Raping the taxpayers, again, and again, and again...

This gig out in the Everglades pays very well, but it really bothers me as a taxpayer what's going on out there.

There's probably a thousand of these little pump/gate stations out in the swamp that South Florida Water Management operates, more are built every day. The ones we're reworking are only about 3 years old -- and this is the second time the electric on them has been reworked, and we're told they'll probably be reworked again after we're done!

The electrical and telemetry gear at these little stations sits a bit low on the wall you see. Not on the floor, just a little lower than is comfortable to fiddle with while standing up. This is apparently a BIG ISSUE for the staff electricians at SFWM, so there's talk of reworking the stations again to raise all this gear to chest height.

Now, all these things are built with rigid galvanized conduit - the heavy shit you thread together. No PVC, no EMT, no cable - rigid threaded piping. The most expensive and tedious stuff to work with there is.

Of course, raising all this gear a foot or so will make all the wire too short and it will need to all be re pulled.

I've come up with a much cheaper practical engineered solution™ for this working height "problem" the SFWM staff electricians morons have. I've used this solution countless time in the past with great success.

You ready for it? Here it is - the Mk 1 Mod 0 plastic freaking bucket. You plunk your dumbass down on a bucket and all that gear is suddenly at a convenient height to work on! Its a miracle solution, and its cheap...which is why they'll never do it. Instead, SFWM will bid the job out and they'll probably be bid in somewhere around $10,000 per station to raise that gear. Another $10M in taxpayer cash thrown down the toilet because some jackass is too stupid to sit on a $3 plastic pail.

Seriously, this kind of stupidity is like welfare for electricians.