This week let’s talk about cold weather. What is cold?
This week I realized that personal comfort makes it all relative.
Yesterday when I left Dallas, TX it was about 40°F, that’s generally considered cold for southerners; today as I sit in Aspen, CO its about 10°F and tonight it will be below 0°F. When I mentioned to a local that I was cold back in Texas, she kind of snickered – don’t worry, I didn’t take it personally – but she obviously doesn’t consider 40°F cold.
When you are talking to other spray foam professionals about how to handle cold weather, it’s important to understand what cold weather means. In terms of your spray foam business, cold has nothing to do with your comfort level or what temperature you think is cold, rather it’s about the temperature and conditions that will have an impact on your business, or the temperature that your equipment and material “thinks is cold”.
As temperatures fall below 50°F, that is considered cold for most spray foam systems.
Depending on the manufacturers recommendations, you may still be able to apply open cell foam below 50°F, but it is considerably more difficult. You have to take additional steps and that requires additional time, so your production costs go up. This is not your crew’s fault, this is how your business works under these conditions.
Most standard closed cell spray foam systems start to act up around this temperature as well. The material gets thicker, there is not enough chemical heat in the standard formulas to kick off the reaction quickly and they don’t react fast enough. At this point you should start asking about winter formulas that have more chemical heat (more catalyst), because they are faster formulations.
And then, depending on the chemical manufacturer that you work with, there are some super winter formulas that can be sprayed to substrates as low as 0°F.
You probably already know that the temperature will affect your business at all times, but a more hidden point is that “cold weather” is relative to your standard conditions of operation.
If your standard conditions of operation during summer means 90+F ambient and 100+F substrate temperatures, like many cities throughout the south, then a sudden drop to 70+F would be dramatic. If you continue to operate the exact same way and make no changes to your operation, you leave money on the table.
This also applies to those of you up north when your moderate summer and fall temperatures fall from the 70s into the 40s. If you make no changes to your operation, you leave money on the table.
Additionally, your spray equipment, generator, compressor and truck engine all react in their own way as temperatures fall. It is important for you to understand these relationships and to plan ahead for sudden changes, like preparing an inclement weather plan, your business depends on it.
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