Epoxy floors

I was tasked today by a customer to find a grinding wheel that would take off epoxy from a floor. I found this little gem of an article about epoxy coated floors. The article goes into depth about the the problems that can happen with epoxy coated floors. They say that 70% of all problems with epoxy floor coating is preparation. At the bottom of the page is another link for Epoxy 101. It is a useful read. There are too many little links on the page to list all. But, if you are wanting to have a little knowledge about epoxy floors, have fun reading through all the pages.

For Men

I usually don't add much trivial stuff to my blog. Well, maybe the boat on occasion. But I read a little thing today. It was The 75 Skills Every Man Must Master. It had things I agreed with and some I didn't. I know most of the skills but not all. Maybe they are the unimportant ones. It is good advice all in all though. So, take the time and read it, you may actually like it too.

More on the boat

I thought I would throw a little update on the boat building. I now have part of the front deck on. The loose planking you see in the picture is what will top the deck. It is on there loosely now. Eventually it will be screwed and epoxied down to the plywood that is underneath it.

You can see that I have flotation in part of the boat in the above picture. This picture is prior to placing the plywood substrate for the plank deck. I do not know if it will really work, but if someone is on the boat with me and asks if I added flotation, I can say yes. It will only give them comfort out of ignorance because I have no intention of adding water to the boat to test the buoyancy of the flotation that I have added. You can also see the tools that are carelessly left in the boat while I work on it. I mentioned in a previous post about if you are not good at fiberglassing then you need to be good at sanding. Well, I think I need fiberglassing classes or more practice because being good at sanding is not as much fun as you may think.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the update.

Customer Appreciation Day

Yesterday we had our annual Customer Appreciation Day. BBQ was enjoyed. People were seen. It becomes a friendly event where people get to mingle with others in their profession. There are many different types of Customer Appreciation Days. They can be called many names. I happen to think that I help make ours successful. To make a CAD successful you need to do many things. There needs to be someone to organize the event. You need to have fliers. You need to promote it. If you want your vendors to help you, then you need to ask them for help. You need to PROMOTE it. The food has to be taken care of. I do not think it matters what type of food, but you need to have something that people in your area like and eat. It must be promoted by everyone at your location. Pass out the fliers with deliveries. Put fliers in invoices. When someone comes to purchase something, tell them about it. I think all this works fine. I have found that the best thing to do along with all the other promotions, is the phone call from the person that the customer most likely identifies with. It is not just a single phone call a week in advance, but two very important phone calls. The phone call the day before and the phone call on the day of. You do this because people forget. The goal is to let people see your wares and to have a good time and a good meal. It always helps sales when customers think of you in a positive way. While it is going on, shake hands, smile and be positive. It will be worth it.

Economy, Quality or Speed

I was talking with a subcontractor today who was talking about business. He said he learned something from another contractor many years ago about three things that really affect a project. He was told that economy, quality and speed are the ones that can create issues. It is not that they create issues in themselves, but if you concentrate too much on one, then the other two suffer. He said yes, you do want a job to have good quality, at a good price and in a reasonable time. However, if you work too much on economy, then the quality and speed suffer. Also, if you want too much quality, then the speed and economy go down. You get the picture. I do not see any of these as a problem for a project if you understand that everything has a consequence.

In distribution it is often said that you cannot have the best price, the best product and the best service. One will always suffer in the long run just like in the above examples for a construction project. So, when you look at a vendor and they have a great price, look at the other two problems you will run into. It may not be the best product and the service may be no good. To have a good balance, as in building a project, you need to pay a fair price for a fair product if that is what you are most interested in. If you want the very best product, then expect it to be more than the least expensive product.

Blown Film and Radon

I attended a company sales meeting this past weekend. One of the vendors that spoke was Raven Industries. We sell their construction films. I learned about the blown film extrusion process of making plastic films. I have never heard of this process before and since I am an infinitely curious person, I wanted to find out more. I am not in the plastic film industry, so, if you read this and are, please excuse my ignorance. Basically, as I understand it, the plastic pellets get heated and go through a dye where air is blown out to help cool the film. It goes straight up in the air to the top and it is slit or folded and is sent back down through the rollers. It seemed really interesting to me. Raven Industries has an animated video of their process. I wanted to find a video of the process on the Internet and I found one that looks like it makes clear pallet bags. Click here if you would like to see the video. I was really hoping the video would show every facet of the process and with some sort of neat camera angle that could show the middle of the blown film, but no such luck. It was still interesting anyway. There is another way to make plastic film and I understand it is called cast film.

One of the products discussed was the Raven VaporBlock Plus. It is an underslab vapor retarder and gas barrier. Radon is a gas. As I understand it, the Vapor Block Plus 20 helps reduce the amount of Radon gas. If you read the data sheet on page 2 note 5, it states, "When VaporBlock Plus gas barrier is used as a part of an active control system for radon gas, a ventilation system will be required. When installed as a passive system, it is still recommended to include a ventilation system that could be converted to an active system later." I knew that radon had become a bigger issue over the past few years. I still know very little about it, but the EPA has some information about the radon gas issue. On http://www.radon.com/ , there is a map where you can check the radon levels by state. It is interesting to look over.

LEED

What is LEED? Leadership in Energy and Enviromental Design.

I wanted to write about this topic but realized that I do not know enough about it. It is talked about frequently by architechts, owners and manufacturers. I went to the USGBC, US Green Building Council, website. I started to research and read about LEED and its rating system for new construction. There are 3 versions right now, Versions 2.0, 2.1 and 2.2. Version 2.2 is the most current. They have a link to find a local chapter. There is one in South Carolina. North Carolina has two that I see, one in Charlotte and one in the Triangle area.

I have learned some things about the LEED process over the past couple of years. I have read some about it also. I have found that there are some added initial costs to buildings in some aspects. There are actually some savings in others. After reading more about it, I have concluded that I do not know near enough. I think there are some long term savings in going with many of its ideas and building designs. Some things, to me, just make sense. Feel free to look at any of the links and judge for yourself if you wish to reasearch it. I think that we will all need to know more about it as time progresses and I think it is better to have more knowledge sooner rather than later.