Replies

1. 
   plumbbill | Oct 06, 2005 06:10am | #1

   Hey John on my jobs & do mean ALL I never see heat until the mudding starts.

   Except in Alaska They were kinda nice to us & gave us some heat. How kind of them! <note sarcasm>

2. 
   IdahoDon | Oct 06, 2005 08:02am | #2

   It's fairly easy to let the costs and benefits determine when to heat, but there's more to it than that. 

   When it it's 0 degrees in a dried in house it's not a mater of survival, but work does go slower so labor costs go up.  Injuries also increase as does employee apathy.  The best finish carpenters I knew in Wyoming would refuse to work inside if the temps were below freezing, and they would moan and groan below 40-50 degrees.  It's common in the mountain areas to try and dry in a big house about the time the cold weather starts and finish the interior through the winter.  In general, those contractors who rarely used heat lost their better carpenters (we gained their best carpenters).

   As for winter framing, we tried to frame and dry in the garage first and work from there.  With one heated area we always had a good place to warm up during breaks and that made the cold temperatures bearable.   As the job progressed we had one well heated area, the garage, and the other dried in rooms would be at least above freezing.  On the colder days we would rotate between the brutal cold areas and the warmer spots so we're not sitting around heaters to warm up.  At freezing most interior framing is comfortable enough that I can't remember anyone quitting because of it.  It seemed like we tried to heat things to at least 40 degrees in our dried in areas.

   A crew from South Dakota had the best construction heater I've seen.  They took a propane fired furnace out of a scrapped trailer house and would set the unit just outside the wall and cut a hole the size of the main supply and return ducts. If the exterior walls were finished they would simply set the unit in front of a seldom used door and plywood the duct to the opening.  It sure beat the carbon monoxide belching salamanders we used.

   :-)

3. 
   Danno | Oct 06, 2005 01:51pm | #3

   I knew of one GC who was so cheap he didn't like to heat his jobsites. Carpet layer (who never got his final payment, along with several other subs, but that's another story) told me he would spread the adhesive and it would freeze before he could get the carpet down. One day he was unrolling the carpet and broke a hole through it when he kicked it because it had frozen. That's when he walked off the jobsite and told them he'd come back when they had some heat!

1. 
   davidmeiland | Oct 06, 2005 04:50pm | #4

   I've got an addition to build this winter, and I'll be heating it as soon as I can. It rarely freezes here, but it's damp and I want the place drying out so the trim and paneling doesn't all warp. My contract states that energy costs are the owner's and that use of such for heating and dehumidification is at my discretion.

1. 
   Danno | Oct 06, 2005 07:01pm | #6

   I couldn't understand the GC I was talking about--among other stuff he did/didn't do, he put concrete plank floors across CBU walls that had just been laid up that day. He didn't block off the elevator shaft and a workman fell down the shaft (supposedly unhurt), used 1x3 blocking in bathrooms behind walls for handicapped hand rails, took materials off the site and used them on other jobs, etc. Guy was a big shaker and mover in town and so no one could touch him. His on site supervior bragged to me how they had bribed the people at HUD to ignore stuff. Sweet.

4. 
   JDRHI | Oct 06, 2005 06:01pm | #5

   Quite simply, ASAP.

   Once the structure is dried in, the heat goes on. Framing materials are going to react to climate change.....no sense waiting until finish materials are installed to find out how drastic those reactions may be.

   FREE NEWF

   and SPHERE

   and anyone else ya got in there, dammit!!