Engineer's so smart he's blinded

joel_14

I swear in Engineering school you take courses in lots of math and others which are titled " How to loose any common sense you ever had" How bout this one. Old church with 580,000btu oil boiler that worked spiffy for 40 years. Imagineer specifies 1.2 million btu gas replacement!!! . At the same time 4" of foam insulation added to roof!
Can you say short cycle? Imagine that ! It lasted 3 years and was yanked.

Jim_8

Went to a 225 year old house in MA. that was bought this summer by a couple who had a friend that was a power plant engineer. The 40 year old boiler was vented into a flue that ran from the basement 1/2 way up the first floor and then angled over and fed into the side of the main flue which was for the fire place in the living room. He did not like the tankless coil so he talked them into having someone come over and install a nat. gas hot water heater and hook the flue for that into, you guessed it!, the flue pipe from the oil burner. Needless to say, they won't be taking anymore advice from their engineer friend and there will be no more one for all and all for one flue's in that house. The reason I was called to begin with was because there was an outside air kit hooked up to the burner by the old homeowner. The engineer said that outside air was the worst thing in the world because the moisture in the cold air will rot out the cast iron boiler, and they would not have to fix the radon system if they got rid of the outside air pipe and just sucked the bad air in the basement into the burner and pushed it up the chimney. Unbelivable but I swear to god true!!

Gary Fereday

And that is the difference

between engineer boots and cowboy boots. Cowboy boots at least have the BS on the outside of them! bigugh

PJO

Exceptional!!!

That's a classic bigigh!

And I thought my own "P.E." (for practical experience) was good...and I am considered an engineer.

Take Care, PJO

Gary Usa

another saying is

you have tried the cowboys now try the indians,lololo

it does suprise me sometimes of what engineers do,their was one occassion where i had to put in a 4 gallon plasic expansion tank into a side loft,well it had a lot of steel beams and basically couldn;t get it through the hole where it was suppose to do,so i made the decission to seal the system put in an extrol water make up all by the boiler all sorted and done,well when their was a site meeting the architect client engineer was their he went nuts when i did not install this open tank in the loft in front of everyone else i handed him the tank and said here you go please put it through the hole knock yourself out,he tried and turned round very red faced,

like you all say where is the common sense in life.

all the best

gary usa

Jamie Hall

Hey guys!

take it easy! Not all of us engineers are dingbats! Although I must admit that an awful lot of us are... particularly the ones with all book learning and no field experience... which is one reason I hang out here -- there sure ain't nuthin' like experience in the field, and what I haven't gotten in the field myself somebody on The Wall probably has...

joel_14

fun

All in good fun buddy, we like it when you guys listen to what where saying though.

Bob Morrison_2

Engineers & Contractors: you can't generalize ... Bob Morrison

For every dumb or non-commonsense idea by an engineer, there's at least one by a contractor. There's plenty of examples of both on this site.

What it boils down to is the person and their ideas. Years of experience, degrees and pedigrees aren't worth anything by themselves: they're history. Every day there's new problems to solve, and when you're in the trenches, the best idea wins. It doesn't matter from whom.

It's useless to generalize about types of people: it doesn't serve any purpose and is therefore incorrect.

Bob Morrison

John Williams, Jr.

Another meaning of the word.....

ENGINEER...... Every New Graduate Is Now Educated Enough, Right?????

My 5th year Professor told us that the first day of class, and it has been repeated many times. Since graduating from Temple I have never been very good (fast) at designing, but I guess thats because we are field engineers. I'll try to find a copy of a statement that same Professor handed out to us way back when, it was titled "the engineer and the mate" and its all about the field engineer and the up and coming graduate who thinks he/she knows it all already.

John

Unknown

An engineer story

I was asked to look over plans for the mechanicals in a three story dorm that was being built. Some of the circulators were sized pretty small.

At a meeting with the engineer, I mentioned it. The engineer jumped on it like I had requested a "change order". I had to decline on that, which involved us paying him to redraw the plans.

On the way out, I asked the engineer, "Are you SURE that you want this size pumps in this job?".

Somehow, the plans got changed that week. Made my day...

I have met some sharp people over the time I've been using this wall, and Bob Morrison is one engineer that I enjoy being with and talking pipe over a beer. He put in a boiler, too, and did very well.

It ain't the job, it's the person.

Noel

PJO

I respectfully disagree...

with your statement "years of experience, degrees and pedigrees aren't worth anything by themselves: they're history."

IMHO, yes, the degrees and pedigrees might be, if you don't "use" it...but I'll take the experience as the exception. In other words, a degree is nearly all a test of short-term memory...repeated hundreds of times over your college career. Experience is REAL...and is normally remembered much more often, as is reflected here on the Wall.

As the saying goes: "Good Judgement Comes From Experience...Experience Comes From Bad Judgement"

Or, how about this; I bet most Wallies remember nearly all of their installs/significant repairs, etc. if they simply saw a picture of them, but how many engineers recall each of the problems in that Calculus exam that included triple integrals ??? That's because the triple integral is not used too much in your "everyday" work, I bet. Maybe you can still solve the triple integral (I would prefer a tooth extraction myself!), but it would take some reviewing because of the short-term memory thing.

The majority of the Wallies probably repeat half of their work on a regular basis - and the smart ones tweak it up a notch each time though learning from other people...this is the magic of The Wall!

I am an engineer by the way, who did it the hard way...eleven years of school part-time while working...so maybe my view of things is more "real world".

Also, remember that this site is dominated by contractors...if you were at an engineer's site the jabbing would be reversed...and it's all in good fun/jest/etc.

Just my thoughts. Take Care, PJO

Floyd

Thanks!!!

For the defense!!!!
We need all types and kinds to make the world go round,
however the attitude of most of the engineers is what bothers me most!!!!
They make mistakes and can learn also!!!!
Just admit it once in a while!!!!

By the way I just ordered a peristalic pump yesterday, to try out.
Thanks for the HELP!!!!!


Floyd

PJO

My pleasure...

Floyd,

Hope that type of pump works for you. Take care, PJO

kevin_5

Generalizations are just alright with me

Hey Bob, What's wrong with generalizations?
A generalization, by it's very definition, IMPLIES that there are exceptions. People could size me up and make generalizations about me in several different areas. Either the shoe fits, or I'm an exception.
Like Rush Limbaugh says, "If you can't laugh at yourself, just laugh at me... Laughing AT you!"