I play and I enjoy baseball. For many years our high school didn't have a baseball field or a softball field and we had to play on bare dirt. Like literal dirt without a diamond, or bases, or stands for people to watch. Whenever we had a baseball game we had to travel about an hour and a half in order to play our games. But then our school district was so nice to have a new baseball and softball field complete with new dugouts and new lights. We couldn’t play for two years because of COVID and we can finally play this year. But as of now the baseball field is not looking good, there are multiple construction issues with welding and there have been sinkholes that appeared in the outfield .

First of all the welds that were welded on at the baseball field look as if they were done in a hurry. In some of the welds you can see gaps within the weld where it was supposed to be fused together which means the welder must’ve been welding a little too fast. When welds are fully fused together, it could cause some problems in the future with rust occurring and with there being a lot of tension on the weld.

Another problem is that it did not look like the welder or person in charge had not known what amperage (temperature) to weld the specific metal that was used. On one of the sections in the field the metal piping that was used for the fence had a lot of penetration and it had seemed that the metal was melting as the welder welded. From my experience from welding certain types of metal, you must have a lower amperage when welding on thin metal than on thick metal, and he obviously used a higher amperage for thin metal which had caused it to melt. On another weld on the field, it appeared that the weld was welded on a colder amperage because there was a lot of spatter where the metal had been fused together.

Lastly there could have been a different type of welding machine that could have avoided all of these problems. From my experience welding, the welder had used a SMAW welding machine which is mainly used for thick metal and he should have only used that for the exterior welds instead of the small and thin metal. The welder should have used a MIG or a FCAW welder which is mainly used for thin metal and it does not cause that much melting when using these welding machines. It is also simpler to use with thin metal.

In conclusion, I think that someone should come and re weld the baseball field so that there will not be any problems in the future. The reason for this is because the welds could break some time in the future and it will cost the school district a lot of money to redo the whole baseball field. It would be way cheaper to pay someone to come and fix these welds than having to rebuild the baseball field. Plus we won't have a baseball field to play in for some time and in my opinion that would suck. These are what most of the welds look like at the baseball field vs how good welds are supposed to look and they are both the same type of metal.

*For reference, the first picture is an example of the poor welding from our ZHS baseball field dugout.  Photo taken 3/12/22.

The second photo is an example of a clean weld (and what the prior welds SHOULD look like).