What actually got built.
On every job there are two sets of drawings. The design drawings show what somebody in an office decided should happen. The as-builts show what actually happened once the wall was open, the slab was off by three quarters, and the duct had nowhere to go.
One is a wish. The other is a record. The trades are the distance between them.
Every piece here carries one word from that record — set small, set straight, no explanation printed anywhere on the garment. If somebody has to ask, that's the point.
- ELEV. 0'-0"
- The datum. Somebody drives a pin, calls it zero, and every measurement on the job is taken from it. It isn't sea level. It's just where you decided to start.
- ROUGH-IN
- Everything that goes in before the walls close. Inspected once, covered forever. The building stands on work nobody will ever look at again.
- 1/4"/FT
- Minimum fall on a drain line. It only runs downhill because somebody set the grade.
- ± 1/16"
- Tolerance. Nothing is perfect. Everything has a limit on how wrong it's allowed to be.