Horsepower hours per gallon- help me understand

[KICK]

hey Kaliburz, my BIL does alot of estimating for his job and he told me that he learned to always add about 25% to his estimates because that covers any mistakes or issues he didn't include in the estimating process.

 

[Farmwithjunk]

hey Kaliburz, my BIL does alot of estimating for his job and he told me that he learned to always add about 25% to his estimates because that covers any mistakes or issues he didn't include in the estimating process.

I'm an estimator for a general contractor. The technique you described is a favorite among companies who're racing to get in line for filing bankruptcy. I LOVE it when our competitors use that type of estimating. Makes my job easier. The GOOD ones learn to do things without huge mistakes and not take a wild stab in the dark. As an accepted margin, we aim for UNDER 2% error between estimate and true cost. In most cases, we do better than that. It's not hard at all if you actually know what you're doing.

 

[Kaliburz]

I'm an estimator for a general contractor. The technique you described is a favorite among companies who're racing to get in line for filing bankruptcy. I LOVE it when our competitors use that type of estimating. Makes my job easier. The GOOD ones learn to do things without huge mistakes and not take a wild stab in the dark. As an accepted margin, we aim for UNDER 2% error between estimate and true cost. In most cases, we do better than that. It's not hard at all if you actually know what you're doing.

A buddy use to work for the state. He was given the task of auditing state social service offices. He was so good, he eventually made it higher and was in charge of building and opening a few offices. If I recall, he said he was with in 2%. But when working w/ millions of dollars.......

Fuel is a variable cost as of right now. Both off and on road. Not sure what it will be during harvest vs spring time. (I've tried to buy when I think prices are low, but get burned since it drops during late summer.) Labor goes up here in WA state to $8.07 Jan 1, 2008 (yes, in ag and we have hired help.) I know the general amount of time for them to do their tasks, since most have been employed w/ us for a while- fairly constant from year to year.

Tried to eliminate as much labor costs as possible by finding alt methods. Some mechanical, chemical weed control, mechanical grape trimming/pruning.

But I'm a small time operation...... I raise apples aside from grapes. Apples have not been holding their own- been a resource ($$) hog of late. Inputs go up and up, labor goes up and up (and I try to do the bare min for them to get a quality crop, but still.....) I can't exactly raise the prices of my apples to compensate since we bring to a warehouse and the do the selling (packing and commission service)- and they take about 58-60% of the gross sales (packing, warehousing, commission).

Sorry, I don't want to get on that soap box....... (Small family farm that kind of dropped in to my lap..... ) Some times I wonder if I do know what I'm doing

 

[RalphVa]

Here's a site: http://www.ext.colostate.edu/pubs/farmmgt/05006.pdf

My 4010 with 18.5 hp has used 0.46 gallons/hr over its 289 hours.

My 12 hp Gravely gas engine with carburetor used to use virtually the same amount. This ties in with data back in the 80s from engineers' own cars, a mix of carbureted gas engines and diesel engines. Gas engine fuel use was 30 mpg-ton. Diesel engine use was 45 mpg-ton, 50% better.

Tractor fuel usage will pretty much prorate by engine hp. Car/truck use prorates by vehicle weight.

Ralph

 

[chh]

Having help that doesn't "hot rod" your equipment will affect your fuel consumption more than anything else in the harvesting scenrio you mention. In one of the farm publications I get a custom wheat havestor had an article about running an a female crew he had against his past history with an all male crew(mostly teenage boys). Fuel consumption and maintance was lower with the female crew than the boys, his theory being that they didn't hotrod the equipment around showing off and getting the "deisel roar". An older male crew may have had the same effect but hiring temp workers one often has to hire what is available.
We ran a PTO irrigation pump here on our hog farm. I started with a Ford 4600 (50 hp I think) that had a tank that would run about 8 hrs and 15 minutes at near full pto speed. The pump showed to require about 45 hp so they were supposed to be a good fit. Tank was about 25 gal. or about 3 gph. Switched to a MF 4243 with a 35+ gallon tank and could run 24 hrs on a tank. It had an econmy pto setting that allowed me to pump the same volume/pressure at 1500 rpms that the other tractor had been doing at 2100. In this case the switch to more hp resulted in a fuel savings.

 

[Farmwithjunk]

A buddy use to work for the state. He was given the task of auditing state social service offices. He was so good, he eventually made it higher and was in charge of building and opening a few offices. If I recall, he said he was with in 2%. But when working w/ millions of dollars.......

Fuel is a variable cost as of right now. Both off and on road. Not sure what it will be during harvest vs spring time. (I've tried to buy when I think prices are low, but get burned since it drops during late summer.) Labor goes up here in WA state to $8.07 Jan 1, 2008 (yes, in ag and we have hired help.) I know the general amount of time for them to do their tasks, since most have been employed w/ us for a while- fairly constant from year to year.

Tried to eliminate as much labor costs as possible by finding alt methods. Some mechanical, chemical weed control, mechanical grape trimming/pruning.

But I'm a small time operation...... I raise apples aside from grapes. Apples have not been holding their own- been a resource ($$) hog of late. Inputs go up and up, labor goes up and up (and I try to do the bare min for them to get a quality crop, but still.....) I can't exactly raise the prices of my apples to compensate since we bring to a warehouse and the do the selling (packing and commission service)- and they take about 58-60% of the gross sales (packing, warehousing, commission).

Sorry, I don't want to get on that soap box....... (Small family farm that kind of dropped in to my lap..... ) Some times I wonder if I do know what I'm doing

A good way to nail down accurate estimates is to gather any and all information that will help to verify or dispell any previous information. If one source of information contradicts another, question BOTH until you find which one is in error.

Then go find a cyrstal ball.

It's getting tougher and tougher with each passing day to predict what cost's tomorrow will bring.

 

[KICK]

I'm an estimator for a general contractor. The technique you described is a favorite among companies who're racing to get in line for filing bankruptcy. I LOVE it when our competitors use that type of estimating. Makes my job easier. The GOOD ones learn to do things without huge mistakes and not take a wild stab in the dark. As an accepted margin, we aim for UNDER 2% error between estimate and true cost. In most cases, we do better than that. It's not hard at all if you actually know what you're doing.

I'd love it if everything was as EZ as building a new building from the ground up.. anybody who couldn't figure out how much it is going to cost is out of his league in that business. But thats why construction work is at the bottom end of the social structure, pretty much anybody can do it if they care too follow the process, because it aint rocket science.

the drywall guy can tell you how much he is going to charge, the plumber, the concrete guys etc., how much are permits, inspection, fees, all the way down to the paint. its pretty much so much a square foot at the end.. and the subs have to do it for the price they said, its in the contract.... lot of GC's aint nuthin but middlemen.. somebody else made the bid on their part of it, they have to do it for that price....

but since my BIL does prototype manufacturing and engineering type stuff, he runs into design or testing issues.. 1st design doesn't hold up, 2nd design is too difficult to manufacture, goes on and on.....

do you think you could write an estimate on how much it would cost to build the space shuttle and be withing 2%?? me neither....

you gotta walk a mile in someone else shoes before you compare yourself to them.

 

[GinNB]

For my use, those horsepower hours/gallon figures are either for comparing the potential fuel economy of tractors I'm interested in buying or for if I want to measure my fuel consumption and work backwards to how many horsepower it was taking for the job I did (not much use for that one). It's very hard to look at a field, fire up the laptop, check the horsepower hours/gallon figures, and then figure out how much it'll cost to do something without prior experience.

For instance, I know that it costs anywhere between $20-$24 dollars to spray out a tank on my mistblower, but without knowing lots of variables like swath width, swath length, field shape (yes, it makes a difference), groundspeed, tractor weight/design (4WD or 2, powershift tranny, etc), horsepower hours/gallon figures, horsepower curve for the mistblower at different RPMs, soggy or dry field, etc etc, you can't figure out how much it's going to cost to do something accurately in advance without actually DOING it and measuring how much fuel you burned.

If someone kept track of how much fuel it took to mow an acre of lawn once a week they might think that it takes, say, half a gallon of diesel with tractor X but they can't take that information and calculate how much it'll cost to mow an acre once that hasn't been mowed for 5 years or, necessarily, each half of a two acre lot if they're used to mowing manicured lawns and they're looking at how much fuel it'll take to mow an acre of grass and cultch one day when it's dry and the next acre if it's raining.

Hphrs/gallon is a useful concrete figure only if I know from experience that tractor X takes 100 gallons to do a certain task and it has a 10 horsepower hours/gallon efficiency at the speed I'm running it and that tractor Y gets 15 hphrs/gallon at the same speed. Then I can accurately predict that, if diesel's $3/gallon, it'll cost me $300 for fuel with tractor X and most likely extremely close to $200 if I switched to tractor Y. It's hard to use to predict future fuel consumption for changing variable tasks unless you know exactly how many horsepower it'll take or accurate fuel records from doing the exact same task before, which is MUCH easier.

 

[Farmwithjunk]

I'd love it if everything was as EZ as building a new building from the ground up.. anybody who couldn't figure out how much it is going to cost is out of his league in that business. But thats why construction work is at the bottom end of the social structure, pretty much anybody can do it if they care too follow the process, because it aint rocket science.

the drywall guy can tell you how much he is going to charge, the plumber, the concrete guys etc., how much are permits, inspection, fees, all the way down to the paint. its pretty much so much a square foot at the end.. and the subs have to do it for the price they said, its in the contract.... lot of GC's aint nuthin but middlemen.. somebody else made the bid on their part of it, they have to do it for that price....

but since my BIL does prototype manufacturing and engineering type stuff, he runs into design or testing issues.. 1st design doesn't hold up, 2nd design is too difficult to manufacture, goes on and on.....

do you think you could write an estimate on how much it would cost to build the space shuttle and be withing 2%?? me neither....

you gotta walk a mile in someone else shoes before you compare yourself to them.

Obviously you know not of what you speak. Thanks for pointing that out for all the world to see.

 

[Robert_in_NY]

Obviously you know not of what you speak. Thanks for pointing that out for all the world to see.

+1