give us nothing just that its trailer #25.
Fine, we send a crew out, they find and survey unit #25.
We deliver the survey. Well, they meant to order unit #225. They initially email back and tell us the trailer we surveyed looks nothing like the one they are working on then this killer line: "Did you even go out there to survey it?"
I re-read what the lady wrote a few times thinking maybe I was reading it wrong, nope she was accusing my company of committing fraud.
The girls up front go back and forth with her, suddenly they can produce a key map, they also send a picture of unit 225, where we can see the unit number on the trailer. We also looked on Google maps and figured out we were in the completely wrong place.
Once they figure this out, we inform the Porch Company they ordered Lot 25, when it was 225 which was obvious in the pictures they sent.
The Porch Company blames the homeowner stating they told the Porch Company the wrong unit number. Not once did they offer an apology for accusing us of fraud.
At this point, disgusted, I told the girls to just delete the email, we are done, we are not going to get paid for the wrong order now and we are cutting our losses. I then told the girls, after she accused us of fraud, I am not even interested in working for her anymore.
2 weeks go by and she emails us and asks us what the status of the correct survey is?
I was amazed by the gall. The girls just emailed her and told her we are not interested in working on this project anymore due to the losses we are incurring, furthermore since they called our ethics into question, it is in both our best interests to not work together anymore.
An hour later the Porch company emails back and wants to know how much to survey the correct lot now?
I saw the return email and I just sat here in disbelief that she still has the gall to try to order with us.
Are people really this clueless?
Yes, people are really that clueless.
What does the lidar survey thing cost? will it save you money by making you more efficient or simply move the heavy workload into the back office/processing area?
The Lidar is 35K for the unit with all the bells and whistles + $1500 a year software subscription.
The jury is still out on this and if it will work. We scanned my office building Friday morning, I have not had time to process the data file to see how tedious or easy it is to manage. This is like learning an entire new language. I am still trying to get my head around the software and process. I hope to have an opinion on this tech by the end of the week. At the beginning of next month there is a online training session that is free, I am signing up to watch it and see if this is the ticket for me.
In theory, it will drop my field time down 75% and increase my office about 25%, I prefer to get done in the field faster and sit in the office longer, especially in the summer.
I came to post this, at a Easter gathering today I met my nephews new girlfriends family for the first time. They are all from Venezuela originally. The dad spoke limited English, we ended up chatting the best we could because we share a common interest. Cars!!
He races in circle dirt track racing, he has a Crown Vic he races and has a Chevy Camaro ZL1 that he just finished building that he is going to be running soon.
In 2 weeks he is racing again, we are going to watch him. BTW - he is 70 years old and I am digging he is still racing.
His daughter (My nephews GF) was all excited we were chatting, she said he does not talk to anyone, the moment she saw us chatting she knew we were talking cars. It made her day, she actually thanked me for initializing the conversation.
I invited him to the AX next weekend, if he comes I will give him a ride in the Mini. Then we are heading to Clewiston, Florida, the sugar cane capital of Florida to watch him race, going to head out early and tailgate before the race.
Quote from: Jims5543 on April 10, 2025, 10:51:38 AMThis is a huge game changer. The timing of this amazing little tool coming into my life sucks. I just purchased a used Tacoma 4X4 to replace Bernie (the PriusV) It has a V6 too which was important to me. The 4cyl models are pigs.
(https://photos.smugmug.com/photos/i-cMqrSzq/0/MCx7323T4NbKwHnsSK2VP4TBnpzK6QkrgHjSS7ZHt/L/i-cMqrSzq-L.jpg)
I just had to write a war and peace email to a customer. I may as well tell this funny story.
For a couple of days the Tacoma was considered stolen.
When I purchased it I wrote a company check for it, full price OTD.
At one point the manager on duty at Carmax came over and asked if she could see my checking account balance, I thought that was odd, so I pulled it up on my phone. Plenty in there to buy the truck. Except for one problem I did not anticipate.
My bank was National City Bank, which was purchased by PNC. I had a large ledger of business checks with National City still on them, the branch manager told me to just use them up, since we hardly write any checks anymore outside the monthly rent and some supplies once every few months we have lots left.
Well, that was causing concern at Carmax that night. I told them lets just table the deal until the next morning, I will run to the bank and grab a Cashiers check for them. They declined and decided to push the deal through that night. I didn't care either way.
It seems Wells Fargo is their bank and Wells would not be arsed to contact PNC and sort out the check. Somehow the check was deemed "untraceable" and kicked back.
I received a Fedex delivery yesterday with a very off putting letter, it demanded I either return the truck immediately or risk it being repo'd or make payment arrangements, the letter stated in bold text, this is an attempt to collect a debt.
I also had to pay a $50 returned check fee. All of this pissed me off because I told them lets back off and do it my way in the morning, they insisted on pushing forward.
So, long story short I stole a Tacoma from Carmax for a few days. LOL! I thought I saw a helicopter following me.
(https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BYTUzNWQwMTEtYjk4ZS00MTcxLWE2MzAtMzAwNjVjMjRhYjdlXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyNDIyNjA2MTk@._V1_.jpg)
Oh and this job is going to kill me. Monday and Tuesday, I had so much field work I was in the field 2X longer than I am usually there. I was getting back from the field so late I was falling further and further behind.
My dog woke me at 2am today she had to pee really bad.
I went back to bed and my brain turned back on, I laid there tossing and turning freaking out over how much is on my desk. I am a log jam at the moment.
After an hour of that I said fuck it, got up, got dressed and went to the office at 03:15.
I left for the field at 06:15 which was a lighter day, my first work was in a subdivision under construction, by 07:00 I had my first tasks completed out there and was leaving there at 0745.
I only had 2 more fast stops to make working my way back to the office. Back in office at 09:30. Put a good dent in the pile of shit on my desk today.
I announced today, no off the street customers. Then we get an inquiry from a gal that used to use me a lot a lifetime ago to survey 7 acres, we punted it and I have to admit, part of me died turning it away, it was going to be a fun project.
I also was just approached to provide construction support a Holiday Inn remodel. Passing on that too.
I am completely at a loss as to how it is so busy here, its insane.
So I have been up since 2am after only sleeping 3 hours last night. I should sleep good tonight.
This is mind blowing to me.
I have always struggled converting old legal descriptions into text. I scan them, then I convert a PDF into text. The conversion never goes well, this is a perfect example, I attached a picture of the legal.
Here is what my PDF to text program gave me to clean up:
QuoteTract 40, $ectian 35, T*rrship 38 liouth, Range d0 f*st, PALM CITY FARMS, according te the Plat thereof. as recorderl in Plat Book 6, P*ge d2, Publie R**ords af Pallr B,eaeh {nox Mrrtin) County, Florids; LISS ANI] right-of*way of r*cord for Stat* Road 76"{ and al*o LT$$ AND pruperty: A part of Tract 4fi, Sectinn ]S,Torrnrhip 38 South, Rnngr EXCH,PT the following 40 [ast, Ftlm City Ii*rrns, to the Ptrat ther*of. ss r*cordrd in PIst Sffik 6- Psge {2, Fubli* County, Florida, describrd ss frrllowr: Carmmence st thc Records af Prlm B*ach (now 38 South, Range d$ East; thrnce North {Xl degreru 50'55" Southwe*l t$rntr of $*ctkx .35, 09'05" f,rst, 5S fe*t t* the flast right-of-x*3' Iine of West, n.221.55 fert; th*nce thrnrt N*rth fil degr*e* ${}'$5" Wt*t* along srid County Road i{o" ?SA rnd the PCIint thcnce Snuth 89 degrees 55'40" East* 50.01 feet; theuce righl-of-wry line, r distsnce of ,{I6.El li,nuth IS dcgrce.c !?'dl" !ilrst, 5{1.99 feet to th* South 05 rlqre*s ?3'l*'* l#trt, l68.tq the fullowirg dtscribed pr*p*rty: A parttl of Point of Beginningl ALSO Lf$S AND Range *O Easl,, Pelm Cifu* *orrns,, nctorcling to Iand lying in Trsct {O, lit*tion 35, Public Reeords gf Palm Se*eh (n*w Marlin) the Pl*t th*reof, as r*rnrded iu Plrt Book 6, Ssuth 6O fe*t of raid Traet *0. l*ss the West 50 County, Flsridq and beiug destnibed rs togrthrr with thr fi,ast 0$ f*rt eif feet af existing right-of-w*y ftr {:R-?6A {a l$$ for {6th Strert {e }S ftxrt right-*f-w*y} said Trsrt d0, less the North lS fret of existing a partel of land hiag tht fillrt of s cun't less the South 6$ feet as descrihed rbovc; cone&yr ta thr N$rttrwe*t lying nrar the S*uthesst corenr of ssid Tract d0- having a radiut af 2tXl f*et and being tengent to the North line of thr Soulh 60 feet af Tract 4* and alxr heing tang*xt to th* Wrst lire of the fsst 6{} fret *f *aid 'frnct 4{} as rhawn on sketch record*d in O.R" Book I I4l, Pnge ( 2253, Public Rtcard"; of hl*rtin Courtyr Floridt.
Subirct to tsxes for
l0l7 *nd subrequtnt yearsi covsnsnt*, mnditionr, rxtricticn$!
t&stmrttlt,,
Defeated, I started to just type it all over myself. Then I thought, I wonder if AI can convert it. So I asked Grok if it could convert it. It said sure and 3 seconds later it gave me this dead on perfect transcription:
QuoteTract 40, Section 35, Township 38 South, Range 40 East, PALM CITY FARMS, according to the Plat thereof, as recorded in Plat Book 6, Page 42, Public Records of Palm Beach (now Martin) County, Florida; LESS AND EXCEPT the right-of-way of record for State Road 76A and also LESS AND EXCEPT the following described property: A part of Tract 40, Section 35, Township 38 South, Range 40 East, Palm City Farms, according to the Plat thereof, as recorded in Plat Book 6, Page 42, Public Records of Palm Beach (now Martin) County, Florida, described as follows: Commence at the Southwest corner of Section 35, Township 38 South, Range 40 East; thence North 00 degrees 50'55" West, 2,221.55 feet; thence North 89 degrees 09'05" East, 50 feet to the East right-of-way line of County Road No. 76A and the POINT OF BEGINNING; thence North 00 degrees 50'55" West, along said right-of-way line, a distance of 416.81 feet; thence South 89 degrees 55'40" East, 50.01 feet; thence South 05 degrees 2318" West, 168.19 feet; thence South 10 degrees 2741" West, 50.99 feet to the Point of Beginning; ALSO LESS AND EXCEPTING the following described property: A parcel of land lying in Tract 40, Section 35, Township 38 South, Range 40 East, Palm City Farms, according to the Plat thereof, as recorded in Plat Book 6, Page 42, Public Records of Palm Beach (now Martin) County, Florida and being described as follows: The East 60 feet of the West 50 feet of existing right-of-way for CR-76A (a 100 foot right-of-way); together with the East 60 feet of said Tract 40, less the North 15 feet of existing right-of-way for 66th Street (a 30 foot right-of-way) less the South 60 feet as described above; together with a parcel of land being the fillet of a curve concave to the Northwest lying near the Southeast corner of said Tract 40, having a radius of 200 feet and being tangent to the North line of the South 60 feet of Tract 40 and also being tangent to the West line of the East 60 feet of said Tract 40 as shown on sketch recorded in O.R. Book 1141, Page 2253, Public Records of Martin County, Florida.
Mind blown!!
High-end recession-proof clients were precisely what I geared my RV business to. $ 500,000 was a relatively inexpensive coach in our world. We were always booked a year ahead. Each client would book next year's appointment before leaving. Also, anyone like your porch client was fired, and yes, people are that clueless.
We had a customer accuse us of stealing a sink cutout cover from his coach. I never went past the driver's seat. The work was on the exterior of the unit. He called, and I explained this to him. He then showed up, cussing me out in person and also accusing us of getting the carpet dirty. At this point, I told him to fuck off and sue me. And if he has any friends fuck them too.
He said, ' Good luck with your business. ' I won't be back. I said you're not welcome back. It turns out he was a member of the Rotary Club and tried to badmouth us; as a result, we ended up with a dozen or so great new clients from the Rotary Club. They all said don't worry about him. He's an asshole. We came by to apologize and to say that he is not a good representative of our club. About a year later, he called, trying to get an appointment. WTF, really? It turns out that every shop in town had fired him as a customer. I never even told him that every step, from me entering the coach to pulling it inside, and all the work was on camera, and I never left the driver's seat or got near any carpet.
I was hoping he would file a lawsuit so that I could provide the video evidence and expose him for the fool he is. A huge waste of time, but it would have been worth it. We sent him a thank-you card for all the referrals from the Rotary Club. He was later found guilty of embezzling money from the club, a real class act that guy was.
I think the longer you are in business, the lower the tolerance for bullshit becomes. I found out the best money we made was when I stopped catering to the bullshit customers. My favorite saying in my new business is. "You're welcome to go somewhere else"
The majority of our customers were super cool people. We are still friends with a number of them and get together for a visit now and then. We ment some really neat people in that business from all sorts of professional fields I always enjoyed the stories of how they got to where they were.
I live in a different world, I am sitting here at after 21:30, I have been going since 0600, a few of my clients and I have been exchanging emails since 20:00 until just now when it hit me, all these folks are self employed just like me, we are all grinding insane hours dedicated to our clients and businesses. They have all probably been going since early this morning like me and here we are late in the evening still going.
I have been talking a lot with Mrs5543 about a huge lifestyle change. We are toying with taking a 50% pay cut and stepping away from the day to day activities in about 2 years to start up a car touring business.
My plan is to hire a friend who is burnt out working for corporations and bring him on board here to run my company so I can move away and pursue this dream I have, I want to wake up every day excited like I am heading to an Autocross.
I should be clear, I love what I do, the field portion, the office portion sucks, clients suck (most of them) the stress in this line of work sucks too. You have to be perfect, zero mistakes, one small mistake can potentially cost you hundreds of thousands. That is very stressful.
I want to play car for a living and have a plan in my head, I am trying put on paper and make a reality. I do not care if it makes me a lot of money, if it pays the bills, I will be happy. I hope to hatch a thread on my plans as they come to fruition.
I do not advertise at all. All my referrals come in from word of mouth or repeat customers. I have never advertised, never had a need to.
A simple Google Maps location is the extent of my advertising.
I was approached by a Golf Course up the road from my office asking if I wanted to put an ad on their score cards, they have 1 space left and it costs $800 for one year. Their sales pitch is this:
QuoteThe reason I am contacting you is because we are going to be creating brand new scorecards to be used by all of the golfers at the Jensen Beach Golf Club!
25,000+ rounds of golf are played at the course annually that you'd be featured in front of.
Middle to high end incomes, business owners and decision makers within the company and family decision makers.
Several charitable events, tournaments, corporate outings, banquets and their popular Women's and Junior Leagues.
Lets have some fun!!
I am open to suggestions.
My idea?
An small add with some wording like:
Does your neighbor annoy you?
Do you think their fence in encroaching?
Lets go to war together!!
*My company info*
Or do I keep it more professional and just state 25 years in Jensen Beach, blah blah boring...
Quote from: Jims5543 on May 29, 2025, 11:26:48 AMI do not advertise at all. All my referrals come in from word of mouth or repeat customers. I have never advertised, never had a need to.
A simple Google Maps location is the extent of my advertising.
I was approached by a Golf Course up the road from my office asking if I wanted to put an ad on their score cards, they have 1 space left and it costs $800 for one year. Their sales pitch is this:
QuoteThe reason I am contacting you is because we are going to be creating brand new scorecards to be used by all of the golfers at the Jensen Beach Golf Club!
25,000+ rounds of golf are played at the course annually that you'd be featured in front of.
Middle to high end incomes, business owners and decision makers within the company and family decision makers.
Several charitable events, tournaments, corporate outings, banquets and their popular Women's and Junior Leagues.
Lets have some fun!!
I am open to suggestions.
My idea?
An small add with some wording like:
Does your neighbor annoy you?
Do you think their fence in encroaching?
Lets go to war together!!
*My company info*
Or do I keep it more professional and just state 25 years in Jensen Beach, blah blah boring...
I'd go completely random. Have this and your contact info.
Quote from: 94touring on May 29, 2025, 01:48:23 PMI'd go completely random. Have this and your contact info.
LMAO!!
I like that, I am about to call them they have a free art design guy who is going to work with me.
This just took another twist. I just got off the phone with the rep from the advertising company I am working with for the Score card.
They had a cancellation at another Golf Course one town over where I work a lot too.
They made me an offer I could not refuse. I purchased a year on that score card for the came price as the one up the road even though it was supposed to be more money. As a thank you for jumping in at the last minute, they gave me a second year free at the course local to my office.
The rep was cracking up when I told him I wanted to do something silly.
I have until Monday to toss a rough concept to him so they can work up the art.
Ideas?
"Bill Murray would never use this company, that is why you should"
If I chicken out I might just go with "25 years on the Treasure Coast, family owned operated and staffed"
Email from this little pool company we started to work for about 1 year ago:
QuoteWe received the email below from Martin County upon their review of the Schafer form board survey requesting finished floor elevations. I was surprised to see this comment, as in my experience, you are well aware of the survey requirements for Martin County. I have chosen to employ your services due to your knowledge of the survey requirements in Martin County and in Port St. Lucie. This does not exhibit the level of professionalism that we have come to expect from your firm.
I seemed to recall having you prepare a form board survey for the Lopez pool last year, so I went back to look at that survey, which is attached. As you can see, the FFE information is clearly noted on the Lopez survey.
Sadly, we are losing additional valuable time in the construction process on the Schafer pool because this survey does not meet Martin County's requirements. We respectfully request that every effort be made to resolve this as quickly as possible.
The last 2 form board surveys we did for them have been riddled with problems of the pool companies making. I have lost money on both of them.
Then I got the email above and I have had enough of this pretentious asshole.
My email back explained there was no way for me to anticipate that rejection, it is not a valid rejection as we performed a form board survey of a pool hole in the ground before the gunnite is sprayed and there is no way to determine an elevation of the pool from that.
Therefore a House finished floor elevation is pointless and just some county office moron trying to find a reason to make a rejection.
The other survey she refers to was one I started at the permit stage, the last one she just got rejected for was not my job, I jumped in the middle as the surveyor they used for permitting was taking too long to get out there. I did this in less than a week. The other surveyor was going to make them wait 3 weeks.
I have reached a point where, if you are going to be an asshole, I am not working for you. There are a couple more clients perilously close to being canned too.
After explaining that to her, providing her with a revised survey with the house elevation on it, that has no effect on the pool hole. I then told her she can choose to employ someone else as I told her not to order anything else from my firm.
I would have preferred to tell her where to go. I had to restrain myself. I bent over backwards for this pool company and all they do is this shit,
BTW - The last pool company I quit from was a few years ago because they were not paying their bills.
They ended up in jail, not because of me, because they were ripping everyone off. The husband / wife owners are both in jail for decades now.
https://www.tcpalm.com/story/news/crime/indian-river-county/2024/05/24/amore-pool-owner-guilty-in-multimillion-dollar-pool-building-scheme/73585251007/
The pool business is evidently complicated. Speaking of.... our condo pool that was going to be renovated 2 months ago:
Having beers with my surveyor friends, I commented about how over regulated pool permitting is.
One of the surveyors specializes in consulting with municipalities. He commented that every regulation is a result of a lawsuit.
I mentioned this to one of my pool contractors and she agreed. She pointed to this news story.
https://www.wpbf.com/article/exclusive-family-says-florida-father-of-four-died-saving-sons-from-electrified-fountain/45632212
After that, all commercial pools / fountains and anything similar were stopped for almost a year while new regulations were drafted up.
A pool like your condo pool is subject to way more rules and regulations than a residential pool would for obvious reasons.
Yeah we have a nice mud pit for the summer.
I wonder how big the lawsuit settlement will be, even tho it was posted?
My equipment salesman hits me up this morning with a solution to a problem I had.
I want to get rid of my 1st generation Robotic instrument. I have been delaying that because it was heavily damaged by water intrusion and has had extensive repairs to it.
I have since bought the second generation of it and do not use the old one anymore. He just let me know they are having a trade in deal where they give 10K trade in for the old instrument towards a 3rd generation one.
Then I can sell off one of our 2nd Generation instruments for about 12K making the purchase of the 3rd gen relatively painless.
Decisions.
edit
He just sent me a quote. The 3rd gen is $25.3K, they will give me 10K on trade. I am trying to see what my 2nd gen is worth to sell off.
If I can get 12K for my second gen, I am only out 3K for a brand new one that will serve me easily for the next 5- years. This is a no brainer.
I wonder why a heavily repaired unit is still worth more than $10K?
But I agree, sure sounds like a no brainer to me too.....
I have been holding off selling it because I do not trust it. I have a problem passing issues onto an individual.
I have no problem handing it over to the equipment company. If I were to try to sell it I may be lucky to get 6-7K for it considering its history.
They swear its repaired and back to factory specs. They did over 4K in repairs to it and ate the cost.
As I said too easy to take 10K for it and get rid of the problem.
The new robot required me to upgrade my software on my Win10 Tablet. The software I was using was not 100% compatible with the new instrument.
I had hoped the new software would have dialed out some of the software glitches I have grown both used to and annoyed by. Welp, after 2 weeks of using it I would like to congratulate Topcon, they managed to make it worse.
(http://www.restorationmini.com/forum/gallery/65-220725080424.jpeg)
In business related news, I have noted before, I have seen a steady decline in home sales over the last 2 years, when the prices doubled along with interest rates in 2022, it basically tossed a wet towel on the housing market.
My tract home builder has slowed a bunch, they only have 20 vacant lots in the huge subdivision I work in for them and they are struggling to justify building those last 20 homes.
My smaller builders have been dormant for the last 2 years as well. The pools are what keep me busy and off the street customers which in many cases are more aggravation than its worth to work for.
I suspect we will start seeing in the news that the housing market is collapsing. I tell people all the time, I see things before anyone else does, I get a good feel for the temperature of the markets based on what I see in my day to day business dealings.
I have been watching the housing market slowly die off for the last 3 years, I expect we will start to see more mainstream reports that things are going south soon.
Great news for my niece and son, they may finally be able to afford a home in the not too distant future.
I have heard so many in my business say the same thing, if the interest rates would drop 1% all hell would probably break loose. I know a lot of people who have stopped shopping for a home and are waiting for just that, as well as prices coming back down to earth.
I do not see a 2008 crash coming, I do see a market correction, which is long overdue, coming up soon.
That picture above was taking while surveying a $5 Million home last week.
The house was remarkable. We had to rush this as the rescission is expiring Friday this week. I had 2 crews on this Thursday last week, we knocked out the field work in less than 2 hours. :grin:
(http://www.restorationmini.com/forum/gallery/65-220725082000-43761930.jpeg)
(http://www.restorationmini.com/forum/gallery/65-220725081955-43711523.jpeg)
(http://www.restorationmini.com/forum/gallery/65-220725081956-43711695.jpeg)
Is that place on the Inland Waterway?
Looks like it was built in the 40's, or at least in that style?
Would it have originally had a tile roof?
Its on an interior waterway called the inter coastal waterway.
https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/3968-SE-Old-Saint-Lucie-Blvd_Stuart_FL_34996_M67926-43686
I just dug through the old satellite imagery, the images prior to 2007 get grainy, in 2007 is had a metal roof it may have always had one.
Fun fact in Key West building code calls for all houses to have metal roofs. That code was put into place in 1886 after a huge fire.
Many houses have metal because it holds up good in hurricanes, and its fire proof.
A price correction would be great. Even in Tulsa modest homes are nearly twice what they probably should be. This is me saying this as someone who owns 3 properties already. I have a 4th property in mind I'd like to buy, but it's almost hard to justify it.
BTW - That house above was a cash deal.
Niece and her husband were just at our house they were looking at a house up the corner from our house to rent. We warned them that the neighbor next door was an asshole who leaves his dogs outside all the time and they are big and always barking all the neighbors hate him.
They toured the house knowing that, went into the backyard and made some noise, the dogs were there to barking up a storm.
Deal breaker!! They told the realtor that was the reason they were passing. LOL!!
They have another house in our subdivision to look at to rent. They are trying to see it tomorrow night.
They decided to just rent for a year, house prices are so insane it is actually cheaper to rent, well, in some cases some are asking way too much to rent.
Fer reference, the house they looked at is $2,800 a month rent and that is a deal around here. Insanity!!
Get off my lawn!!
How un-affordable is housing now?
We just talking to a super while working in the large tract home community. His little story made me realize people are getting in over their heads buying houses again. Smacks of 2004-2008 all over again.
Couple is on a final walk through on the house with the super, they start asking questions, how much will the electric bill be in this house? Can we turn off the automatic sprinklers?
I thought they had reclaimed water in there, they do not all the irrigation is on municipal water, which is not cheap. Hence them asking if they can turn it off, which will result in dead grass.
After he told me that, I said to him, these people can barely afford these houses, one bad event and they are in foreclosure.
Crazy!
For some that prestigious address is worth the suffering.....it's not to me.
I catch your drift, except there is nothing prestigious about this community.
I cannot remember when I first started in there. There are only 20 vacant lots left now. We have over 300 houses built in there now.
As the place fills up, I notice a lot of houses are starting to look really bad, lawns are burned up and all weeds, whats left of the grass is not mowed, driveways full of stains. Junk in yards, its getting trashy in there. The newness is wearing off fast.
This is a place you buy in because the houses are cheaper.
They just dropped their prices 50K per house and now they are selling. Here is an example of one.
https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/5483-Lugo-St-Fort-Pierce-FL-34951/337760914_zpid/
I am the same way Dave, I probably typed this before; many years ago James Woods made a comment that has stuck with me, exactly 4 people care about the house you live in, buy a house to make you happy not to impress people.
My wife and I love our little 1400 s.f. house. It has all we need, we love the location and community.
We toyed with selling a few times, then stopped ourselves, this house is paid for, we love this little house. We have no plans on selling, ever. It will end up being passed on to our kids.
The 5 Million $$ home above?
While doing research I learned something cool about the area. The property the house is sitting on used to be a hotel 100 years ago.
The Sunrise in, this is a picture of the 1911 Record Plat, You can see Capt, Henry Sewell's house on Sewells Point across the river, he was a huge part of developing this area in the early 1900's along with his friend Lieutenant Hugh Willoughby, there is a road here named after him.
The funny part is the "Reserved" Willoughby Point, it was recently subdivided and has 3 houses being built there.
Neat article on the Hotel.
https://archive.tcpalm.com/yournews/martin-county/historical-vignettes-the-sunrise-inn-at-beautiful-port-sewall-ep-381473119-342810492.html
Picture of the hotel from 1965 (I think it was used in the article too)
https://martindigitalhistory.org/items/show/2286
(http://www.restorationmini.com/forum/gallery/65-230725102459.jpeg)
Some other pics from the hotel.
(https://www.martindigitalhistory.org/files/original/a90eff19bd3a8f9af3f5daa565bb3025.jpg)
Circa 1915 along the water behind the hotel.
(https://www.martindigitalhistory.org/files/original/cd78747a3b0654b11f53a9b814e57b57.jpg)
Cool aerial shot from 1955
(https://www.martindigitalhistory.org/files/original/e20e78e3d330efe22212004a34846629.jpg)
Dock in 1914.
(https://www.martindigitalhistory.org/files/original/166e5bbee33e7f7e754df51e82885be6.jpg)
To give you an idea how this area changed over the last 100 years. 2 Pics of about the same area 70 years apart.
(https://www.martindigitalhistory.org/files/original/e20e78e3d330efe22212004a34846629.jpg)
The empty wooded Island (Sewells Point) is now fully developed and is a perfect example of prestigious address.
Further in the distance you can see the St. Lucie Inlet (Altantic behind it) that point just to the left of the inlet is Sailfish Point where I posted about the billionaires house a page back.
(http://www.restorationmini.com/forum/gallery/65-230725105406.png)
Man, all of that land looks like it's just a hairsbreadth away from being under water!
The 5 Million house finished floor elevation was 13.5' above sea level.
I live on a sand ridge, my house is 30' above sea level, I am practically on a mountain. LOL!
That sand ridge I am on runs down Sewells point along the west side (closer to us in the pic) those houses range from 20 to 40 feet over sea level, the other side of the Island is very low like 6-10 feet over sea level.
If you ever see a hurricane coming our way and it has a 15-20' storm surge, many of these houses would be under water.
The crazy thing is, FEMA does not consider the 5 Mil house to be in a flood zone. They were asking me to prepare Flood Elevation Certificates, I told them they are not in a flood zone, therefore I cannot prepare one. The good news is Flood Insurance should be cheaper due to that.
What's FEMA? Hasn't it been defunded? :grin:
If you can wait just a few years, all those submerged houses will be priced at much more reasonable levels... :cheesy:
Quote from: Veggivet on July 30, 2025, 05:50:40 PMIf you can wait just a few years, all those submerged houses will be priced at much more reasonable levels... :cheesy:
We'll be waiting awhile.
Oh come on, one pic could have been taken at high tide, the other at low tide.....
It may not happen in our lifetimes,, but unless the temp change moderates it will happen. There's a reason there were inland seas in the US......most of the country from Missouri to Colorado was under water.
I'm not trying to stir up a debate about man's impact on the climate change, but only to point out that over the millennia climate change has happened.
Yes once upon a time everything was underwater because it's a natural cycle of the earth. It won't happen in our lifetime.