Chapter fourteen

DIY construction, package deals, patents, trade names and trade-sponsored literature

14.1
DIY approach to construction

14.1.1
Introduction

A well-managed complex of facilities that included, for example, a bowling green, a children's play area, an orderly arrangement of allotments and a multi-purpose playing field, all laid out around a club house, car park and maintenance yard, could do much to meet the social needs of a community. In many circumstances the provision of just one of these facilities would be a welcome move in the right direction.

It has been a primary aim of this book to give practical support to the ideals and objectives of the National Playing Fields Association. This is a charity whose purpose is to help those who wish to use outdoor facilities for recreation. It provides grants and advice either to assist in the improvement of existing facilities or to help create something entirely new. Being a charity with very limited resources it must be particularly concerned to achieve maximum benefit for minimum cost. One way of achieving this is to encourage community involvement in a DIY approach which may have the added bonus of community concern for aftercare.

14.1.2
Advisory services

In previous chapters general guidance has been given to illustrate how theoretical principles work out when applied to typical, practical examples. This guidance should be adequate to enable organizations intent on adopting a DIY approach to achieve this with the technical support of the NPFA or an independent consultant.

Role of the adviser in a DIY project

1. To assist with site selection;
2. to provide the technical vetting that can eliminate mistakes in design and choice of materials;
3. to inspect and provide guidance at critical periods during construction.

Role of the community in a DIY project

1. Planning permission must be obtained, and checks made with the local authority on arrangements for discharge of drainage water and obligations with regard to public utilities.
2. The adviser will require support in designing the various facilities, preparing layout and construction drawings, specifying the materials and staging the work.
3. The site will require marking out and checking against the specification.
4. As the construction work proceeds, it will be necessary to call on the adviser to inspect and instruct as each pre-determined stage in the construction is reached and before the next stage begins.
5. Working with the adviser a detailed programme of maintenance must be agreed, care having been taken at the planning stage to point out the general nature of the maintenance that will be required according to the scheme of construction adopted.

Payment

Independent advice can be a much undervalued commodity. We are happy to pay for goods but we expect advice to be given free on the packet. The value of advice is ofter not immediately obvious and, if given verbally, tends to be regarded as a goodwill offering. However, knowledge is a commodity well worth paying for and should not be confused with sales talk.

An independent consultant will either work to a scale of fees based on time and expenses, or charge a fixed percentage of the contract price. The NPFA expect the cliem co cover all the expenses involved in advisory visits but may use charity money to cover the cost of the adviser's time.

14.1.3
Organizing community effort

Tasks

Working together can strengthen a community so that much is to be said, in a DIY project, for spreading around the variety of tasks involved. These include:

• fund raising;
• financial control;
• design, preparation of drawings, specification of work and marking out;
• timely ordering and provision of approved materials, equipment and mechanical aids;
• timely provision of skilled manpower and willing labour;
• site management to organize each stage of the work, to check on the standard of workmanship and to maintain a tidy, wellorganized site;
• organization of maintenance, from seeding onwards.

Each stage of the work should be finished off securely so that no harm will come to the progress of the work should a long interruption intervene. Holes, trenches and depressions should not be left to fill up with water because no provision has been made to protect them against surface-water flooding, or to clear accumulating water to a safe outfall. When working in the open the aim should be never to start what cannot be cleared up and made safe before leaving.

Personnel

Recreational activities can attract a wide range of personalities. When allocating tasks for a DIY project it would be as well to remember how a psychologist is said to have classified personality according to activity and intelligence:

• the active and intelligent—they are liable to develop neuroses and burn out early;
• the inactive and unintelligent—they do not achieve very much but neither do they do much harm;
• the active but unintelligent—they are likely to be a menace;
• the inactive but intelligent—these are the most useful because they will think twice before committing themselves to action.

Beware the macho man, revved up with horse power and impatient to get started. Be on site early to think ahead for him. Give simple, clear instructions for just one phase of the work at a time and keep your own, more reliable manpower to clear up afterwards. Be on site to observe the large boulder that might otherwise end up just below the surface, or the topsoil that was about to be buried when it should have been preserved for better use elsewhere. Reject no genuine offer of help but supervise diligently until experience justifies confidence.

14.2
Package deals

It is possible, at extra cost, to obtain package deals from consultants and contractors which may include:

1. details of model schemes requiring only local modification to fit the peculiarities of a particular site;
2. plans, specifications and details of quantities to achieve a specified purpose on a particular site;
3. a total package deal, covering both design and construction, plus immediate aftercare through to the point of handover for play.

The NPFA endeavours to keep abreast of this information and should be contacted by those wishing to purchase information sheets listing appropriate consultants and contractors.

Beware the tendency for package deals to escalate. From the contractor's point of view the bigger the package that he can conveniently handle the better the financial prospects of the deal. And the more ancillary aids he can build in, the less risk of failure. This will protect the contractor against litigation, and suits the bigspending professionals who demand play at any cost. It may well be cheaper to include irrigation and undersoil heating in one package along with drainage, but in most circumstances drainage along will suffice. Improved drainage, to the extent that it will keep the soil drier, will bring with it less risk of damage from frost heave, and because of improved soil aeration, will encourage deeper rooting and therefore lessen the risk of sward damage from desiccation.

Many things are useful but that does not mean they are essential. Prudent spending requires that priorities are critically assessed, particularly when spending other people's money.

14.3
Patents

14.3.1
Extent of cover

Periodically, one is liable to come across mention of the fact that a particular construction is protected by a patent. Sometimes the way this information is presented can mislead the reader into thinking that the patent covers every feature of the construction. This may raise doubt as to the freedom with which others may develop their own design or implement even traditional techniques to achieve their purpose.

The following advice on patent law has been checked by the NPFA and may be used as general guidance.

1. Nothing which is common knowledge can be patented. This covers traditional procedures and information freely available in the standard literature.
2. To secure a patent the inventor has to draw attention to the features of his invention that are novel and it is these only that the granting of a patent protects.
3. The impression of quality and reliability that might be given by association with the backing of the law is not always justified in practice because, for an invention to be patented, it does not necessarily have to work.
4. The DIY enthusiasts have little to fear in the patent world so long as no one involved in the special nature of the construction is using the invention for financial gain.

14.3.2
Examples

1. One sub-irrigation system of construction involves tanking an excavation with polythene, laying pipes and building a soil of a closely specified sand. The construction is said to be covered by a patent. Does this mean that any system of sub-irrigation or any sand construction is covered? In fact, sub-irrigation and constructing with sand are old ideas. In this case, all the patent actually protects is the ingenious way devised to ensure that laterals off the main fill up in an orderly succession, but this patented technique is not the only way of achieving the benefits of sub-irrigation.
2. A construction involving a thick, surface carpet of sand, used to be widely advertised, like the last, under a trade name. It drew attention to the fact that it was covered by a patent, but this lapsed in 1990. In this case sand is spread as a thick carpet over a soil drained by an integrated system of gravel channels and pipes, the sward being established directly on top of the sand carpet. Such a design sounds as if it might cover any sand-over-soil construction, but the novel feature of the invention referred to the belief, heretofore, that it was not practicable for grass seed to germinate in ‘uncontaminated sand’. The patent, therefore, only referred to a construction in which the sward was established from seed sown directly onto a surface layer of uncontaminated sand, at least 3–4 in in depth. Since it was unlikely that many people would want to use sand for this purpose without including some soil, peat or other amendment, the patent had very little practical significance.
3. A lapsed patent for which application was first made in Austria in January 1965, appeared to cover all slit systems of surface drainage, but it repeatedly stressed the advantage in the invention of first strongly compacting the soil surface before slitting and seeding. The application of this patent, therefore, was again very narrowly defined, especially so when in the preamble it made clear that the strong compaction referred to was such as could be achieved by a road roller! No wonder the invention also referred to a special method of seeding involving a surface covering of straw, coated with asphalt.

It is obviously a very difficult thing to acquire the sort of all-embracing patent that advertisements seem sometimes to wish to imply. If in doubt, obtain a copy of the patent from The Patent Office, London WC2A 1 AY.

14.4
Trade names

When a novel approach reaches the stage of commercial exploitation, minor variations which at best differ only marginally in principle, are hijacked by the marketing men for special promotion. This can then lead to exaggerated claims for significance based on pseudo-scientific terminology and the bogus distinction implied by a trade name. Fertilizers, weedkillers, hard porous surfacing materials, sand constructions and slit systems of drainage, the less they differ in principle the more it seems that the distinction of a trade name is required to secure a substantial share of the market.

14.5
Trade-sponsored literature

It would be naive to expect literature supported by advertising to be free of commercial pressures. Even technical articles are liable to be merely extensions of advertising. This is not the type of literature to which scientists normally refer, but in a free market economy we must all learn to recognize partial information that is ‘economical with the truth’, and evaluate it accordingly.

The enthusiasm of the salesman should not be allowed to carry more weight than experience justifies. Though there must be some virtue in a well-tried recipe, for the salesman it is essential to project the idea of novelty. Each year the market needs reviving and last year's novelty has to be projected as superseded or set aside as obsolete. Too often we have seen a minor innovation immediately proclaimed as a significant breakthrough, but trades literature does not give equal prominence to its subsequent demise. No sales representative is going to help you to discover the weak features of his product; you must seek independent advice and then think things out for yourself, or find out by experience, too late. Listening, viewing and reading critically are skills which require effort to acquire, but acquire them you must if you are to survive in a free market system.