Temperature with the wind chill is well past 40 below here today, which means I take an administration day.
Just curious as to how you others make the call on when it’s too severe to work. Back in the employee days I worked for a guy who had a 30-30 rule. More than 30 celcius or less than -30 celcius and we didn’t work outdoors. That’s about 87F on the top end and about 20 below on the bottom, I think. For most of you guys in the southern states that would have meant taking most of July and August off.
I don’t mind working outdoors down to about minus 20. Below that tools, materials, and my own hands all get kind of brittle. Below -30 even work that’s mostly indoor gets slow unless it’s a reno with an attached garage or unfinished basement that I can make dust in.
On the up side, drywall mud and paint both dry unbelievably fast in this weather 😉
sorry for you all chipping out of the ice, by the way. That’s no fun no matter what the temp.
j
Replies
That there is serious cold.
here in not-so-sunny Ca. the issue for out door work is rain. It'll drizzle, then clear up, etc. If you call it and go home, it inevitably clears up.
my old foreman used to draw a circle on a flat surface and say "if thirteen raindrops land in that circle, we're outta here".
If ol' bob was hungover, it'd be a big circle. if he was broke it'd be tiny...
k
"if ol' bob was hungover, it'd be a big circle, if he was broke it'd be tiny." I think I see a flaw in that system. Was there ever a time that bob was broke and hungover at the same time? We always used the frozen cup of coffee rule. If you toss a cup of coffee in the air and it freezes before it hits the ground, it's too cold to work. Of course, some were known to have put ice cubes in their thermos.:) Monday it was -10 F with a -30 F windchill. Too cold for me. The windchill is a factor for if you are outside for any period of time. The rule we always used was below 0 or -10 windchill. Any colder and you dont get much done anyways.
<I think I see a flaw in that system. Was there ever a time that bob was broke and hungover at the same time?>
I'll grant you that bob's internal calculus of decision making was beyond the ken of most of us.
k
-30°C = -22°F Darned cold either way you measure it.
I used to go helicopter skiing out of a remote lodge in the Canadian Rockies. One week at Caribou Lodge the temp was -39°C and we could not go out because of risk of injury. If anyone broke a bone he would go into shock and likely die of hypothermia before they could get him back to the lodge.
Oh my . . . we had 77 f today, expecting 79 f tomorrow ! I LOVE South Georgia ! ! ! A friend in my office building wore shorts to work today.
Greg
Bite me.;o)Down near zero here, and expected to stay that way for the forseeable future...
Just because they want to make it personal,
doesn't mean you have to take it personal.
I'm just glad to have power back finally. We had a bad ice storm hit my area last Thursday night. The ensuing damage wiped out power to pretty much all of North-Central Mass and Southern NH. Lots and lots of downed trees, closed roads, etc... big mess. Learned real fast how lucky I was to have a generator on hand... as well as a few good chain saws and a four wheel drive truck.
Twelve or so inches of snow expected tomorrow afternoon/night into Saturday with another storm rearing up for Sunday.
So glad I live in New England...
I am dreaming of a white Christmas.
Russell
how much water you got though?
(we don't have any either...)
k
Shoot, our creeks are at or near flood stage right now - we had about 7 inches of rain two weeks ago, and it rained that much north of us, too. My little town is 192 feet above sea level.Snow ? We had a little dusting of snow about 4 years ago, just enough to whiten up the roofs a little. Everyone took pictures, 'cause that's the most we'd had in over ten years.Water freezes here at 55 degrees ! !Greg
If water froze here at 55 degrees we could ice fish 10 month's of the year.
Russell
OK, folks, nail me down some numbers here. When do you call off working outdoors, top end and low end? I threw out the 30-30 rule before. In actual fact I head for shade or some indoor work above 35 C, which is somewhere in the mid 90's F, and there's precious few construction jobs I'd do down to -30 C (22 below F), so I'd probably call it at -25 C, let's say. Cold temps include the wind chill. Any dumb weather-related injuries? Last year I froze the palms of both my hands on the same day, through mitts, sheeting a roof with an older Paslode nailer with that rubber grip thing long gone. There was a commercial crew framing a new Burger King down the road from here today. I was inside putting all my papers in piles. j
Years back - finished up morning chores on the farm (milking, feeding, cleaning, and spreading poop) then headed to the woods where we had a logging job going on. Still -30F when we left home. Dozer wouldn't start so we went back home. That whole week the temps ran as cold as -42F and never got above 0F.
"(milking, feeding, cleaning, and spreading poop)"Ok, I know how you spread poop.I don't think I want to know how, let alone why, you would milk, feed and clean it...
Just because they want to make it personal,
doesn't mean you have to take it personal.
In ski country, there's the 20 centimeter rule: Any morning when there is 20 cm or more of fresh snow, nobody shows up for work (unless they work on the hill like me).
Seriously, in this area we get thermometer temps (not 'wind chill') down to -40ºC altho the average daily minimum over the whole winter is only about -17º. Almost no residential construction is done in winter up here--only the commercial crews (with their much higher pay rates) work thru the cold. I am told that CSST (provincial safety commission) and union rules state that at temps under minus 20º a worker cannot stay outside longer than 20 minutes without a 20 minute break in a heated space. I guess you could call that the 'Rule of Twenty', too....
Whatever. At -25º it takes so long to do anything, that a guy can just about get himself and his tools back up on the roof before it's time to come down again and go inside.
Dinosaur
How now, Mighty Sauron, that thou art not broughtlow by this? For thine evil pales before that whichfoolish men call Justice....
Call it if: - the weather will effect the quality of the product!
For good new rock music, click on:
http://www.myspace.com/rosehilldrive or
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http://www.myspace/com/thesuedebrothers
<Call it if: - the weather will effect the quality of the product!>Yabut, at what point does that happen for you and your crew?And, using that logic, all houses should be built modular/RTM inside a big shed so that working conditions could be maintained throughout the process. Some houses do get built that way, but not most, partly because I think builders like (or have a nasty codependent relationship with) the pressure of weather and site conditions on their work. Call me wrong if I am. j
When I lived in S. Cali, moving there from the upper midwest, it stunned me to see these guys take rainy days off. Claimed it affected the "fit."
I'm here to tell you that's BS. The only "fit" it affected was in their heads.
They did just as crappy work in the sun as they could of in the rain.
LOL!! I take rainy days off and snowy days off and cold days off. That's the beauty of being self employed!!!
I even take the occasional sunny day off, gotta have play days!!
For good new rock music, click on:
http://www.myspace.com/rosehilldrive or
http://www.myspace.com/yearlongdisaster or
http://www.myspace/com/thesuedebrothers
part of the reason us cali folk will choose to not work in the rain is that it literally does not rain for 8-9 months straight (unlike oregon), so we kinda figure winter is time for indoor work. (true, the other part of the reason is that we're spoiled and weak).
it is extremely rare for a residential project to be open to the elements for any length of time in the winter down here, and usually indicates bad planning or schedule problems. carpenters tend to resent it as someone else's screw up if they're working in the rain.
k
"OK, folks, nail me down some numbers here.When do you call off working outdoors, top end and low end? "Perhaps you could use a method that doesn't require carrying a thermometer? Perhaps for low end you could say, if you take a leak and have to use an ax to cut off the stream at the source, it's too cold. :)BruceT
LOL, I read your post ...<Perhaps you could use a method that doesn't require carrying a thermometer?>... and thought, "I bet that guy's from California somewhere." Sure enough. I'll bet that in most places where it gets cold in the winter you could ask anybody who works outdoors what the current temp. is and what the forecasted conditions for the next 5 days are and they'd tell you right off. Never mind using an ax to cut off the flow, if you're cold enough that you can't get the little thing out of your Carhartts, then you're too cold. ;)j
really we are not comfortable till it gets about 100 degrees. The humity is what kills us. butbelow 40 is cold to me but 100 degrees I can work a ten hour day no problem.
Gotta love the Gulf Coast. I quit working outside below 40 since it will be warmer tomorrow.
I'm on day 2 of my part of the job being down due to snow.
I work on the decks of highrise condo's.
Our issues are snow & high wind.
20yrs in this area this is about the 5th day of that called off due to snow.
Rain is a nuisance & we work right through that, overly hot sun---- drink more water.
If wind drives the tower crane operator out of his crane we shut down due to safety that we must have a crane operator incase someone gets hurt.
Me & my crew do not get paid when the weather shuts us out.