Do grade setters normally paint marks on the ground or do they just use lath and blue or red crayon as means of communication ? Just curious what's the norm or acceptable ? Thanks
In the area I live in we use both, sometimes at the same time. A hand level to shoot the grade from the lath and then paint the cut or fill on the ground. Sometimes a laser level and rod - then paint the cut or fill. We always use different colors of plastic ribbons on the lath to indicate the cut or fill in increments of feet.
Thank you Tinkerer !
Stakes with colored ribbons for rough grade. Blue is grade, white for one foot, red for two, red and white combo for three, yellow for four feet. Ribbons directly on the ground, notched in with a hatchet, are sometimes used for finish grade work when there is no lazer or gps around. Ribbons on the ground indicate tenths instead of feet. The same scale applys, blue is always grade, white for one, etc. A twist on this is you can add a blue to signify fill, so for example, blue and red would indicate fill 2 tenths. This is a handy method when grading by yourself, or to keep the grade checker farther ahead of your machine so you are not waiting on his shot.
And then a dump truck driver shows up and messes up the whole finely tuned system.
willie59, you are so right.
On the positive side, should you ever find yourself lost in the desert simply pound a stake into the ground and you won't have to wait long before a dump truck shows up to run it over.
Works to find concrete trucks too!
I'm more an electrician. I find trucks by finding a safe spot to lay out conductors for a wire pull. My favorite story is a unplowed, but rutted, and frozen parking lot. There hadn't been a vehicle in it in two months. I had 5 runs of 150 feet #2 copper THHN ready to pull. Suddenly I heard diesel engine. I looked up in time to see a ten wheeler dump, with low boy, and a crawler drive over it in the middle. I could lay wire on Mount Everest, a truck, crawler, fork lift, or at least a lawn mower would appear out of nowhere. Willie
It was so bad on one job I was on that my grade man stopped a semi and then threw an entire bundle of lath under his drive wheels. The driver asked what that was all about and Lennie said "That will just save me the work of setting them and then watch you drive over them". They hit the stakes going forward and reverse an if they didn't get them that way they would dump the load on them.
But that can't beat the new kid, bosses nephew or something like that, brought out to learn to run paddle wheel scrapers. The first thing he was told was to make sure he saved all the stakes. So he got in the seat, drove out to a fresh line of stakes just set by the surveyors, and lined them up and LOADED THEM UP! Then he drove back to the boss and said with a straight face "I saved all them stakes right here, where do you want me to put them so they will be out of the way?"
I have shot grade with a GPS rover and surveyed with a total station (I was the rodman). I used the GPS on cleared ground and the total station in brushy and overgrown ground. Paint was the way to go with the GPS because you can hold the rover in one hand and paint in the other. I was taught to use plus or minus for fill and cut then write the amount. It was difficult to set stakes with the GPS because I had to carry stakes, a hammer, and the GPS. With the total station in the brush, stakes were the only things that would be visible to operators. It was not as hard as setting stakes with the GPS because I could lay the prism down (gently) and then use both hands to set a stake.
I have spent hours setting stakes in the Arkansas heat and yet, I still hit them occasionally when I drive a dump truck. One stake every once in a while is inevitable, but I would be mad when we showed up on Monday morning and some fool on a four-wheeler had driven down the ditch and knocked down every stake. That is why I prefer paint