What should I look out for if someone asks me if they can partner with my construction company?

Liability!

You need to have a clear understanding of who has access to what.

Do you trust this person?

By becoming a partner you gain a lot of access to the other partners. In a good relationship, they can take care of things on behalf with only limited knowledge on your part.

In a bad relationship, they can do things with your consent with only a limited knowledge on your part.

It goes both ways at the same time. Discuss limits of control, knowledge and anything else that could affect each other. A Partnership gives similar access to each other as a marriage does. So, make a contract to define things ahead of time rather than wondering about them later on.

And register that contract with the county, so if things do go bad you have a legal tool to go off of.

Your contract should cover each person’s responsibilities, ownership, where does money come from, how is it divided, spent and saved, what happens if the company breaks up because of disagreement, death, someone just wants to leave. What did each of you bring to the company (including knowledge and experience)? Put everything in there you can think of, especially if it is over things you don’t want to think of.

If you ever get into a bad spot the judge will go with:

  • First: Anything illegal will be addressed.
  • Second: Anything not covered by the first is covered by the Partnership agreement.
  • Third: Anything not covered by the first two is covered by the judge’s understanding of general practice.
  • Fourth: Anything not covered by the first three items is covered by the judge’s opinion.

If you take anything away from this post. MAKE A PARTNERSHIP AGREEMENT/CONTRACT and REGISTER IT WITH THE COUNTY.

What will happen if you pour an asphalt sealer over a concrete driveway?

You will get a thin layer of asphalt or epoxy (if it is an epoxy type sealer) on top of your concrete.

I wouldn’t expect a great finish as most asphalt sealers expect asphalt beneath them. It will probably grab well in some places but not in others. Also, it will probably stain your concrete badly.

Imagine burnt marshmallow smeared over your concrete. You have a 50% chance of facing that scenario.

Is it possible to use solid concrete blocks for foundation instead of size stone in loose soil condition?

Yes, but it isn’t your best choice.

Using solid concrete blocks is very much like using stone walls as a foundation. Either the ground or the blocks will need to be shaped to meet the needs of the building.

Mostly nowadays we use either reinforced concrete or reinforced concrete masonry units (CMU). Both of these can be built much stronger than solid blocks or stone, and in the case of concrete can be shaped very easily when compared solid blocks or stone.

Just so we are clear; the problem with solid block and stone is that unless you build rather large walls or footings the joints will crack with relatively little pressure from the building.

If you were imagining the same walls or footings without mortaring them you need to make them even larger and with tapering sides. Otherwise, the weight of the building can make your footings move or crumble.

So, unless you are big historical construction buff, I highly recommend you stick with modern concrete or CMU.

What would traveling be like if the Earth were as large as the Sun?

Rather as several others have mentioned the Earth would have ignited as star under the force of gravity. Due to the “surface” temperatures, you’d get to experience travel as a plasma or a gas cloud.

As you moved along an essentially turbulent ocean of similar material you would notice (if somehow you retained consciousness) that while being jumbled along that the surrounding photons were constantly blowing little bits of yourself away into the space around your star. Things would be very bright and very warm. You would continue this way until you were blown away or caught in solar flare where the same would occur, only more explosively.

What is the size threshold for something tunneling underground to cause an earthquake, and what relationship might there be between tunneler size and the magnitude of the earthquake that follows?

The tunnel size does not impact an earthquake, or at least not as a first order effect.

The collapse of a tunnel could create a sinkhole, but for most cases your tunnel very close to the surface and/or have a very large tunnel. Unless this was a large event you probably wouldn’t notice it if you didn’t see or hear it occur.

Now what does create earthquake in relationship to tunnels is pressure release. This usually occurs during the tunneling process, but outside forces can do the job just as well.

Typically this occurs where gas (typically natural gas) or liquids (typically water unless the tunnel was prospecting for something like oil) under pressure burst into the tunnel. the change in pressure can affect a sizable area like a large hydraulic ram relaxing beneath a whole area. Granted that is unlikely to affect a very large area, but it has occurred.

Another version would be frakking or similar technologies. Drill a hole and apply hydraulic pressure until something underground blows out. Here you adding pressure to a system with a sudden release. Again wide area effects are uncommon, but if you’re doing this all the time, across a large area, you will get periodic wide effects.