Another Rainy Day here in the Northeast

[CT18fireman]

Atleast we got mowing finished on Friday. We could not work on a Patio job on Saturday and now today. Did some maintenance and the sent my employee home. I feel bad for him as much as myself, he has probably made half what he did last year to this point because of rain days. I have a lot of jobs in the works but the weather has really slowed us down this year.

How do you guys handle keeping employees happy when this occurres? I do not want to lose him.

[PSDF350]

I feel your pain Jesse. Everyone around is finding it tough to make a living when everything is a mud hole. I am soooooooooooooo sick of rain I am about ready to move to the sahara. Only thing stopping me is the webbing on my feet and hands I am getting from past 16 months of unbelievable wet weather we have been having.

[woberlin]

I too used to feel bad about sending employees home for lack of work for any reason. I'd pay them basically for nothing. And it is a surefire way to ruin yourself! And in the end, the more you do the more that is expected. It really is a bad break, but if you can't work for whatever reason you can't pay people to stand around or do busy work. If you treat them fair, and are good to work for, they won't leave. Chances are that nobody else is working either because of the weather. You could always have them work extra, longer days or weekends, when the weather breaks, if you have the work, and they are willing. The sad truth is that you are the only one worried about your bottom line, not your guys,and certainly not the customers!

[tylermckee]

we just push through the rain. we only stop working if its snowing, and even then its gotta be coming down pretty good to get me to stay home. We only reall have a couple months of nice weather, july, aug, sep, then comes the rain. today we have blue skies, and its about 90 degrees right now :notworthy

[digger242j]

You could always have them work extra, longer days or weekends, when the weather breaks,...

It would be interesting to hear how many would actually be interested.

[rino1494]

We work 6 days a week. If we miss one day then it is ok. Usually if it rains too much, we'll go into the shop and work on the equipment. We save repairs for days like this. Then again, we are a small company.

[tylermckee]

Whats better than standing in a trench 6' deep with a foot of muck on the trench floor while its 35 degrees and the rain is coming down damn near horizontal:bouncegri

[CascadeScaper]

I don't know, I'd rather be cold than too hot. I like the heat, but today was insane out here, it hit 103 at about 3:00 today. Supposed to be 100-104 tomorrow....:crying :crying

[Ford LT-9000]

Too hot today it was around 33 celsius (92 degree farenhiet) I was sweating like a pig today I'am glad that I have a job where I can go hide in the shade which is 28 celsius (82 degree farenhiet).

We don't let rain stop us we work right through thunder storms if we have to. Put on the rain gear and rubber boots and go to work your not made of sugar your not going to melt.

The only time rain stops us is if the site is turning to mush. If we stopped because of rain we wouldn't be working it rains 80% of the year on the West Coast.

[Squizzy246B]

Whats better than standing in a trench 6' deep with a foot of muck on the trench floor while its 35 degrees and the rain is coming down damn near horizontal:bouncegri

Uhh...Ummm...when the rain is coming down vertical????:confused: :rolleyes:

[Dwan Hall]

Rain gives me a day off.

[JimBruce42]

Another rain day... if I'd been here for a year I could at least put in days like today as vacation days, but I haven't so it kinda sucks. That's the one problem with this field of work, it's really dependent on good weather, otherwise you don't get paid:Banghead

[Ford LT-9000]

Horizontal rain hurts when it hits you in the face or any exposed skin. When you have wind gusting hard enough it will blow you over in combination with heavy rain it makes for a miserable day.

When you have the rain gear on you don't get wet from the rain you get soaking wet from sweating in the rain gear. I try to avoid wearing Helly Hansen rain gear its good for commercial fishermen but not good for construction its too stiff makes you walk like a robot.

I would rather deal with rain over frozen ground and snow.

[Steve Frazier]

We had a confirmed tornado touch down in town here Monday evening. It was very localized and only traveled about 1/2 mile. This is the first time I've seen a picket fence blown over, it's a very strange sight to see. Two houses were damaged along with one car by downed trees, one major road was blocked for 3 hours by a huge tree. The trees were twisted off their stumps, that's what confirmed this as a tornado, NWS representatives came to the scene to investigate. I can't remember the last time if ever we had a tornado in this area. I live about 5 miles from the tornado site and we didn't even experience a stiff breeze!

For the past 6 weeks, we've averaged 3 or 4 days of rain a week. Work is way behind, most of the work I do is finish work and it's too sloppy to do in the rain. We squeezed in a day of mowing today after 2 hours of morning showers, it's forcast to rain again the next 3 days now. A very frustrating season so far......

[Cat420]

No tornadoes by me, but plenty of rain. I had to make a trench off the side of the foundation hole to drain it. Even worse was that an old septic tank bubbled up all over the lawn.

[PSDF350]

More rain

[CT18fireman]

I am in the same boat as Steve, I do mostly finish work. Mowing, new landscape and lawn installs and walls, walks and patios. You just can't prep a yard for seed in this muck.

At least the grass is growing.

[Steve Frazier]

At least the grass is growing.
But when the hell do you mow it?????

[CT18fireman]

Last week my brother and I cut for 14 hours in one day and 12 the next to get three days of mowing into two.

[Dwan Hall]

At least I don't have to water this new hydroseeding job. It quit raining 3 days ago for about 4 hours. Just enough time for me to spray a little seed on a job that has been waiting sence last Augest. It started raining again before I was finished and dumped over an inch that afternoon and hasn't quit. Hope the seed will grow under water.
Oh well I suspose that is what one should expect living in a rain forest.

[Steve Frazier]

They broadcast on the news here yesterday that parts of Port Jervis, a NY/Pa. border town are being evacuated. The Deleware River runs through there and is expected to crest above flood levels today. I've got my gutter piped to my pool to fill it, it came up 6" overnight.

I just hope we don't go bone dry when this thing finally ends.

[JimBruce42]

Suns out today, and yet here I sit... since our job is mud. I hope it dries out enough to do something tomorrow, boredom i can deal with, but I'm gonna have bills and other expenses here to deal with soon.

here's to a week or so without rain:drinkup

[CT18fireman]

Ran over to Carmel today Steve and all the resevoirs along 84 in Brewster are full, I can't imagine what it is like over by the PA border.

I sank in to my ankles at one job today, so obviously could not work there.

We did some cutting, hoping to get more in tomorrow and I was able to lay pavers and work on cuts.

Even my mulch supplier has been unable to grind with all the rain.

[murray83]

the woods here its just a swamp,we don't even dare take the gear in very far :( i can't remember a weekend so far the past couple months where we're not getting decent rainfall.

[itsgottobegreen]

I am now screwed for the next two weeks trying to get some grading done. All I did for 4 days was run fire calls during the rain. I am trying to cram 3.5 days of mowing into 2 days right now. Man does it suck since half you can't get the ztrs on it because they are still well. Only got the kubota zd-28s stuck like 4 times today. :Banghead

[CT18fireman]

We haven't even tried to use the ZTRs this week, although I have seen others using them. Generally we only use them in backyards anyway. All the fronts get the 48" WBs. That is all we have been trying this week and last due to the wet. Even then they have rutted a bit.

[Steve Frazier]

We got hammered again this afternoon!!!! I awoke to showers that ended about 8:00am, sent the guys out to do a dethatch while the grass dried and then they mowed. I got about 6 hours in on a deck I'm building, then all hell broke loose. I saw a thunderstorm rolling in on me and had time to gather up the tools, then the sky opened up.

We had rain like I've never seen before for about 30 minutes. For about 10 minutes of that time we had pea sized hail. The aftermath of this storm didn't come until about 30 minutes after it stopped raining. It had rained so hard that the runoff coming from the mountain behind me overflowed streams and brooks causing massive destruction.

One house I saw ended up with 6 mafia blocks in his front yard that were pulled out from under a bridge. A client of mine lost her culvert and now has a 5' wide by 6' deep ravine in her driveway now. One part of the County road that I live near had all of its shoulder washed away and when I last saw that section, the pavement had broken off to the white line and the driving lane was being undermined.

The forecast tonight is for a worse storm than we had this afternoon. It should be interesting. The ground is so saturated it can absorb no more water so anything we get becomes runoff. Thunderstorms forecast for all day tomorrow too.

[tylermckee]

It's been about 80 and sunny all week here, and its supposed to stay that way for a while :cool:

[JimBruce42]

Here we go again...:mad: :Banghead :Banghead

[CT18fireman]

yup. I am sitting here waiting. Got some mowers parts I needed ordered for maintenance and we just did all our sharpening.

Was supposed to grade out around a wall we were finally able to finish by working over the last few days but it will be to muddy now.

Looks like another hour ot two of rain.