Painting Tips

Posted on by Neil

I hope these thoughts will help some of you painters out there. Below are some thoughts about tracking your daily reports.

We are all aware of the need to track, early and often, how our crews are performing on each job. This task can be made fairly simple by using time cards, which you can purchase or create yourself. These don’t need to be terribly sophisticated, just basic spread sheets that you can populate with the project information and rows which depict each task and the hours estimated for them. One suggestion is that you use the first column to assign a code to each task. When your foremen fill out their time cards, they should indicate the code that each employee was working on for that day. For example, the first column and row of the time card would have code 101 (Or any number of your choice). Moving to the right, the next cell would indicate “paint walls”, the next would show the hours used that day for painting walls and the next one, the total number of hours that were estimated for that task. The last cell should be for the percentage of the total that has been completed to date. Each day’s time card can be totaled weekly, and used to populate a Job Phase Overview Report. This lists, by codes, the total number of hours used on the job to date, compared to the estimate, and shows the differences. This makes it very easy to spot where you are winning or losing. The Job Phase Overview Report can be used in weekly production meetings to help your team evaluate the progress of each of your projects and to determine any necessary adjustments.

One other tool I would suggest is the use of Daily Reports. An accurate set of daily reports from a job will arm you with information that can help when bidding future work. Another benefit derived from the practice of keeping daily reports, is that they can serve as activity reports, should you need to refer to them at a future date. It’s not unheard of for a general contractor or owner to come to you during the course of a project, and question you as to what may or may not have been done on any given day. With your daily reports in hand, you have documented evidence of the number of people you working on any given day and what tasks they performed, material purchases, temperature and dew point readings, any conditions or events that may have impacted your production, documentation of directions from or correspondence with the customer and any other information you choose to include.

These reports can all be generated as easily as using a spiral notebook and handwriting, using a shared Google spreadsheet or a number of apps on the market. The important thing is to track and monitor everything you do. I hope this has been helpful for those of you struggling to keep up.

Submitted by Student Painters (website)

Painting Professionals

Posted on by Neil

Some would call it a club others would call it a nightmare. Either way, we have official opened up our painting professionals carp fishing club. We are a group of local house painters who love to fish. We share our lives together as well as our work. If you are interested in joining our club, then it is very simple. You have to love fishing and you have to be connected to house painting (even if it is your own house painting). Contact us for information.

 

Catching Carp

Posted on by Neil

On short sessions, where we don’t need to go overboard with bait, it’s important to maximize attraction and give the carp something that they want. Feeding little often, strategically placed traps here and there are perfect for nicking consistent bites for the angler that doesn’t necessarily have the most time to go baiting up all week. In a Session Pack, you receive boilies, glug, pellets and pop-ups; everything you need to outwit even the trickiest of carp.
Spruce up your pellets
Although the pellets break down quickly and release a huge scent in the water it can sometimes be successful to give them a little glaze in the glug. This sends out food signals and pumps even more attraction into the water column. Simply pour the pellets into an empty bucket and cover/glaze with the matching additive, which comes complete in the pack. It will create a real rich, oily, powerful attraction and works particularly well if feeding in the edge. As always the pellets also work well on their own or when used inside a PVA funnewelb bag. A little bag of pellets is often just enough of a mouthful to create a pick up. While others are piling in the bait receiving nothing, you can be nicking fish with little appealing packages – less is sometimes more.

Whittle down your hook bait
When using your pellets in a bag, try mimicking them with your hook bait. The best way to do this is to whittle away at the hook bait with a pair of scissors. You can create all shapes and sizes to look like a pellet. A round boilie will often stand out like a sore thumb so this is a tactic that can pay off, especially on waters where the carp have seen it all before. Not only will whittling away at the bait make it more natural, it can also take the outer skin off the bait and allow the powerful feed-inducing triggers of the bait to release quicker, definitely worth a try for your coyer specimens.

Enhance your boilies
Amongst the pack you will find some concentrate boilie dip. This is very deep in flavour, taste and in particular smell. It adds another dimension to the bait and can only enhance its attraction. You can use this additive a number of ways:
Combine it with your free offerings. Simply pour some of the liquid into the packet, give it a quick shake and your boilies will be glazed with goodness, which will leak through the water. To get all the ingredients activated and kickstart them a little, boil the kettle and scald the lot with boiling hot water. The softer the bait the more active it will be.

We have already talked about adding it to your pellet. You can combine it with stick mixes, place in spod mixes, literally anything. Due to the fact that it’s PVA friendly, you can even go as crazy as pouring directly into a solid PVA bag, the options are endless!
There are a number of ways to make your boilies go further. Why not cut them half? Sometimes a halved bait can be far more effective than a round. By slicing one, all of a sudden you have two baits! The halves will sink far slower through the water column, thus settling on any debris and also they can trick wary carp that are used to getting caught on round ones.
Why not crush them to a crumb? Boilie crumb is one of the most appealing things you can present. The natural food triggers are working instantly as they are no longer locked inside a boiled bait. The fish have to work particularly hard to seek and eat the crumb, at times keeping them in the swim. Also the crumb can be used to create PVA sticks or solid bag mixes. Again, there are a number of ways to use a boilie!

Fishing in the Winter

Posted on by Neil

Many anglers give up carp fishing through the colder months, either hanging the rods away until spring or going out after other species. This is sometimes understandable but even in the colder months I still like to carry on trying to catch a carp or two.
It can be made enjoyable, but it’s all about adjusting what you want from your carp fishing. I am going to give you a little insight to how I go about my winter fishing, and how I keep it as enjoyable as possible.
First of all is venue choice. Don’t get me wrong, if you are after a particular target fish then you have to put all effort into catching it. That could mean a lot of blanks and a lot of long nights sat out in the cold. If you do succeed then yes it’s an achievement for sure but it can be hard work staying motivated.
I’m a little different; I like to get bites which keeps me active and warm. I choose to fish well-stocked lakes where the average size of the carp are smaller with the chance of catching a 20lber keeping it spicy.
I also look to fish shallow venues as they warm up a lot quicker which in turn sees the carp moving and more active when conditions are favourable. Doing day sessions rather than nights also helps to keep the motivation and activity levels high.
Watercraft and locating the fish is a vital piece of the jigsaw.
Most of the carp will tend to be holding up in particular areas of the lake. Snaggy areas and reedy areas as well as offering cover will hold heat from the sun, and these features are always a good bet when the sun is out during those winter days. Sheltered spots on the back of the wind, especially a cold one, are always a good choice. When you do locate the carp it will often be in numbers.
When the carp’s metabolism starts to slow down there is no need to be smashing loads of bait out into the lake. It can actually ruin your chances as you will just fill them up. On well stocked venues a little more bait can be applied, but keeping it to a bare minimum to get a bite is my favoured approach. I use little parcels of bait, such as small PVA bags or sticks with a highly attractive mix in them such as the Citruz fizzing stick mix. This fizzes away whilst giving off food signals – perfect to get the attention of a carp and with a mouthful of bait gives you enough just to get that all important bite.
Personally my favourite tactic in the winter is to use single hookbaits, namely bright and high attract pops ups. Pink and white are my chosen colours, and I opt to use sweet, fruity flavours such as Citruz. Carp sweets I like to call them! When you are not hungry you wouldn’t want a full Sunday roast put in front of you but if someone put say a Starburst in front of you, the chances are you would have it. That’s no different to an opportunist cold water carp.
When single hook bait fishing I like to recast the rods a lot even if it does and sometimes with the intention of spooking the fish. I believe this can get the dormant carp moving around and if you move you are burning off energy consequently mean that you will need to eat!
I tend to keep all my rigs as simple as I can. I might scale down on hook size from a size 5 to a 7 or shorten the rig, knocking a couple of inches off the hook link, but other than that it will be the same that I use all year. One change I do make in winter is to alter my lead set up. Autumn brings leaf litter, dying weed and other debris which ends up on the bottom of any lake. Opting for a helicopter setup gives you a better rig presentation and allows the hook link to settle on top of any debris on the lakebed.
Don’t forget to try a zig too. I have found carp don’t spend half as much time on the bottom as most of you’d think in the colder months. More often they are sat mid water or a few foot off the bottom just dropping down to feed occasionally. Find them at the right depth and zigs can be awesome.
The biggest buzz kill in winter is the cold. I always take my brew kit, it’s the one thing that will always keep you warm and active between bites. A good quality jacket, bib and brace and boots is also advisable. If you are cold you won’t enjoy your fishing, so be prepared and buy the best you can afford.
If like me and can only go on set days the weather means not a lot but if you are lucky enough to be able to pick and choose your days according to the weather then that’s a big edge. If you see a warm front due in after a cold spell it’s a no brainier really; you need to act on it and get yourself out on the bank!

Let’s Help Each Other Out

Posted on by Neil

We are looking for ways to connect as painters so that we can grow our community. We are looking for this website to be about both carp fishing and painting. We would love it if you have things you would like to talk about. Please feel free to contact us. We are encouraging individuals to write a blog article about carp fishing or painting. Please feel free to leave your information and we will post it with your article. We are looking forward to everyone having the opportunity to share their thoughts and experience.

Bidding Estimates

Posted on by Neil

The first step to any bid is of course to gather the quantities, whether you are measuring an existing structure or doing a takeoff from a set of plans. From there you must “extend” your numbers, either manually or by entering the information into an estimating program.

Once you have your calculations completed, there are still a few things to consider before the bid is ready to submit. Let’s look at some of these variables that can influence how you want to present any given bid, or if you want to bid the project at all.

As a preface, let me say that my focus here will be on bidding to general contractors, but many of these principals apply to bidding from plans dealing directly with owners as well.

First, you must determine what type of bid this is going to be. There are basically three types; negotiated, select, and competitive. Of these three, the negotiated bid is the most desirable. In this situation, an owner will choose which general contractor they want to run their project and negotiate a price with that company. With the negotiated bid, in addition to the price, your reputation for honesty, quality and how easy you are to work with can be deciding factors.

The select bid is the next best situation to find yourself in. It is similar to the negotiated bid, but rather than choosing one single general contractor, the owner will comprise a list of a select few that will be asked to bid on the project; usually three. As with the first example, your chances of winning such a bid are still better than with the typical, open or competitive bid.

The competitive bid is probably the most common of the three I have mentioned. This is when an owner puts a project out to bid on the open market so to speak. Your chances of winning a competitive bid are statistically the smallest. This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t bother bidding on them, but it is something to take into consideration.

The distance your crew and you have to travel to a job can have more of an impact than just the travel time involved. The distance to the nearest paint store, should you need supplies, can be a factor. What if you experience equipment failure? Supervision becomes a more difficult task as well. In light of such possibilities, you may want to increase your bid accordingly.

Basically, high quality work goes for a premium. “Blow and go” production type jobs don’t. If you know that a high level of craftsmanship is going to be required on a job, you will need to adjust your bid to account for the extra attention that will be demanded.

Assume you are bidding an interior repaint of a school, it is summer and the contract documents stipulate that the work must be completed before school resumes session. They further stipulate that if you are not done by the deadline, that you must finish the work during evenings or on weekends, and/or liquidated damages will be charged to you for failing to meet the schedule; these can be substantial. These added constraints add a risk factor that again commands a higher rate than typical jobs.

These jobs are typically for federal, state, or city agencies, or for schools. With prevailing wage jobs, you will experience increased expenses for your bookkeeping needs, as you will often be required to submit “certified payrolls”, and see to it that your crews are paid weekly and at the prevailing wage required.

Who are these people? Have you worked with them before? Were they easy to work with? Did they pay on time? Did they honor your change orders? Were they difficult to please? Did they interpret the plans differently than you did? All these are legitimate questions to ask yourself.

How full is your plate? If you presently have a substantial amount of work in progress, you may decide not to bid any additional work. If you choose to do so, you should bid it at a premium rate. You don’t want to submit a ridiculously high number, but you clearly have the option in this case to make the extra work well worth your while.

OK, so you’ve submitted your bid, and you’re wondering how you did. In the case of “sealed bids”, there is typically a bid opening that anyone can attend to find out immediately who won. If you are the prime contractor on a project, you can typically contact the issuing authority and ask who won the bid. If you were bidding as a subcontractor, you can call and see which of the general contractors was the “apparent low” bidder. Once you know which firm won the bid, you can call them, congratulate them, and asked if they “listed” you for the painting.

Submitted by Broomfield painting.