lets look at some simple mistakes that have consequences

Here is a nice one.  See the yellow tape inside the back box?  That tape used to mark out specifically how we wanted this cement pillar to be laid out.  But as you can see the yellow tape is removed and amazingly enough the com box is also in the wrong place.  Now someone is going to have to fix that.  Why did this happen?  What EHS management doesn't know is that we know why the tape was ignored but for now we will keep that secret to ourselves.  As long as they fix the problem.

This one is more obvious.  As you can see there is a line and a word that indicates where we want the data box to be.  But for some reason that was also ignored.  For some reason the journeyman installed this where we wanted something else to sit.  Again we know it was not the journeyman's fault.  
Here is one that ETC did.  The drawings that were approved seemed to be ignored.  The drawing below was approved but what showed up on site was what is pictured.  The difference is subtle but as my email box today indicates.  It seems to matter a lot since this particular difference involves way to many people.  Lets hope the fix is not much of an issue.
What is sampled here are small problems but when expanded out you can see why we have had to be so consistently involved.  These small things end up adding up and causing mountains to fall.

It is the end of the day and i have put up a lot of blog posts so maybe my attitude has been a little effected since i started writing but tomorrow is our Wednesday meeting and i have a feeling that it may be interesting again.  Though this project seems to working out.  There have been a lot of fires lately that make me concerned about the next six weeks.

Stage Electrics

Hey look what showed up in a box.  Oh sweet love.  I love presents especially when i don't have to install them.  Then it really feels like the dream is coming true.

And Look at this.  A new screwdriver to keep inside the terminal box.  Now we really won't have to carry tools any more.  How nice of ETC to provide us with this little touch.
And this is what it looks like.  The Blue indicates non dim.  Plus on top is the twist locks that will power our worklighs and then underneath check this out.
oh woops i uploaded the same image twice.  oh well. This was supposed to be an image  of the underside of the raceway that is also labeled.  

Stagecraft plays it's role.

So after two years of haggeling we finally have what we originally drew before last summers rigging upgrade.  Notice the relatively clear line upstage and downstage on the SR side of the grid.  Except for the Shell cielings we have a relatively clear path to move upstage and downstage.

Notice in the image below it is not that way.  This was all last year we had to deal with this crisscross of cables on SR.
Even though the drawings we had last year clearly indicate what was supposed to be installed.
So now thank goodness we have finally got what we were looking for the first time.  Thanks to the installers who also were able to fix a couple of problems that were a part of our history.  The main one was upstairs on the second electric, our motor lift line was rubbing against the bracket that was holding the loft block in place.  This caused a vibration to run down the line that was noticed on the floor.  There was no clear indication as to why this was noticed seven years after the install but it was and so they notched out the bracket for me.   In addition Joseph asked me if i wanted to raise arbor out trim so that it might be easier to reach when needing to add weight to compensate for those extra big hangs.  
Notice all the cables draping in to our five electrics. What a sight.

Oh and Robert if you happen to be reading this blog. Here is 1/3 of the line drawing you are waiting for.  This is from the original install.  But maybe this could help in describing what we still need from stagecraft.  Of course there will be a lot more lines then this but hey at least there are cable lines in here.

PSP- company switches.

Company switches everywhere.  We have power for days and days.  It is like we are drinking from the well of life.  I suspect that at some point there will be some complaints about not having enough tie in positions on stage and in the dimmer room but hopefully that will be after the Armageddon.  It seems like we have maxed out on this kind of stuff.  So any way this is the innards of the PSP panels.  Tie ins are nice with two option on being a direct cam lock and the old fashioned lug nut.  Provided in the panel is our very own PSP specific Allen Wrench.  

The Most useful PSP panel in the House.  A new isolated ground 100 amps for sound power on stage left.  This is nice.  Now sound can be on it's own ground and be able to tie in to it's own power without having to run feeder from outside on the dock to through two concrete walls across the whole dock making rolling anything impossible and then all the way down stage left. and across a couple of doors.  Now it will just be 25 feet.  In these Company switches you will not have use the lug nuts either now they have both lug nuts and cam locks as tie in options.

This PSP panel is located outside of the dimmer room and will provide a great way to add more dimmer capability.  This is right outside of the freight elevator and will be great for drama or operas that need a little more power to tie in to.  It's the little things really

This is located on the Fly Floor above the SM panels DSR.  This will be most likely used for motor power for the times when we rent a motor package.  Or if we felt like adding a few dimmers up here well there is a 100 amps
This on pictured below is there to replace the giant patch panel that was here before.  we just felt that we should have something on this upstage wall that would remind us the the patch panel.  So why not Tie in Power in the form of 400 Amps.  Seems like a good idea to me.

Since a long time ago.

I am here to start my blog again but i can't seem to get rid of this underline.  And no there is no option in this cryptic browser based blog writing application.  Maybe if i move past this image it will correct itself for me.
Let see-   Yeah back to normal.  So any way as i was beginning to say.  I have been absent from my blogging since i went on my art camp residency at smoke farm.  A lot happened in those ten days.  Here is some images that ryan took before they closed this wall off and sealed up these feeder runs that go up to the dimmer room above the hallway.  They had to extend the existing ones so that they could get to the new position for the Distro panel which was three feet to the left and sex feet to the right.
Now when you look down the hall way to the freight elevator the ceiling makes you feel like you are an industrial building instead of a hospital.  Plus now it makes the reality of where the dimmer room lives so clear.  Above this area of the hallway lives the hundreds of dimmers.
In the image above behind Ryan is DBA which powers all of the dimmers and then to Ryan's left facing the camera is DBB which is the distro for all of the PSP panels.  Which in my world before now has classically meant company tie in switch but hey PSP sounds good too.  We will get to these PSP in a minute but for now lets go the bigger news
Pictured above is our NEW FOREMAN.  Yeasss that is right we have yeat another grand change in the plan.  New Foreman.  You may have remembered earlier when i told you Pat was our foreman who was leading the on site charge to make things happen. He tried hard but in the end he and upper management seemed to have some major differences that couldn't be reconciled and so Pat quit.  If you come into the theater i will give you my real assessment of the situation but at this point in the game we still have to deal with the management.

So New Foreman-  So far so good and i have high hopes that management is committed to helping Aaron complete this project.  So since i have been back the pace has picked up a lot in terms of how many people are working.  A lot of the devices are arriving and now that the slow tedious part of trying to run conduit is pretty much finished now we seem to be seeing a lot of exciting things showing up on our walls.

Aaron has definitely stepped up to the plate and has been a good job of trying to get up to speed on the project.  He has the sub foreman previously and now he is lead foreman.  I think it just might work out in the end with minimal hassle.

Core drilling gone bad

 The Core drilling has continued.  As they planned out how all the cables were going to get into the dimmer room,  they x-rayed the concrete floor and then started drilling.  Then, what was supposedly just a piece a re bar, turned out to be a conduit packed full of wires.  But after four hours of trying to figure out where this conduit that ran through the slab under the dimmers came from no one could to find the other ends.  It was determined that all of the wires were not hot so that meant it could have been one of the hundreds of panels that have been demoed since this project began.

So they continued to drill the rest of this array of holes.  I looked at it on Friday and now that there are two or three holes going through this conduit i start thinking that maybe it is coming from the studio booth.
I go to the studio booth where two men have found a potential assortment of cables that seem to match the colors that are in the conduit.  (Timing is everything really) So that makes me think which one of the conduits is heading towards the dimmer concrete slab.  Two seem to go that direction so i go back into the dimmer room and then continue to try and follow the line
I walk into the Studio theater and suddenly it all comes together when out of these two circuit boxes the evidence is all you need to see what the men on the other end where figuring out is that the lines that were cut were circuit lines running from the old Studio dimmers to this upstage right area.
Then just for fun later in the day they core drilled through the crying room wall.  Unfortunately that is in view of the audience.  This time the drawings were completely accurate and the people drilling somehow went 5 feet to the right of what they were supposed to do.  Oh well.  I guess we cap it and paint it black.

Core drilling

We had about 17 core drills today.  These are some samples or our walls.  As you cans see from the growth lines it indicates that because of the warmth this summer we are likely to move towards a rapid rise in cloud cover and we could soon be involved in another ice age.  Concrete can really tell you a lot about the history of the geological realities of this region...

the machine.  Soon we will reach the other side and turn up in Madagascar.  We are looking forward to the molten energy we will soon harness with giant turbines that will power all the new dimmers we are getting.  Did i mention that we were getting off the main Grid.  Soon we will be the first theater run on the power of the Earths molten core.
It is very new technology harnessed by ETC.  We got a bargain on this new technology since we are the first to attempt it.
We have recently found a some carbon material in these cores we are hoping that this carbon based material will not turn out to be human.  That would put a huge damper on the progress of this project.  One estimate is that we could end up like the wetlands project next to the college inn.  But we will wait until the lab results come in before we stop work.  From what i hear that could be 6 weeks from now.  If we are lucky we may be finished by that time.

Plans for the Stage Managers Panel

Our stage manager panel consists of three different Sections.  Image below is the SMP 1B.  Two arms that will extend off the wall to hold our video monitor and our 20U rack that will hold the cue light control panel, the sound mixer, monitor speakers, Clearcom base station, CD burner, DVD burner, ETC Network hub and our paging system mixer.   

The picture on top of the image below is my attempt at a 3d version of our desk sitting below the SMP 1b rack. to the right of that is the wall mounted SMP 1a and the SMP 1c.  SMP 1a & b will be made by ETC and the SMP 1c will be made by Stagecraft.  1C will control all of the motors With a new 10 inch LCD Screen.   Should be pretty nice
Here is the layout on the wall.
If it works out it will be amazing.  Unfortunately that clock above is ticking away and all the contractors are beginning to freak a little as they see the hand keeps on moving.
Honestly one thing that has been very difficult about this project is language.  It seems that since the electrical company speaks electrics and we in theater also speak electrics it is kind of like we all English speakers but one set of us is living in London and the the other set of us is living in New york.  We all think we know what the other person is saying but in the end we don't seem to understand the cultural difference.

Good thing we all speak electrics ; )

Back up to the Grid.

So my theory is that people are afraid of the Grid and they don't pay much attention to it.  It has been suprising how often things have been wrong in the drawings and in the implementation of what is going to happen up there.  

But today i can say that luckily we are keeping our eye up there and the raceway is being installed in a good place that wont hinder us anymore.  Now if we can get them to install the Terminal boxes by ETC up on this railing then we will be doing great.  Notice Ryan holding the nice black box right where we would like it.

A lovely 4 x 4 raceway will sit just offstage of this as well that will hold all the communication lines.  One day this place will be pretty close to state of art.

Here is the large open hole for bringing things up to the grid.  It is just a mere 80' to the plywood decking below.

This is an image of the new blocks we will be getting from stagecraft for installing our boom SOCA lines.  Stagecraft if you are watching this please take note.  This is what my redlines indicate on the most recent submittal.

the dimmer room

We received a large shipment of back boxes from B line.  The shipments will hopefully be coming fast and furious as we move on in to week four but we shall see.  That means nine more weeks

The dimmer room is huge when you compare it to the size of these dimmers but even with all that room width we have a ceiling that is only 9' 6."  The dimmers are 8 feet tall and the amount of wires that are coming is creating a problem with the design of the routing that was all supposed to be above it.  So this room came to a stop and hopefully it will get solved quickly so that i can upload a picture that shows the new dimmer room.
These are the Studio dimmers.  It has left a lot of room open in the control booth where they used to take up a great amount of the precious real estate.

New Choral Risers

Well this has nothing to do with lighting but it sure is nice to replace our old choral risers with these ones that roll.  The other ones were original.

These ones roll.  Like everything else in this theater.  Now we will not have to worry about the grooving swaying singers might collapse the rickety wooden risers we used to have
Oh,  who needs risers.  Our old ones should be going to surplus by the end of the summer

nOOOOOOO not there!!!!!

So i am on my way upstairs to the Grid to see how the demolition is going up there.

Oh look finally the most aggravating wire way is gone.  Now this section of the grid can be used again.  5 feet is open again so that i can place blocks in this area and actually drop points here again.
But wait,  What the heck is this.  Two large 2" conduits are running upstage from the plaster line.  Why are these here.  I thought that i was supposed to be consolted before anything is installed up here.  NOOOOOOOOOO.  Another five foot section that i wont be able to drop a point running all the way upstage from the plaster line.  Why did this happen?

So it turns out that there was these two panels up there that are supposed to hold 3 phase motor power that we could plug into easily on the grid and if we are lucky we could even have control down at the stage managers panel if all goes correctly.  But so far it is not looking good, this 2" conduit just can't be here.  So now we have to figure out who's fault it is so that then we can figure out who is responsible for paying for fixing it.  We don't have time for this silliness we just need to get it done and done right.

I think this is week three right.

SMP panel stage left is out and looks like this now.  

SMP stage right.  The clock keeps on clicking by as the things around it change.  Even the amazing mystery box that somehow controlled all of the motors including the main curtain.  At least all of the purple cables are marked

Pat is trying to break the crazy code that will decipher the complexity of this project.  Lets hope that the alogorithm that he comes up with works on the first try because there is not much time left to adjust.