Baby.....It's Cold Outside....

Sometimes being in the construction field can be inconvenient...

 Especially when we have to deal with and be slaves of the weather. The weather in New Jersey fluctuates from day to day and is about as inconsistent as a teenagers moods . Although we do have four beautiful seasons that we can always count on.  The summers are MY favorite, as I really don't mind the heat. Although, there were plenty of times that it was just way too hot to keep working. Most of the time our NJ. heat is coupled with humidity and that double punch is enough to make some of the toughest men fall out. And this kind of heat is not only bad for working outside in it, but it can also spell disaster for certain materials. For example, if we pour concrete on a hot day, it will dry way too fast. This is bad for a few reasons, first it makes it hard to finish it because it starts to harden and I've seen plenty of concrete that had to be ripped out due to this. The second and really important reason is that the concrete needs to cure slowly. It takes 27 days for it to completely cure. So if it's really hot outside, and it drys too fast from the heat, you can pretty much bet that you will get cracks in it. If I have no choice but to pour on a hot day, I instruct the homeowner to keep a hose handy and keep spraying the concrete, and ideally, keep it covered. That hasn't failed me yet.

The Spring and Fall are ideal to work outside, everything is in harmony (weather & materials). But this is the time when it's usually  windy here. That can also be a problem for concrete, because I personally have battled the attack of the leaves, or the mulch.

But it's the Winter that makes working in construction really unattractive........

 The good thing for me now is that I do pretty much all kinds of construction. I do additions, kitchens and baths, so if I'm lucky I can usually schedule these kinds of jobs for the winter months. But it wasn't always this convenient. Years ago I worked with my Dad, and it was all mason work period, and the work was hard but he was harder. If it was hot, we worked....if it was cold we worked (most of the time), if it rained we were soaked when we got home. He didn't worry about the weather, he just wanted the work completed. Which brings this one story to mind..........

It was a blustery snowy winter day in January.......

My alarm woke me from a really good nights sleep, I wrapped my blanket around myself and looked out my

I want to stay in bed!!

bedroom window to see that it was really nasty outside. This made me pretty happy because I figured that it being so nasty this early in the morning, that my Dad would let us stay in our warm homes. I wasn't going to call him because I really didn't want to hear the words "Well let's try and see what happens". But then I thought that hearing him say to stay home would somehow be rewarding. So, I called him.

"Hey Dad, have you seen the weather outside? it looks really bad" And as he replied, I cringed " I'm already waiting at the Diner, it's cold but let's try and see what happens" Just the words that I feared I would hear, and I thought myself an idiot for calling him.

So, I reluctantly got dressed in four layers of clothes and started up my little reluctant yellow Fiat, and headed off to meet my Dad at the Diner. I arrived and the wind was so strong I had a hard time opening up my car door. I got in the Diner to see my Dad talking to one of the waitresses. I tried my dramatic approach, and I sat next to him and while blowing my warm breath into my hands.

"Oh my God, it's horrible out there! That wind is crazy and it feels like fifteen below!" 

My Dad looked at me and said "Well so far your the only one who showed up, so maybe we'll just take the day off" I was ecstatic and I was about to get up and say goodbye to him when he offered to buy breakfast. Now, as far as I'm concerned there is nothing better than a breakfast at a Diner. To this day I sometimes stop at a Diner to have lunch and I love to order eggs over easy with sausage, and home fries!

This turned out to be a mistake. It wasn't that the eggs were bad or the sausage was burnt, nope....it was because as my plate of happiness arrived in front of me.....Uncle Paul came waltzing in! He sat down on the opposite side next to my Dad, and he tried the same dramatic intro that I had. My Dad offered him breakfast also, and it seemed his spirits had picked up a few notches.

The Best Breakfast!!

As we were eating he asked the two of us if we would go to this one job and work on the fireplace. He justified this suggestion because on this housing development the fireplaces were built inside the garage.

"You could bring the material inside and mix it in the garage. At least you won't be in the cold" My happy level went from a ten to about a one and a half. I should have left when I had a chance! My Dad took notice that both of us weren't too keen on this idea, so he offered that if we went in and got the fireplace above the ceiling rafters we could go home early, and he would pay us for the whole day. I was still not happy, but Uncle Paul accepted and he trumped me.

We were off in the snow and wind to the freezing wasteland of this housing development. We broke into the frozen top of the sand pile, and wheelbarrow-ed the needed materials into the two car garage. I got my tools and Uncle Paul mixed the cement. Even though we were inside, the new home was unheated and it was still COLD! 

We worked for about four hours in this freezing cold garage, and I had the block work up past the ceiling rafters. I asked my Uncle that since we had a full batch of cement, why don't we just stay another hour or two and get it to the roof. He reluctantly agreed, but he told me to hurry because he was loosing feeling in his toes and fingers. So I put myself into high gear and looked straight ahead and went to work.

I could hear my Uncle Paul moving things around below me. If I stopped and looked between the joists, I could see him, but I didn't want to waste any time, so I forged ahead. Then I noticed that he was gone, because I didn't hear any movement or his complaints of him having to get his toes cut off. I continued on, because I too was freezing, and I wanted to go home.

I smelled gasoline............

"Uncle Paul, do you smell gas too?" He said something, but I couldn't make it out because I was trying to move myself around to see what he was up to. As I looked down, I saw he had a metal cement tub on the garage floor, filled with scrap wood from the jobsite. He lit a match and threw it in the tub. WHOOSH!!... the flames almost hit the ceiling rafters! I shook my head in disbelief of how crazy my Uncle was....chuckeled to myself, and turned around to go back to work.

I wasn't going to complain or give him a hard time for this because I was now swimming in warmth! and it felt GOOD! The fire was going for about fifteen minutes, and now Uncle Paul came up into the attic area of the garage where I was because that's where it was the warmest. He was pushing me to finish up and I kind of agreed because the weather outside was starting to get even worse, and the snow was accumulating pretty fast. I don't know how I did it, but I was now going even faster, must have been the heat.

We were talking about his new Buick that he had just purchased when all of a sudden there was an

Okay, it wasn't this big....but almost!

explosion...KA BOOM!!!!! We were being hit with flying debris from every direction!!! Again, when things like this happen, somehow they happen in slow motion. It seemed we were being battered by this debris forever! I was shocked and had no idea of what happened. Then all was quiet. We scrambled to the ladder to see what had happened and what we saw was a hole in the middle of the concrete garage floor! It was where my Uncle had put the metal cement tub. This hole was massive.....it was about five feet wide, and about a foot deep. We looked at each other and we laughed, I guess because we were relieved that we weren't killed or we didn't burn the house down. We examined the hole and figured that because the concrete was cold and the air below it was cold, the heat from the fire expanded the air below the floor to a point that it had nowhere to go but through the concrete!

I again uttered those now famous words.......

"Oh my God Uncle Paul, my fathers gonna kill you!"

My Dad took the news surprisingly well, and we learned our lesson about building a fire on top of concrete.

TIP OF THE DAY:

Lets Build A Simple Fire Pit....that doesn't explode!

• Choose a location for your fire pit that isn’t close to trees, buildings or anything that could catch fire from a spark. A level location is best, but the design can accommodate a slight slope as well. Be sure there aren’t any underground wires, cable or pipes in your chosen location. Call 811 before you dig!!! Also, check with your city hall about fire pit ordinances in your community you may be prohibited by law from having an in-ground pit.

• Drive a stake into the ground where you want to put the fire pit. Tie a piece of string to the stake and cut it at half the distance of the diameter (radius) of your intended pit size away from the stake.

• Scribe a circle all around the stake and mark the line with spray paint. Remove the grass inside the circle and dig out the hole to a depth of about 1 foot (keep the sides as straight as possible).

• Pour in about 4 inches of pea gravel. If your fire pit is on a slope you can level the bottom out by adding more pea gravel to one side. The pea gravel will help the fire pit drain. Use the level to help you.

• Add about 3 inches of sand on top of the pea gravel – the sand will help prevent any fire from spreading to roots under your pit.

• Place your first row of bricks inside the pit on top of the sand. They will be anywhere from 0-2 inches higher than grass level. Stack the next row of bricks on top.

• Dry stack the pavers to make it easy to replace any that might break. Don’t use adhesive to hold the pavers together; it can melt and give off fumes that could be toxic.

• Fill it with some nice wood, and enjoy.......

See you next time......from beyond.........