There is a cloud drawn around part of your duct run, and a little triangle next to it with a number in it. Something in there changed. That is what the balloon is telling you, and that is most of what it is telling you. This goes with how to read HVAC drawings on a…
You are holding a sheet. Is it the current one? It probably says so. The architect marks the current drawing, and that marking is true as of the day it was issued. What it cannot tell you is what happened since. If an RFI answer came back, or the owner or architect issued a change…
Tomorrow is thought of today. Not tomorrow morning at six in the gang box with a coffee. Today, while there is still time to do something about what you find. Everything in this post is the answer to one question: when four guys walk into that area in the morning, does the work start, or…
Somebody tells you to check the schedule. Which one? There are a dozen of them in that set. Lights have a schedule. Toilets have a schedule. Devices, electrical gear, mechanical units, exhaust fans, VFDs. The roof drains are on a schedule. So are the floor drains. That word does a lot of work on a…
You found it. You are the one standing there with a tape in your hand looking at a beam that is exactly where your duct is supposed to go. So you tell your foreman. And then the problem leaves your hands and you do not see it again for three weeks, and when it comes…
Here is something nobody tells a first year. The floor you are standing on is not the thing the building was laid out from. It is a finished surface that got poured to meet an elevation, and sometimes it misses. So when you pull a tape up from the slab to set a duct height,…
Here is a question worth two inches. A duct is called out at an elevation and that duct is going to have insulation. Is the number to the metal, or to the outside of the insulation? It is to the metal. Always, regardless of where the insulation goes. If you have never had to ask…
There is not much room above a ceiling, and there are four major trades trying to get into it. Duct is the biggest thing going in there. It is also the most rigid. And on most jobs it is close to last in line. Put those three together and you get a fight that duct…
When I was installing, I thought we should get priority. Our duct was big, it was rigid, and everybody else’s pipe could bend around it. That was my honest opinion for years. Now I sit on the other side of the table. I work for a general contractor and I read the same drawings from…
A shop drawing came back with a stamp on it. The field does not match. Somebody is about to eat the cost of that and it is worth knowing in advance who. These are two different documents doing two different jobs, and mixing them up is one of the more expensive mistakes available to a…