Dirt vs Rock vs Concrete

An easy to remember rough rule of thumb for pricing bulk material in place:

• clay is $5 per cubic metre
• hardfill, crushed rock  or clean drainage stone is $50 per cubic metre
• reinforced concrete is $500 per cubic metre

Never use concrete when you can use hardfill; never use hardfill when you can use clay.

180 things a great stormwater engineer should know

This post is in response to an engineer asking me what technical things he should know. The list is personal and a bit quirky - and I hope you will disagree with some of the things I have included. Some of these things an engineer needs a thorough and intimate understanding of; others, knowing the basics and where to find the details is enough.

Some of the items are specific to Auckland, New Zealand but most places will have their equivalent. Let me know in the comments if you would like me to add US or Australian equivalents to the standard documents)

Make a comment if you think there is anything I should add.

1. Mannings equation
2. Selecting Mannings n values from photos
3. N values for flattened grass
4. Culvert design hydraulics
5. Sand grading curves
6. Sedimentation - Stokes equation
7. Fish passage basics
8. Rock scour protection design
9. Erosion around pipe outfalls design and weaknesses (ARC TP10)
10. Tractive stress method
11. Open channel flow basics
12. Froude number
13. Open channel flow profiles
14. Humidity, vapour pressure, boiling point, dew point
15. SketchUp
16. Rational method (and at least one irrational method)
17. Time of concentration for overland flow
18. Basic boundary layers
19. Flood flows (ARC TP108, SCS TR-55 Method)
20. Dissolved oxygen, temperature and redox
21. Autumn turnover
22. Bridge energy losses and hydraulics
23. Scour calculations around piles and abutments
24. Phosphorus processes in waterways
25. Nitrogen cycle
26. Darcy equation and Ergun equation
27. Erosion and sediment control (ARC TP90)
28. Sediment pond sizing
29. DEB (decanting earth bunds)
30. USLE (Universal soil loss equation) Note 1
31. Flotation calculations
32. Forces from moving water
33. Scour hole sizing in sand
34. HIRDS and finding rainfall data
35. Adjust rainfalls for climate change
36. PE pipe properties
37. Creep in plastics
38. Pressure and acceptance tests in plastic pipes
39. Hand augering and basic soil assessment
40. Local soil types (In Auckland ECBF, Puketoka formation)
41. Shear vane use and adhustment. SPT testing
42. Porosity
43. Stream quality modelling
44. Compaction tests and optimum soil moisture
45. Air locking and velocities for moving air bubbles
46. Bill of Quantities (Schedule of Prices) Preparation
47. Specification writing for a contract
48. General Conditions of Contract (NZS3910)
49. Extensions of time
50. On-site wastewater disposal (ARC TP58 and AS1547)
51. Colebrook-White equation
52. Colebrook-White equation for open channels
53. Hydraulic jump
54. Energy equations for open channel flow
55. Vee-notch weir
56. Sharp crested weir
57. Broad crested weir
58. Road as weir
59. Free overfall
60. Culvert Analysis Software (HY8 or equivalent)
61. Algal vs macrophyte dominance in ponds and lakes
62. Eutrophic status
63. Water network modelling software (EPAnet)
64. Rip-rap basin design
65. Freshwater invertebrate
66. Wetland plant species
67. Heavy metals chemistry speciation
68. Weed species
69. Basic reinforced concrete design
70. Steel plate design
71. Maori perspectives on water
72. Pollutant runoff levels (kg per hectare)
73. Stormwater filters
74. Stormwater treatment device design (ARC TP10)
75. Simple water tank design for developing countries
76. On-site stormwater treatment (Countryside Living Toolbox)
77. Swales for stormwater treatment design
78. Flood report basics
79. Soakage testing for rock bores
80. Stormwater soak pit design (Onehunga soak pit)
81. HEC RAS
82. HEC HMS
83. HEC22 US FHA Urban Drainage Design Manual
84. Catchpit design, Megapits
85. Basic hydraulic structures
86. Manhole head losses sophisticated
87. Pipe fitting head losses - valves bends etc
88. Stainless steel selection
89. Stainless steel corrosion
90. Welding
91. PE pipe welding
92. Floating wetlands basic
93. Raingarden design
94. Permeable paving design
95. LID theory
96. LID and urban design
97. Animal vs human faecal contamination
98. Eel lifecycle
99. Koaro, galaxiid and mullet life cycles
100. Whitebait can't jump
101. Tannins
102. Woody streams and geomorphology
103. Grass selection
104. Topsoil Specification
105. Fencing
106. Concrete pipe external loads and selection
107. Timber protection
108. Rip-rap design
109. Wave run-up calculations
110. Dye testing and tracer analysis
111. CCTV analysis
112. GIS
113. Ground penetrating radar
114. Riparian zone planting
115. Integrated catchment management planning (ICMP)
116. Skinks and geckos
117. Gumlands ecology
118. Directional drilling and micro-tunnelling
119. Urban design principles
120. Settlement assessment
121. Peat
122. Flood routing
123. Modelling basics 1d vs 2d
124. Tide levels and datums
125. Working in the Coastal Marine Area
126. Trench safety
127. Gas detection and cold water safety
128. Rock breaking
129. Geotextiles and when to use them
130. Joining PE pipes to manholes
131. Floodgates
132. Duckbill valves
133. Stream rating systems
134. Stream gauging
135. Litter traps (in stream)
136. Litter traps CDS etc
137. Oil traps (API and more)
138. Spillway design
139. Morning glory outlets design
140. Rapid drawdown bank stability
141. Basic slope stability
142. Gabion design
143. Protecting steep clay slopes
144. Ephemeral stream criteria
145. Regulatory Auckland Regional Plan: Air, Land and Water
146. Vortices
147. Stormwater pumping (flood pumps)
148. Pipe bursting
149. Pipe lining
150. Pipe bridges
151. Part full pipes analysis
152. Waves in open channels
153. Manhole diameter selection
154. Concrete pipe bends and factory selection
155. Rain tank design
156. Leaf guard
157. Tank vac
158. First flush theory
159. First flush diverter
160. Wingwall subtlety
161. Landscape theory basic
162. Pond wildlife
163. Mosquito breeding and control
164. Mosquito fish/pest fish/carp
165. Carp
166. Safe velocity vs depths for flow paths and people
167. Aquaplaning
168. Hydrology 
169. Does planting trees increase river flow?
170. Vertical pipes air entrainment
171. Building code (E2)
172. Dispersal trench design
173. Penman equation for evaporation
174. French drain spacing
175. Groundwater movement
176. Phreatic zone
177. WHO crop requirements
178. Probable Maximum Precipitation (PMP)
179. Chemical sediment control
180. Extreme value distributions Gumbel

        

Notes   

1) It is unlikely that the Universal Soil Loss Equation is in fact universal or that it is particularly applicable anywhere off planet Earth. 

Hedonistic Sustainability

New thoughts and intriguing ideas around making sustainability pleasant from architect Bjarke Ingels.

http://www.naturalhabitats.co.nz/our-news/blog/hedonistic-sustainability

Excel keyboard shortcut - CTRL+1

Hold down Ctrl and press 1. This opens the format cells dialog box.

Knowledge worker?

Are you a knowledge worker?
Then make sure you know stuff!

Lots of stuff.
A huge range of stuff.

Excel Shortcut - Insert Today's Date

Like a lot of engineers, I live and die by Excel. There are a handful of essential keyboard shortcuts, but they are hard to learn. It seems easier for some reason to learn shortcuts one by one. So I will occasionally post the ones that I think make me more productive.

Ctrl + ;  (Hold down the Control key and press the semicolon key at the same time).
This inserts today's date in the current cell. Cool.

Cool PDF tools

I know - your boss won’t pay for full adobe acrobat to edit and fix pdfs. Don’t grizzle there are lots of free tools that will do the same jobs. The three I find best are:

1) Bullzip – for creating pdfs. It appears in your list of printers. (Windows) http://www.bullzip.com/products/pdf/info.php

2) PDFsam for splitting, merging, rotating and visual reorganising files http://www.pdfsam.org/ (free, open source Windows and Mac)

3) NitroPDF for converting pdfs to excel, word, extract images and edit pdfs. (Windows) http://www.nitropdf.com/

   Bullzip and pdfsam require the installation of ghostscript a free open source tool.

Let me know in the comments if you have found something better that you have been using for a while.

Why use pdfs for archiving engineering calculations?

Four reasons for a start:

• You can print a copy from almost any format. Even Linux and Apple users get the same printout
• It is likely you will still be able to print a copy 15 years from now.
• PDF is the most widely used format with lots of free open source tools as well as the original Adobe ones.
• You can easily store most common types of documents - drawings, reports and scanned documents in pdf. 

Spreadsheets change over time – almost mysteriously. Print a calculation spreadsheet a year after you last used it and it has nearly always changed. Links are missing, dates have changed, someone has updated it. So save a pdf snapshot of important spreadsheet calculations. This is part of a bigger discussion about electronic engineering files, preserving records and doing calculations in the modern world.

It is always wise to produce a .pdf copy of any report including all attachments and figures. That way, a year from now you can find exactly what you sent and carry an electronic copy with you everywhere. This should go without saying – but I'm surprised how often it doesn’t.

Oh and by the way pdfs can easily be edited (unless they are locked) so don’t assume that they are unchanged from the original.

Buying into a business

A smart guy once told me that a wise man said, that when it comes to buying into an engineering consultancy there are two types of sellers - those who want to sell and those who think they should but don’t really want to. With the latter you will never reach agreement.