Breadcrumbs: the engineers
Feb. 29th, 2024 01:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
walkitoutI’m trying to post some summaries of what’s been going on in construction because I apparently have been very closed mouth about this here and it’s becoming a problem in terms of keeping the timeline and details straight in my head. This blog exists in part as an outboard brain for me.
Once upon a time, we had a big house we were planning with a design build firm and the architect was getting a little nervous about the amount of steel involved so we hired some engineers. They were super helpful with the steel problem, but they kinda let a concrete problem really go unrecognized. This is probably number one on the list of complaints I have about these engineers. When we went to hire a builder and the builder was putting together an extremely rough idea of pricing, the concrete involved (this house is on a hill) made all the concrete people in the valley extremely nervous and so _they consulted with a bridge builder_. When I heard that I was like, absolutely not. We stripped a bunch of stuff out of the house until we got back into normal construction and proceeded from there. I was Not Sad about what we stripped out. I hadn’t wanted that home theater anyway.
The engineers were nonresponsive for a while, and had to be prodded to make further progress on the electrical and fire protection and so forth components of the project to meet a late fall 2023 deadline on draft conformance documents. At that point in time, we had a PV only solar proposal, and someone at the engineers (I do not know who) told someone at the builder (I do know who) they had questions about battery integration and generator integration with the PV array. Meanwhile in the MEPFP weekly coordination meetings, all efforts to get the not an electrical engineer engineer to even entertain the idea of integrating batteries were completely failing. He claimed he consulted with someone who said that battery backup for this house would require three container sized batteries. He spec’ed a 100 kw diesel generator with integrated fuel tank for “3 days”, which sounds like 1100 gallons of diesel. These never made it onto the plans; they were budgetary only for the control estimate. (Yes this is a cost plus project. If you are asking me if I know what I’m doing, I will cackle at you like a hyena and ask you if you parachuted in here from somewhere else because if so you should read more of the blog before you ask questions of that nature.)
When we were discussing — yes, this part is absolutely unhinged — where the wireless drop points in the house should be, the question arose about whether there should be one in the garage. R. said, yes, because I like to be on my phone in the garage. I fucking hit the roof. No, we need the wireless in the garage because that’s where the batteries are going to go, that’s where bidirectionality is going to happy with the cars eventually, we need this to all coordinate and be manageable via an app. And at that point, I started talking and emailing with the builder and with the architect about the fact that we basically had an entire missing system, and no apparent vendor for it and no one had allotted space in the mechanical rooms and there probably need to be _some_ kind of runs for it and so forth. Efforts to, oh just do the diesel thing ran up against the total lack of plans for that either, and so the solar vendor was contacted after I established they definitely do the kind of system I want and they attended an MEPFP coordination meeting and they are in the process of producing a solution. The PV array is much bigger than the PV only / sell into the grid array, and the rest of the system is flexible enough to do everything I want, right down to managing self-consumption based on time of use and everything. They are specing their next gen batteries and I am Happy.
We’ll call all this problem number 2 I have with the engineers: _they_ knew back in November that there might / could / should be battery and generator integration. And then their manager kept suppressing all discussion along these lines by having an allergy reaction to the mention of battery backup in any capacity at all. So now we are at the end of February, and our builder is (appropriately) sending them a Where Are My Drawings letter. They _can_ say, but the owner said design this system late in the game and said she knew that this could result in a delay, but _then they also have to explain_ why they didn’t do it back in November. When they definitely knew they should be doing this system.
Problem number 3 I have with the engineers is also battery related: they were completely freaked out about where batteries might be placed, because fire risk. This is _despite_ the fact that just driving one of my cars into that garage is going to put more battery in there than the system that was eventually specified. They actually went multiple rounds on, well, outside of the house? Away from the house? Etc. Which is stupid, because they really need to be in conditioned space. The concern appears to revolve around getting past the fire inspector, and that’s fair, but that’s a solvable problem (I’m working on it, obviously) and everyone just stated the problem and stopped. I was eventually contacted directly by the engineer who does FP and he pointed me at blankets, which was at least a starting point.
Problem number 4 I have with the engineers is that I felt all along that a single dedicated 50 A circuit was really more than enough for electrical charging. They were initially trying to put 4 in (2 tandem bays), and I was like, that’s idiotic; we have no trouble sharing a single 30A charger here at home. I quit fighting at 2, and eliminating one of those (along with the unnecessary HVAC equipment) was key to getting the load calculation under 800 without requiring load shed equipment. They fought to give me stuff I did not want that interfered with doing the project at all.
What do we have on this list?
First, they failed to flag a major problem with the design of the building from a structural perspective; it was identified by the builder. _That’s really bad._ That’s why that problem is the biggest problem. We hired the engineers to ensure this thing _could be built_. They didn’t.
Second, they _knew_ there should be integration of PV, battery and generator. They asked about it. And then they stopped all efforts to design that system until the _owner_ (me) identified the vendor and most of the components of the system and the preferred maker for those components. All they had to do back in November was circle back to the PV provider with a new prompt and we could have wrapped this thing up before the end of the year.
Third: they have refused to engage constructively with the fire protection problem they believe they have identified.
Fourth: they have made multiple incorrect statements about what is and isn’t in the NEC in a way that interfered with and delayed getting service to the site by months, and they failed to engage in a flexible process for winnowing down what did and did not need to be included in the house to get the load to a manageable level. They should have involved the HVAC person (that’s what the MEPFP meetings are for!) and they should not have been arguing when the owner said she did not need certain things.
Once upon a time, we had a big house we were planning with a design build firm and the architect was getting a little nervous about the amount of steel involved so we hired some engineers. They were super helpful with the steel problem, but they kinda let a concrete problem really go unrecognized. This is probably number one on the list of complaints I have about these engineers. When we went to hire a builder and the builder was putting together an extremely rough idea of pricing, the concrete involved (this house is on a hill) made all the concrete people in the valley extremely nervous and so _they consulted with a bridge builder_. When I heard that I was like, absolutely not. We stripped a bunch of stuff out of the house until we got back into normal construction and proceeded from there. I was Not Sad about what we stripped out. I hadn’t wanted that home theater anyway.
The engineers were nonresponsive for a while, and had to be prodded to make further progress on the electrical and fire protection and so forth components of the project to meet a late fall 2023 deadline on draft conformance documents. At that point in time, we had a PV only solar proposal, and someone at the engineers (I do not know who) told someone at the builder (I do know who) they had questions about battery integration and generator integration with the PV array. Meanwhile in the MEPFP weekly coordination meetings, all efforts to get the not an electrical engineer engineer to even entertain the idea of integrating batteries were completely failing. He claimed he consulted with someone who said that battery backup for this house would require three container sized batteries. He spec’ed a 100 kw diesel generator with integrated fuel tank for “3 days”, which sounds like 1100 gallons of diesel. These never made it onto the plans; they were budgetary only for the control estimate. (Yes this is a cost plus project. If you are asking me if I know what I’m doing, I will cackle at you like a hyena and ask you if you parachuted in here from somewhere else because if so you should read more of the blog before you ask questions of that nature.)
When we were discussing — yes, this part is absolutely unhinged — where the wireless drop points in the house should be, the question arose about whether there should be one in the garage. R. said, yes, because I like to be on my phone in the garage. I fucking hit the roof. No, we need the wireless in the garage because that’s where the batteries are going to go, that’s where bidirectionality is going to happy with the cars eventually, we need this to all coordinate and be manageable via an app. And at that point, I started talking and emailing with the builder and with the architect about the fact that we basically had an entire missing system, and no apparent vendor for it and no one had allotted space in the mechanical rooms and there probably need to be _some_ kind of runs for it and so forth. Efforts to, oh just do the diesel thing ran up against the total lack of plans for that either, and so the solar vendor was contacted after I established they definitely do the kind of system I want and they attended an MEPFP coordination meeting and they are in the process of producing a solution. The PV array is much bigger than the PV only / sell into the grid array, and the rest of the system is flexible enough to do everything I want, right down to managing self-consumption based on time of use and everything. They are specing their next gen batteries and I am Happy.
We’ll call all this problem number 2 I have with the engineers: _they_ knew back in November that there might / could / should be battery and generator integration. And then their manager kept suppressing all discussion along these lines by having an allergy reaction to the mention of battery backup in any capacity at all. So now we are at the end of February, and our builder is (appropriately) sending them a Where Are My Drawings letter. They _can_ say, but the owner said design this system late in the game and said she knew that this could result in a delay, but _then they also have to explain_ why they didn’t do it back in November. When they definitely knew they should be doing this system.
Problem number 3 I have with the engineers is also battery related: they were completely freaked out about where batteries might be placed, because fire risk. This is _despite_ the fact that just driving one of my cars into that garage is going to put more battery in there than the system that was eventually specified. They actually went multiple rounds on, well, outside of the house? Away from the house? Etc. Which is stupid, because they really need to be in conditioned space. The concern appears to revolve around getting past the fire inspector, and that’s fair, but that’s a solvable problem (I’m working on it, obviously) and everyone just stated the problem and stopped. I was eventually contacted directly by the engineer who does FP and he pointed me at blankets, which was at least a starting point.
Problem number 4 I have with the engineers is that I felt all along that a single dedicated 50 A circuit was really more than enough for electrical charging. They were initially trying to put 4 in (2 tandem bays), and I was like, that’s idiotic; we have no trouble sharing a single 30A charger here at home. I quit fighting at 2, and eliminating one of those (along with the unnecessary HVAC equipment) was key to getting the load calculation under 800 without requiring load shed equipment. They fought to give me stuff I did not want that interfered with doing the project at all.
What do we have on this list?
First, they failed to flag a major problem with the design of the building from a structural perspective; it was identified by the builder. _That’s really bad._ That’s why that problem is the biggest problem. We hired the engineers to ensure this thing _could be built_. They didn’t.
Second, they _knew_ there should be integration of PV, battery and generator. They asked about it. And then they stopped all efforts to design that system until the _owner_ (me) identified the vendor and most of the components of the system and the preferred maker for those components. All they had to do back in November was circle back to the PV provider with a new prompt and we could have wrapped this thing up before the end of the year.
Third: they have refused to engage constructively with the fire protection problem they believe they have identified.
Fourth: they have made multiple incorrect statements about what is and isn’t in the NEC in a way that interfered with and delayed getting service to the site by months, and they failed to engage in a flexible process for winnowing down what did and did not need to be included in the house to get the load to a manageable level. They should have involved the HVAC person (that’s what the MEPFP meetings are for!) and they should not have been arguing when the owner said she did not need certain things.