# Future Masons



## fatboy (Feb 24, 2018)

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/17/con...aying-robot-five-times-faster-than-human.html


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## Keystone (Feb 24, 2018)

Has there been a decline in masons, you beat there has. With the advent of "lick & stick" the industry changed overnight. Will this robot change the industry, IMO not overnight. This unit would be most beneficial in a commercial site but a union would knock that down in a blink of an eye, add to that the tremendous amount a site variations, corners, styles, etc....


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## mark handler (Feb 24, 2018)

Keystone said:


> Has there been a decline in masons, you beat there has. With the advent of "lick & stick" the industry changed overnight. Will this robot change the industry, IMO not overnight. This unit would be most beneficial in a commercial site but a union would knock that down in a blink of an eye, add to that the tremendous amount a site variations, corners, styles, etc....


Masonry is a dying art. In seismically  active areas, which is now, a larger portion of the world, it is block walls and decorative finishes "lipstick and Mascara".


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## conarb (Feb 24, 2018)

I recently built a house with pyramid style walls at the base, the owner insisted on real stone averaging 8" thick, the average is called "thin stone" and is quarried at an average of 2" thick.  Every mason, but one, I contacted would only use thin stone, with the 8" stone they cut it with a huge gas powered saw with about a 16" masonry blade.  As they were laying up the stone the architect stopped by and stayed for hours watching them, he told me he hadn't seen this since the Egyptians built the pyramids, the only difference was the gas saw. The quarry is in Alaska and the owner of the quarry flew down to go over sizing of the stone with me, hundreds of hours were then spent chiseling the stone by hand to fit since it was laid up in a pattern.  My best friend just built a new home in Nevada to avoid California's insane taxes, he showed me the plans and he had the same stone pyramid walls, I told him about the problems I had with water running down through the foundation vents, so he called his Nevada architect and told him to remove the foundation vents and install mechanical ventilation under the house.  BTW, that Nevada house cost $1.7 million, it would cost over double that here, his permit fees totaled $3,000, they would be well over $100,000 here, for inspections he had a choice of county inspections or private inspections, he told the architect to hire private inspectors to avoid the high county costs, when he moved in I asked how much the inspections cost, he said he didn't know it was such a small amount.







I still get calls from my owner about water blowing through the vents, actually it's coming in three ways, 1) Blowing in, 2) Running down the face of the walls and running back in, and 3) Running down behind the rock and running in. A problem is that my mason refuses to cooperate saying he sees it all the time, water blows through all foundation vents, I've made a few attempts to catch it fom behind and divert it back out, if what I've done this year doesn't work I'm going to remove stone arouind all vents, seal them up, seal the vents up, replace the stone and install mechanical ventilation, I figure this will cost me about $10,000 and I'll get no help from subs since I'm retired I have no leverage anymore, my mason won't touch anything under $100,000 and he's usually scheduled several months out.

BTW, I still get calls from architects and engineers to "build one more", they say the younger generation of contractors doesn't know how to build quality, and using "Lick and Stick" and "Thin Stone" is an example cited.


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## Keystone (Feb 24, 2018)

I played as a mason's tender and then an assistant mason through and right out of high-school but life lead me into another direction, I do miss it and jump up on scaffolding and grab a trowel in the few slim instances that I see my old boss on a job. He laughs, I leave, they fix my my screw ups. 

I know of 3 masons, residential, that stick to masonry, no lick & stick or lipstick and mascara.   Lip stick on a pig!


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## ICE (Feb 25, 2018)

I watched the video.  There is a statement that the mason trade is being aged out of existence.  That's true with all of the building trades.  Hiring qualified workmen was a problem more than twenty years ago. 

The finished product that shows such as brickwork involves more than what a robot will ever accomplish.  The best tradesmen have a bit of an artist in them.  

Robots my ass!


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## ICE (Feb 25, 2018)

conarb said:


> for inspections he had a choice of county inspections or private inspections, he told the architect to hire private inspectors to avoid the high county costs, when he moved in I asked how much the inspections cost, he said he didn't know it was such a small amount.



You get what you pay for.

Not really.  
You just think that you do.  
It's a crap shoot.  
But hey now, there are some good inspectors out there and you just might be in for some luck and get one.


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## conarb (Feb 25, 2018)

ICE said:


> You get what you pay for.


So Tiger why are permits and inspections in Nevada a fraction of the cost of permits and inspections in Calfiornia?  After all, Calfiornia has a law that building departments can't charge more than the cost of delivery of services, otherwise it's a tax subject to a vote of 2/3 of the electorate, Nevada has no such law (to my knowledge) and charges much less.


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## ICE (Feb 25, 2018)

I'm sure that the cost to own a building dept is a lot less in Nevada than it is in California.  

It costs more in Ca because we are Ca and Nevada is not.  

It costs more in Ca because people are willing to pay what they pay.  My guess is that rich people would be willing to pay more. 

Most permits are a loss in revenue for the AHJ.  Especially when the builder is lousy and there's way more inspections than there should be.


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## conarb (Feb 25, 2018)

Tiger:

He said Nevada has a law that contractors have to qualify for higher job limits, a contracator with minimum assets is limited to $500,000, to get a higher limit he has to prove high enough assets to prove that he can handle the larger job, his low bidder could only qualify for $500,000 so he was going to have to just contract for the first $500,000 with him, then hire another for the second $500,000, etc., fortunately for him the first guy was able to raise his job limit so he didn't have to go through all of that, much like bonding limits here, consumers are always wise to make their contractors bond their jobs, but few do because they want the cheapest price, I think that's why you see so much crappy work.  The reason the contractor was able to raise his limit was the owner had an architect with a supervision contract, that way the architect would catch anything before there was a lawsuit.


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## steveray (Feb 26, 2018)

If architects and contractors could catch half of the stuff I would like them to (and I do), I wouldn't have a job and could probably sleep well at night.....Maybe the wicked long and expensive process in Cali. weeds out a lot of that, but not here.


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## conarb (Feb 26, 2018)

steveray said:


> If architects and contractors could catch half of the stuff I would like them to (and I do), I wouldn't have a job and could probably sleep well at night.....Maybe the wicked long and expensive process in Cali. weeds out a lot of that, but not here.


Steve:

You are right, I've had all of my problems with plan checkers, fire marshals, environmental people, and other government people prior to getting my permits, once I have the permits all of the field inspectors have been great guys and even had one gal, some became personal friends and we socialized with our families.  What explains Tiger?  Southern California and The Bay Area of Northern California are two different states and should be separated.  The agricultural valleys are totally different from either of us, and up north where our gal Sue was from was more Southern Oregon than California, and southern Oregon is totally different from the Portland area. 

I mentioned gal, we have a town here of Moraga behind the East Oakland Hills, beyond Moraga on a winding road is a beautiful area of Redwood groves called Canyon with nothing but an old schoolhouse/post office, during the 60s the Hippies settled back in the trees and built Hippie shacks.  One day the gal came out for a final on a house I was building in Moraga, she said: "Tell you what Dick, when I finish here I've got to go condemn a shack in Canyon, how about I sign you off and you accompany me out to Canyon?"  I looked at her and she had short pants on, I said: "You don't need me you need a cop, those Hippies grow marijauna and have guns to protect their pot."  She said they wouldn't give her a cop, so I said okay to get in my truck, when we got there there was no-one home, she wrote like Hell and posted a red tag with her list of violations then we jumped in my truck and I took her back to her county car at my jobsite in Moraga.


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## tmurray (Feb 26, 2018)

What are foundation vents? I've never heard of them...


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## conarb (Feb 26, 2018)

tmurray said:


> What are foundation vents? I've never heard of them...



That's because you are not on the International Codes, you lucky Canuck, someday we'll attack you and make you citizens of the world too, in the meantime look at the picture above, behind those holes in the stone are $1,700 worth of fire-baffeled vents.


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