Friday, April 30, 2010

We're Shooting Grades and Taking Elevation

There are various types of rods used in the land surveying, construction stake-out, and site prep industry available. There are various types of rods are Grade Rods, Survey Elevation Rods, Lenker Rods, Level Rods, Cut/Fill Rods, but they all boil down to being used to figure elevation for various reasons. These reasons could be shooting grades for highway work such as grading a road bed and ditches, or installing storm sewers and drop inlets, or installing sanitary sewer lines and manholes. Other reasons could be setting a septic tank underground at the right elevation so there's enough fall from the sewer that exits a building over to the tank. Any time you need to measure from a known level reference, as when using a transit level, auto level, or laser level, a grade rod can be invaluable. A "Smart Rod" that Agatec makes is one worth looking at as well.

Cut-and-Fill Rods are used to quickly figure out if a dozer needs to cut or fill in a particular area. These are great tools for construction stake-out and grading contractors. One cut-and-fill rod we carry is the Crain One-Shot Grade Rod.

Measuring Rods also double as a grade rod. Measuring Rods are rods you can use in a vertical or horizontal fashion to measure distance. Great examples of uses are a land surveyor that shoots grades and then quickly needing a measurement of a sidewalk width, or the height of a building. Another example would be

Pocket Rods can be handy on any construction site when you're wanting to take a quick measurement for elevation from level.

So there you have it, a quick run-down of the various types of rods used by land surveyors, grading contractors, construction stake-out folks, building contractors, and anyone wanting to find work from elevation.