Reference Documents

Showing posts with label Sewer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sewer. Show all posts

Sunday, December 08, 2013

The Word "Sewer"

I was reading the New York Times on Kindle today and ran across an article called "In a Scoreboard of Words, a Cultural Guide" by Natasha Singer. Excellent article, I might add. Anyway, it got me to thinking that I should try out this technology Google Ngram on our favorite word here on this blog, "sewer." Be sure to click the picture below to see it large enough to actually read!



Then I did a search with the words "sewer" and "Los Osos." I will this time imbed the graph.
You can move the cursor over the lines to see the actual percentage of instances of the word. You will note that the words "Los Osos" are a flatline compared to the word "sewer."

HOWEVER, I suspect that if this data collecting was inclusive of technical journals, newspaper and magazine articles, these words might be off the charts and tied closely together in many instances. Food for thought digestion. And perhaps elimination, pun intended. You can find the tool at this link to have fun with your own data queries at this link! https://books.google.com/ngrams

Saturday, October 26, 2013

Sewer Work on Sixteenth

Similar to, but different from the reconstruction of the tanks on16th (and the street being torn up for the new piping that went with it), the sewer construction is the most exciting thing to hit 16th. OK, the broken unmarked water pipe near the bike path was high drama a few days back, but it was over pretty fast. This is going on for a while.


It started with the pot holing.


Then the street was unzipped.


Water applied at every step to keep down the dust.


Electrical wires lifted out of the way.


Coming up the hill.


Digging sand.


The point of digging, placing pipes. Rather a pretty color!


The trench boxes are moved around with surgical precision.


Tap, tap, tap. Then more digging inside the box.


Plates go down to keep the sand contained.


When the pipe is in the trench boxes come out. 
Note the lift in the back, they are pretty heavy.


Plates arrive to cover the excavation.



Look to the upper left at the holiday appropriate antenna decor!

There is so much more to say about the mind boggling dexterity of the equipment operators. How they lift, trek, nudge and tap these giant hunks of steel as though they didn't weigh tons.
And the fantastic project coordination with the many steps that require perfect timing between the different parts of the team—the guys constantly measuring, guys cutting pipe, so as soon as the trench is ready, in goes the pipe, the street sweeping and watering both with the equipment and by hand, new water arriving via truck, two trucks lined up to keep the dirt coming up and away from the trench, the dirt coming back to go into the newly piped section, putting on the plates with some hot asphalt to keep them firmly in place. Today is Saturday and the watering trucks came twice (while I was paying attention). 
I got nothing done Friday watching this oh, so, beautiful show.








Sunday, November 25, 2012

What Won't Happen In Los Osos

It's been a while for some new sewer news on the home front, so here is a bit of sewer entertainment from Mexico City to tide us over. We will never encounter scenes like these, but just think, a tank of similar if less diverse stuff, sits right now in your very own front or back yard Los Osians! As for me, I will be happy to see the tank pumped one last time. And I'm keeping any skulls if there are any in there.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goh8k4Zxbh4