Shoddy school construction

[Les]

Too bad the district signed off on it...

I say - find a new district. Sounds like you will never get all the kinks worked out and even if you do, they still won't trust you. I just think that life is too short and you're better than to have to deal with people like this.

 

[museav]

Sorry to hear you had such a mess, there are way too many stories like yours out there. It can be almost as frustrating from the Consultant side as well. All I can do on a job is offer input, recommendations and comments to my Client, what they do with that is up to them. And unless I can reference some relevant code or documented accepted industry standard practice (of which there are very few), anything I offer is only a recommendation or opinion, not a requirement or mandate. I've had Clients who listen carefully to those opinions and weigh them thoroughly and I've had Clients who simply ignored anything that didn't fit their ideas or goals.

I recently recounted the story in another forum where I had designed a small sound system for a school theatre renovation, a nice system but definitely nothing fancy. The School District came back and directed us to redesign the system using a particular speaker that the Sound Contractor who got most of their work had used in the past. We found out that what they wanted was one of these, Welcome to KDM Electronics a speaker that it turned out they had been installing in gymnasiums but that was totally inappropriate for the space and application in question. We wrote a letter explaining why we designed what we did, identifying the problems with the proposed speaker, but they persisted. Since they provided the direction in writing and it did not conflict with any codes or other accepted standards, our only real choice was to either do what was asked or end our involvement. We chose the latter, telling them they had our design and that using it or not was their choice, however we would not ethically or morally issue something we knew would not work. I have no idea what they actually did after that as we had no further part in the project. Sort of the old "you can lead a horse to water but you can't make them drink" situation.

 

[emac]

Im sorry this happened to you...... My school district(im a student) a few years ago decided to build us a blackbox (yayayayay we are alternative school and have no) they got around to expanding one wall, painting the walls a dark navy blue, installing black out curtains, giving us 8 ancient fixtures, and building a booth with stairs that cut the space in the room next to us down by a fourth until they realized that the booth could not be wheel chair accessible. The big thing was we were on the third floor and the WHOLE building was not wheel chair accessible. On top of that they completely ignored our director when ever she tried to give us advice.

In the next few years they built a VERY nice preforming arts center at the school next to us and when we needed a stage to preform on because the stage were we usually preformed on was booked the person incharge at that space pretty much said no cause he did not want us there even thought we COMPLETELY rearranged our schedule for them

anyways they now moved us to a new location and i have only a cafetoruim to work with but i did manage to get some movers for our dance committee now i just need to get DMX for my laptop


i feel your pain

 

[dcollins]

Ah yes... one of the things I hate about my theatre..

At our theatre, house lights are controlled by 7 dimmers. 7. I'm since soft-patched them so they only are controlled by channel 48 (we have an express 24/48), but that still doesn't give us back the 6 dimmers which could be used for something more productive.

7? Is that all? Try 14. Though I also have twice as many dimmers as you do, I don't understand why the designers felt that I need to independently control each of 6 chandeliers, each of 6 sets of incandescent lighting, and each side of the casino windows, when I'd be fine with maybe 4 dimmers, but also decided that it was OK to have a stage electric with 9 dimmers, 2 of which don't work, and 4 of which are taken up by strip lights.

If only we had the chance to design our theaters...or the money to redesign them...

 

[Les]

7? Is that all? Try 14. Though I also have twice as many dimmers as you do, I don't understand why the designers felt that I need to independently control each of 6 chandeliers, each of 6 sets of incandescent lighting, and each side of the casino windows, when I'd be fine with maybe 4 dimmers, but also decided that it was OK to have a stage electric with 9 dimmers, 2 of which don't work, and 4 of which are taken up by strip lights.

If only we had the chance to design our theaters...or the money to redesign them...

How many watts do these house lights consume? Therein may lie the answer as to why they had to split it up so much.

We had at least 14 dimmers controlling our 1350 seat auditorium back in high school, and while it seemed like overkill, the reality was that each houselight pulled 500w.

 

[dcollins]

You had a larger auditorium than I - mine is about 500 seats, with a balcony, and I think we worked it out and could put the houselights on 6 (2.4kw) dimmers while retaining all the independent control we wanted.

But just because we HAD more dimmers than instruments at the time, they decided that more independent control was better. We since managed to buy, you know, a useful set of instruments.

 

[mstaylor]

We have a local HS that did the same thing. I believe when they put in the new ETC dimmers they are half the size of the old so it did require more dimmers. The problem was they replaced with the same number of dimmers and took some the lighting circuits to break up the house circuits. I can give you a ton of looks in the house but I am short of dimmers and circuits to light the stage.

 

[thatactorguy]

This particular situation isn't a school, rather a community theatre, which could- I suppose- qualify somehow as "educational": When they got the grant to build the theatre, part of the stipulation was it serve also as a community center. The stage is four feet off the concrete floor, and the three walls of the stage- you read that correctly- are faced with drywall over metal studs. Stage exits are a 5' wide opening DSL & DSR, 29" openings USL & USR, and a 72" opening UC, complete with a four foot drop to the concrete floor backstage. SR/SL exits go to a hallway, on the other side of which are the dressing rooms. Imagine my chagrin when I discovered this little suprise before building my first set up there (Cinderella), a major part of which had "book page" walls to ease scene changes and have a different look on the stage: Stepmother's house and Prince's palace. Fun...

 

[shiben]

re the houselights issue, the place I used to work for had an entire rack of dimmers specifically for the houselights. We did have 1100 50W bulbs in 1100 sockets, all on winches (which broke). I believe we had 30 dimmers for the collection, 6 major sections. They were thinking of replacing them all with LEDs that color changed, but budget cuts are a b****.

 

[SHARYNF]

As a funny aside, I once was in a meeting with Frank Borman ex Astronaut and president of Eastern Airlines. Some one was talking about how smart he was etc etc. One of my co workers made the comment, He cannot be that smart, after all he went into space in a rocket/capsule provided by the lowest bidder.

Schools are stuck with the lowest bidder, all sorts of crazy bidding rules, and usually the people who control the funds no nothing about what they are doing but are typically afraid to ask for fear of loosing control or looking stupid.

Sharyn

 

[museav]

As a funny aside, I once was in a meeting with Frank Borman ex Astronaut and president of Eastern Airlines. Some one was talking about how smart he was etc etc. One of my co workers made the comment, He cannot be that smart, after all he went into space in a rocket/capsule provided by the lowest bidder.

The statement "It's a very sobering feeling to be up in space and realize that one's safety factor was determined by the lowest bidder on a government contract." is attributed to Alan Shepard. John Glenn was quoted as saying "You're thinking you're sitting on top of the most complex machine ever built by man, with a million separate components, all supplied by the lowest bidder." And when asked what he thought about while waiting for launch Wally Schirra supposedly replied "This was all put together by the lowest bidder." That their lives depended on the work of numerous lowest bidders for government contracts was apparently often on astronauts' minds.

Schools are stuck with the lowest bidder, all sorts of crazy bidding rules, and usually the people who control the funds no nothing about what they are doing but are typically afraid to ask for fear of loosing control or looking stupid.

And that is often a huge disconnect, the purchasing people usually know all about contracts but typically know little or nothing about what they are for while the people who understand what is being purchased have little experience or involvement in the purchasing aspects.

 

[tjrobb]

And then there is the joy of "value engineering" wherein one tries to get the same result using less material (parts, etc.), and thus less money. Can cause some unusual issues, especially with fly tower construction.

 

[Sayen]

I can at least say I am never bored teaching in a school. When I worked professionally there were often gigs where one day flowed identically into the next.

The fun tonight was when the counter, provided by the contractor in the booth, collapsed under the weight of the audio equipment (console and eight space rack with CD/communications/etc). Fortunately a replaceable student was in the way to brace the irreplaceable equipment, and other than a small bruise and some pulled wires for me to resolder tomorrow everything was gently lowered to the ground safely.

The counter, regrettably, split down the length and must be relegated to the firewood pile.

 

[museav]

And then there is the joy of "value engineering" wherein one tries to get the same result using less material (parts, etc.), and thus less money.

That was the original, and sensible, concept for VE; trying to gather suggestions to obtain the same quality and functionality for less money or to provide greater quality or functionality for the same amount of money. It has sadly too often become just another form of cost cutting.

An example of the difference was one school theatre where the Contractor, at the Owner's request for Value Engineering ideas, suggested switching from a two line comms system to a single line system. That may have been a legitimate cost savings idea but it was not really VE since it obviously changed the functionality. Luckily, that Owner asked about all of the suggested VE items an dthus was aware of the implications before making a decision, however many times I think the people making the decisions do not really understand what is proposed and make decisions based on assumptions that what is offered is actually VE and would not negatively affect the quality or functionality when the reality is that items offered may do just that.

Then there was the community theatre project where one of the bidders made a "Value Engineering" recommendation on their own to provide speakers that were a step down from what was in their bid. Not only did they provide no justification other than that reduced cost, but it also turned out that the speaker they offered in their bid, for which they were suggesting a further reduction in quality and capability, was itself already deficient compared to what was specified and required. It was pretty obvious the goal was not to provide the desired quality but merely to try to get their bid as low as possible in order to get the work. Another example where without someone identifying that what was proposed was not truly VE and had negative implications on the results, this attempt very likely would been successful.

 

[ajb]

Lighting keeps losing control. I've changed the cables from the console, and the console, twice now. Monitored those brand new snazzy Leviton piece of junk dimmers. I have no idea why we're losing control.

I know this is a cathartic rant and maybe you're not looking for advice, but do you mean that the Leviton packs stop responding? I have that problem too, I think it comes down to the fact that the packs are fundamentally stupid and get fatally confused at an invalid DMX frame. At one point a board op went to rearrange his headset cable and bumped the power cable to the board--it didn't actually reset the board but evidently screwed up a few DMX frames since ALL 10 of the Levtion packs (spread among various optosplitter outputs) immediately stopped responding. The Sensor+ rack, Seachangers, scrollers, and Twinspins all kept chugging along just fine, but the DDS packs wouldn't respond at all until they all got power cycled. And these used to be our only dimmers! Thankfully we have the Sensor rack now to handle the bulk of our dimming and we can afford to reserve four of the DDS packs as spare for when one of them fails (a monthly occurrence). I've gotten pretty good at replacing their fuse holders. . . .<I could keep ranting, but I don't want to hijack your thread> But you might want to check cable type & length (see if it falls within DMX spec) and termination, or futz with transmission speed in the board settings.

At any rate, our recent renovation was overseen by one benefactor who jealously guarded the architectural and technical plans. This has led to a vast number of WTFs from the worthless wireless headset system that was purchased to fundamental bizarreness in the floor plan--lots of wasted space that with a bit of rearrangement could have given us some much needed storage space--all of which is costing us $$$ to fix now (see Sensor rack). So I feel your pain.

 

[GrayeKnight]

It's interesting reading about other high school auditoriums..

I'm currently a senior at my high school (Stage Manager for productions... basically keep the space up and running since our school system can't) and have quite the long list of problems.

I know at least for us our house lights are not tied in to our system, they have their own controls because first and foremost we're an "auditorium" not a theatre. Electricians from the school said they couldn't rewire our catwalk to have more than 9 channels because we "didn't need them for anything that would happen in our space."

Another quite funny story, after 4 work orders and one year the electricians came to our auditorium and told us they couldn't change our house lights because... they were too high up. Needless to say i brought in a pole from my house to do what they couldn't do in one year.

Also, sorry for reviving the dead thread and hijacking it, but it's something i can relate to since I have all kinds of problems with my space.

Any other stories? This thread is a fun read

GK

 

[GHSStageManager]

I'd actually be interested in knowing if its possible to take control of house lights if they are currently wired to a wall switch

 

[mstaylor]

If you are asking can you wire into the circuit to gain control at another location, the answer is maybe. It would depend on a lot of things and you would need to have a local electrician look at it. Many times it will require running new wire so have somebody take a look for you.

 

[DuckJordan]

Example on house lights controllable is: In our theater they had the bright idea we will use the dimmer packs for the lights (which is ok i liked that idea) but then also had the bright idea lets only make them controllable from a 5 slider analog box not accessible by anything as far as changing plugs or anything else. Me and the new TD came to the conclusion the next time we go to blow out our dimmer packs as they were stupidly placed right next to an enterance spot on our stage, that we would "rewire" these to go into our DMX Horizon controlled system as well as the manual box, they will never know


P.S. before you ask yes he is a qualified electrician. and no we would not attempt doing so without first having blue prints, schematics, and the head of the departments go ahead.

 

[derekleffew]

Okay, two different issues here.

1) GHSStageManager, unless it's a very small auditorium, the wall switch does not actually switch the power for the houselights. More likely it controls one or more contactors, so it would be possible, for a qualified, licensed electrician with knowledge of relay circuit wiring, to install an alternate control location. Operating the On-Off functionality from your stage lighting control system would not be cost-effective however.

2) DuckJordan, whether or not you can accomplish what you desire is entirely dependent on the make/model of the dimmer packs in question. Many dimmer packs provide for multiple control inputs simultaneously, at its simplest, on an HTP priority basis.