[4seasons]

How many of you guys and girls make your employees work in the rain? I only do it if its unexpected and we have materials sitting in the street. I called everyone off today and yesterday because of 90% chance of precip. Yesterday it rained all but a few hours, today its more a mist than anything. We are forcated rain the next 6 days That's just not common for our area. I told them that next week rain or shine we are working. Maybe I'll just purchse cheaper rain gear like posted in another thread.

[Stonehenge]

Everyone's a little different in that regard. We had 24 straight hours of heavy rain yesterday, and it's still going pretty good today, though not as bad. We ran errands and did some work in the morning, but with temps in the 40's, it's just plain miserable to work. Not to mention really slippery when crawling in and out of machinery.

I wouldn't worry about the forecasts - anything beyond 24 hours out I ignore. And I sometimes even ignore forecasts that are 3 hours out, because they are wrong more often than they should be.

[TrickyDick]

We work in the rain when it is possible to do the job we are doing and the schedule is tight enough that not working is going to be hugely inconvenient. We rarely quit if it's not cold too. And I agree with Stonehenge about the forcasts. 8 o'clock tuesday morning the forcast was for rain starting after 3PM. By 10:30 it was pouring and blowing 30mph and didn't let up. That was a fun planting job.

[concept]

We schedule work and head out on every day rain or shine.Our company policy is to show no matter what the forecast is. if we have to send them home we will give 1 hour of pay just for showing up.But this is rare we believe that crystal balling the forecast is best left to the weather man. Where else can you be wrong more than 50% of the time and still get paid.
The problem with not generating revenue is everyday still has overhead to cover and you try to get as much billable hours as possible even if it means sitting in truck for 1-2 hrs a day if it gets to heavy

[John Palasek]

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Here's what I do:

If I think it's going to rain, I get up in the morning and I check Accuweather, The Weather Channel, (online) and NOAA, (National Weather Service).

If at least two of the three indicate a real threat of rain, I'll call off work for the day.

I particularly like Accuweather because of their radar information. I can see the regional radar as well as local in real time and I usually make my decisions based on the radar track. (Sometimes I'll actually measure the movement on the screen and compare it to the the time lapse on the radar loop to try get an idea of how long it will take for a front's edge to get here).
Of course, now and then, either I or they are wrong and I'll call off a day and have the sun pop out a few hours later, (talk about feeling like a horse's ass), or I'll go ahead and work only to be on my way back home a few hours later.

But it generally works out well.

As for rain occurring during the day, I will stay working as long as it's reasonable, (light drizzle/light rain). But if it starts coming down in buckets, then Fugghedaboudit! , and I will not start a job in the rain either.

As for pay, if I call the day off, then that's that. If we get rained out before noon, I'll generally pay half a day and if we get rained out after noon or so, I usually pay the whole day.


-JP




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[Lanelle]

It really depends on the type of work happening when the rain comes along. If we're starting a hardscape job, I try to not have the sub-base exposed to a heavy rain but it can happen. Yesterday, it rained hard late in the first day of a patio install. We covered the site with plastic. Came back today and it was fine. If it had really rained hard in the morning instead of a light mist, we would go home. During a planting job, we go sit in the truck for thunderstorms and if it continues to rain and the site is getting messy, we'll try to stay until lunch time and go in early. We may change work plans due to the prediction of heavy rain, but we won't call off work until the rain happens.

[site]

It's usually really easy to find things to do during the first rainy day after a dry spell. It gets consecutively harder as the rainy days keep coming. We almost never give up. The season is too short, and going home makes having a profitable year more difficult. It's a good time to cross those nusciance jobs off the list- repairs, replacements, small jobs, mulcing, equipment maintenance, etc.

[Pelican]

I look for rain days to get caught up on paperwork and equipment maintenance. It rains here maybe once a week on average and I've gotten pretty good at analyzing radar to predict when it will hit. We work right up to when it starts, and if we can finish the job that day I try to stick to it.

Our soil has a lot of clay in it in most areas so things get real sloppy quickly. I've found I'm better off doing busy work while it's raining because my cleanup time is tripled or more from the mess we make working in wet conditions.

[4seasons]

pelican

you said everything I didnt in my post. The cleanup time is ridiculous! Ive defininately been getting caught up on paper work. I think I would rather lose one or two days to rain than have the whole crew sick for a week, especially in this crud weve recieved the last 3 days.

[GLAN]

MY main concern with rain is the my health and that of my men. I provide rain gear and they will mow through lawns in light rain. Pausing for the heavy stuff..

Some planting work we can do in rain........if there is the probability of making a complete mess.....then we will not do it.

The men know they are on call when it is raining first thing in the morning.....cause it just may stop soon. Just yesterday I called them in at 9:30....rain stopped 8:30


There is various tasks we can do in the rain......so we do what we can.

What is most important is staying on or close to schedule

[Mark Oomkes]

Sort of a mix. We will work in the rain sometimes, especially the last 5 Mays. We've had 2 or 3 of the wettest Mays on record in the last 5, and all have been above normal precip. If it's only a day predicted, we'll hold off on mowing and catch up later and try to get some landscaping done. If it's more than that we start mowing through it, which we will Monday if it's still raining.

Today makes the third day in a row, temps in the lower 40's Thursday and Friday, about 50 today. We mowed 2 lawns Thursday, about 6 yesterday and didn't even try today.

[Paul]

Rain days = time off

Production slows way too much, and clean up takes too long. I figure it's better to pay over time on the men than to lose all that time cleaning, fixing and lost production.