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My buddy works for an architectural/engineering firm, and they were recently called to a public school to help with some repairs.
They couldn't tell the internal structure of the building without starting to tear away some of the wall in the first place, but the school was strapped for cash and asked
that they only do what was absolutely necessary.
The firm asked if the school had any of the blueprints or architectural drawings for the building; of course, they didn't. The firm tried to get hold of the architects, but they were long since out of business.
My proposal is for a series of large bronze plaques that are installed in a wall of the building during construction. Perhaps in the boiler room or a similar uninhabited utility room.
This plaques have a 'positive' of the blue prints such that, when you hold a large sheet of paper up to them and rub over it with a blue crayon, voila! You have a fresh set of blue prints.
As future work is done on the buildings, plaques are added or replaced as appropriate.
https://xkcd.com/878/
[hippo, Feb 22 2017]
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I kin of like it but... When I got permits for the house I'm
building, the county planning department made a scan of
my approved plans, then gave me a copy of the pdf file on a
CD. I imagine that they have that stored somewhere, and
could pull it up for a small fee. That seems like a much
cheaper system than making bronze plates every time you
pull a permit for a remodel. |
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Try retrieving the data from a Lotus 123 file on a 5.25" floppy disk. |
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Finding a drive that can read the disk, then a program that can display the file, is non-trivial. |
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The huge advantage of the bronze plaque is that it's always accessible. |
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Of course, if the bronze plaque is to be built into the building, then it will have to depict the bronze plaque. And that depiction of the bronze plaque... |
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It would be cheaper to do this scaled down, as opposed to full sized bronze plaques. You can always use a magnifying glass or whatever enlargement technology our future robot overlords make available. |
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I know a bronze plaque would look very classy and be highly effective, but in my experience nearly anything metal that is publicly displayed becomes a target for one of those metal-scrounging A-holes who are out to make a buck. These worms routinely steal plaques from government buildings, historic sites, and even cemeteries. |
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A cheaper, less elegant solution would be a plastic plan plaque. Plastic would have a twofold advantage: easier to amend if/when future work is done and it could be made from recycled material. |
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... and would burn nicely if the building ever caught fire, destroying the plans. |
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Cast iron is cheap, and therefore not unduly attractive to the ungodly. It's also got an acceptably high melting point; and it can retain fine detail, if lost wax casting is used. |
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//... and would burn nicely if the building ever caught fire, destroying the plans.// |
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Where is it carved in stone (sorry, couldn't resist) that a rebuild would be required to follow the original plans? I would think a structure that suffers a fire of such magnitude is going to need a lot of remedial work, including the gutting of any areas that are damaged by smoke and/or water, not just fire. |
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@scad meintist -- sure, and paper print outs are even cheaper than a CD (you need a coomputer and requisite software to make the CD in the first place.) Yet how many places do you know with the blueprints on file? The CD would get lost, just like the paper drawings. |
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@canuck -- my idea is to put these in the boiler room or some other utility area. If thieves have access to that place, they probably have much easier more rewarding items to steal in the building, such as, say, a laptop. |
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/Cast iron is cheap/
Why are plaques generally bronze, not cast iron? Is it purely the outdoor durability? Tradition? |
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I presume it's the non-rustiness. That said, cast iron doesn't rust much. |
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Durability and tradition are both factors. The very fact that bronze is so expensive makes it attractive to those wishing to make a statement, such as, "Look, we have enough money not only for this impressive structure, but to display this over-engineered lump of bling to awe all you horrible little proles". |
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What if someone sets fire to City Hall ? |
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Not only that, they make excellent catapult ammunition. |
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I assume that the blueprint depicted on the bronze
plaque will itself show a diagrammatic representation
of the bronze plaque affixed to the wall of the
building - which will recursively show an infinite
number (actually fewer - see link) of blueprints and
bronze plaques? |
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<points at third annotation> |
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It's fine - [hippo] just pre-empted me retrospectively. |
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I knew you were going to say that |
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