Jonathan Garner

As a field lead I have an apprentice under me. My duties at Total Wells have a broad range. I do everything from well inspections, well rehabilitations, well pump replacement, filtration system installs, shock treatments, plumbing and electrical repairs and installs, pressure system repairs and installs, and diagnostics on all systems. I do system upgrades from basic well systems to variable frequency drive systems with or without storage. On occasion I would run a mini excavator with one of our contractors to dig up or install new electrical conduit and water line. I would also run a skid steer with this contractor to move gravel to make well heads accessible. I do site walks, take pictures and detailed notes, recommend system repairs and upgrades, including upselling or same for same replacements. I inform clients of issues with their system, whether it be from age, performance or out of spec. I have a 100% client approval rating in my time with Total Wells.

I worked under the Stormwater and Streets Departments for the City of Monroe, although I assisted the Water and Wastewater Departments weekly. I had a very long list of responsibilities in Monroe, including street sign maintenance/installation, designing and installing RRFB crosswalk systems, traffic signal and traffic light maintenance, light pole installation, tree felling and stump grinding, asphalt and concrete repair/installation, storm ditching, pond dredging, catch basin maintenance, inspection and repair. The most valuable duty I would say I had at the city of Monroe was instructing. Almost all of the other maintenance technicians were very young with little to no experience, so every single job I did in my seven months at the city was a teaching experience.

The everyday duties of a Streets Maintenance Technician at the City of Redmond vary quite a lot. One of my main duties is to maintain and install signs and pavement markings. Installing and maintaining signs requires the use of hand tools to dig and cement sign anchors, change/install the steel sign posts and blades. If my locates that I request show that there are underground utilities nearby, I will use a Vactor truck to hydro excavate a hole for the signpost rather than unsafely digging with hand tools. I also trim back brush and tree limbs, wash and test the signs for retro reflectivity to ensure they are clear, legible, and up to retro reflectivity standard, especially at night. I am also responsible for using a thermoplastic stand behind road machine (which I fill with a bed-mounted thermoplastic kettle filled with molten thermoplastic) to lay down stripes, fog lines, center lines (when the requested area is too small to hire a long line painter), directional arrows, stop bars and cross walk markers. Another main duty I have as a Streets Maintenance Technician is grinding/removing asphalt with a skid steer and grinder attachment, or a Kubota 7-ton mini excavator with a stinger and/or a bucket and thumb and patching new hot mix asphalt in to maintain the quality of the road and prevent potholes. I will either drive and operate a Class A CDL required 3-ton freightliner patch truck with an auger and heated hopper to dispense asphalt, or a 5- or 10-yard dump truck to fill bigger asphalt patch sections. I will either hand lute the asphalt or use a screed attachment on a skid steer to level the asphalt before operating a steamroller or walk behind compactor to compact the freshly poured asphalt. I will then use a heated crack sealer to seal the new asphalt patch to the existing asphalt, continuing down the road sealing any cracks in the vicinity. In the Streets Department I am also responsible for repairing sidewalks. This is either repaired by grinding smaller edges with a concrete grinder, or temporarily ramping sidewalks, until my superiors go through the proper routes of determining if the tree that is causing problems is the responsibility of the city or a private entity. If the tree is deemed the city's responsibility, I will cut the tree down and remove it accordingly. The City of Redmond is very fond of its buttons (raised pavement markers), which means every summer I am responsible for running the button truck (a Kenworth Class B) truck with a 200-gallon hot glue tank that has a carriage on the side for myself or another maintenance tech to apply glue and raised pavement markers and reflectors. I would honestly say that our biggest and hardest battle in the City of Redmond is combating sticker bushes and vegetation, as it is a very green city. A good portion of the year when conditions aren't ideal for many other types of work, using driving mowers, hedge trimmers, chainsaws and weed whips I combat vegetation. Our city is not too keen on spraying vegetation, so it is done as minimally as possible. I am responsible for repairing guard rails when they are hit, using big impacts and nuts and bolts. I will operate a 6-yard commercial street sweeper which require a class A CDL to clean our roads, or to clean up any spills in the roadway. One requirement I have every winter as a Streets Maintenance Technician is snowplowing and deicing. I will snowplow 7 days a week, on 12 hour and 15-minute shifts until our snow event is over. Our snowplows are 5-yard dump trucks with 5-ton sanders on the back, or 900-gallon CCB tanks for deicing. This includes using a front-end loader to load salt into trucks and using a centrifugal pump to transfer CCB from our storage tanks to the truck tanks. I am generally tasked with training the new drivers every event. Emergency storm cleanup is a very important part of my job. This requires maximum availability during storm season, which railroads into snowplow and deicing season. If trees fall and there are no powerlines involved, I will tow our 7-ton mini excavator out to the site with our Kenworth 10-yard dump truck, finish felling the tree if needed, section the tree, and use the excavator to load the dump truck. Sometimes this involves very careful operation of the mini excavator, as trees have a tendency to fall on cars or city buses and in the vicinity of powerlines. It is then my job to carefully remove trees from these vehicles while causing minimal additional damage to said vehicles, ensuring the safety of my coworkers while keeping a steady pace as generally more trees are in the road somewhere else. The City of Redmond has smaller crews compared to other bigger cities, resulting in cross departmental work during emergencies. My most often cross departmental work is with the water department during main breaks. I show up at the beginning of the main break, usually driving a 5-yard dump truck. After the water department shuts off the water main, I assist them in using the tow behind air package jackhammer to start jacking up asphalt. Generally, one of the water department workers will use the mini excavator to start picking up bigger chunks of asphalt and rock to load in my dump truck while I am loading smaller rocks and asphalt chunks into a smaller one-ton dump truck. Once the meat of the asphalt and rocks are out, I will hop into the hole and hydro excavate clay, dirt or gravel, and/or get a pump going to pump excess water out from around the main. Once the main is exposed, I will go dump my truck and come back with 5/8 gravel to fill the hole. If the water department is still working, I will generally grab a broom and begin minor cleanup in the meantime. On rare occasions I will help them install saddles, with help. When the main is repaired and tested for flow and leaks, I will either begin dumping 5/8 gravel around the main or hop in the hole and use a jumping jack to begin compaction around the main. After the general area around the main is complete and compacted, the water department leaves. At that point it is up to me to fill and compact the rest of the hole with gravel, compact it, and fill the hole with cold mix asphalt for a temporary patch, until I can get a crew and hot mix asphalt for a permanent patch. The last step is bringing a street sweeper out to the temporarily complete main break area and clean up any excess dust and debris. During any of these given tasks, traffic control is a must. Our city is notorious for having skinny lanes and only two-lane roads. To work safely we have to constantly be mindful of overhead powerlines and underground utilities, while making sure the general public vehicle, bicycle and foot traffic has a safe route around our work zone. Flagging, traffic rerouting and in some cases, completely closing roads temporarily is a requirement.

I had done many things in my short time at Total Wells. I operated a one-ton hydraulic hoist truck to remove submersible pumps from wells, ranging in depths from 10 feet to 500 feet. I would then connect the new pump to jacketed wire, seal it, then lower it into the well using the hoist truck and connecting drop pipe to it. I would have to make judgement calls, for instance, if a pump was sucking up too much sediment, after checking static water level to ensure a hefty amount of water is still above the pump and raise it up 5 to 10 feet to supply cleaner water to the client. I also did well inspections, which meant recording all equipment used in the above and below ground pressure and pump system, determining gallons per minute supplied, making sure the well produced a minimum of 400 gallons per day per Washington State requirement, searching the well tag for the well log in the Department of Ecology database to determine pump size, pump and well depth, and testing amp draw on the pump to determine if it is operating in a safe range, inspecting the well head to make sure it is a minimum of 6 inches above ground or finished floor, and checking to make sure it is sealed to prevent contaminants from entering the aquifer, and inspecting all electrical to make sure it is up to code. I would then write a summary of everything inspected, whether it was in good, satisfactory or bad condition, then gave suggestions on how to replace or fix any problem areas in the well system. I also took water samples from customer's wells and turned them into a state certified lab to be examined for nitrates, arsenic, iron, pH, hardness, TDS (totally dissolved solids), complete inorganic compounds, and coliform bacteria. When I got the results back, I would then confer with the owner of Total Wells, who would then contact the client, and go about the process of selecting which filtration systems they would want to purchase and install. I installed reverse osmosis systems to remove arsenic, ultraviolet filtration systems to kill bacteria, self-backwashing ultrafilters to remove iron, manganese, sediment and bacteria, and install and calibrate salt converting chlorinating water softeners to combat hard water. If there were any issues regarding water pressure with taps at the house or around the property when pumps and pressure tanks were reporting to be supplying sufficiently and correctly, I would have to test systems and find leaks, excavate and repair.

I started working as a part time laborer during high school in 2004 (in all reality I had been working for my dad since I was a young kid) for Garner Commercial. My duties included cleanup, material stocking and delivery. By 2008, when I finished high school, I moved on to being a full-time drywall hanger, carpenter, and steel framer. My duties included reading and deciphering blueprints, framing steel and wood structural walls, applicating drywall or plywood, and mudding and taping drywall. By 2012 I had picked up more responsibilities, including problem solving and amending blueprints, attending job walkthroughs, upkeeping customer relations, time management on jobsites, directing crews, problem solving depending on available materials and repairing shop equipment. In 2015 I began working part time in the office. My duties in the office were payroll, job estimates, bids, change orders, purchase orders, amending all out-of-date formulas that were preset to estimate cost of constructing specific walls, ceilings and supports accordingly with recent changes in length, gauge and strength of current materials, and making sure they are in accordance with current building codes and specifications in Microsoft Excel.