ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade General Discussion Area "green house" bid

Highground, throw all referance to the job, and GC into the rectangular file - or mark up the bid 1000%.

Steve, do you have any evidence of that? What I remember is that there was a huge study in, IIRC, Sweden, that compared proximity to power lines with a large number of maladies, and this study showed a slight elevation in leukemia. HOWEVER... When you are measuring as many things as they measured, you will, by random chance, get some things that show up above average, and some that show up below average. That was the conclusion about what happened in that case--there was a rather small number of leukemia cases, and by random chance there was a slight clustering around power lines. When researchers went looking for this in other locations, they found no correlaton between power lines and leukemia in other places.

That doesn't stop the alarmists from proclaiming that it has been proven that power lines cause leukemia, and shouldn't be built.

This is from a while back. Perhaps you have more up-to-date information than I do?

All I know is what I gathered from a quick google search. I'm sure there are conflicting studies out there.

This sounds like they wrote a loophole into the spec so that they can get away without paying you, even if you try a lien or court case.

RUN AWAY !!!!!!

You could always bid the job and exclude this test from your scope.

Some of the other interesting specs include:

There is to be an exhaust fan in the garage that runs for twenty minutes after the the garage door opens or closes.

And there are to be switches outside each bedroom to kill the power to the entire bedroom before they retire for the evening. Besides the smoke detectors, does anybody see any code problems with that one?

Thanks
highground

I see a problem with the alarm clock, and running out into the hall naked to turn the lights on, but there's no Code against silliness.

I had a friend that wanted something similar to this when he wanted to keep his kids off the video games and such while grounded... He also wanted keyed switches

That sounds like someone who is far enough off the deep end that I wouldn't want to do business with them. (The term "paranoid schizophrenic" comes to mind, but there is nowhere near enough information here to make a reasonable determination.)

Seems I had job like this for a short time for the 'tin foil hat' set. (EMF-a-phobes) We only did the foundation work, by which time the GC and subsequently the company I worked for were released from contract. These people wanted all cabling routed away from sleeping areas yet still wanted bed-side outlets for the cordless phone, cell phone charger and what have you.

People like that have been reading too many poorly written articles by people with 'greener than thou' political agendas who regurgitate data that they either have little understanding of, or just made up entirely. And there seems to be an epidemic of it in certain circles of people... Whats worse is that you can't seem to debunk the crap they have been fed without seeming anti-green. At which point they dont trust anything you have to say anyway. But that could be an advantage if you feel unscrupulous. I was on another job recently where there was a lot of talk about the required (Contractualy) use of recycled lumber. The entire job used no dimensional lumber at all. (*except all the concrete forms... ) They used all engineered lumber through-out the building under the guise that it contained 'some' recycled wood. Little do they know that they grind entire trees that they wouldn't cut anyway due to visual, staightness or other defects for the other 98%. But to them it contains some recycled wood, and they are willing to pay top dollar for that green grin in the end.