One of the drawbacks of living/working in Florida is that it tends to get a little warm here from time to time. We endure ninety degrees and 95% humidity pretty regularly, but it can get even warmer in July and August. Most recently, August 11 to be exact, it was still 100 degrees (38 C) inside the shop at eight minutes until five in the afternoon. The “feels like” temperature was somewhere around 115. Sorry, but that’s too hot.
We have lived in central Florida most of our lives – at least fifty years for me – and we’ve become acclimated to the hot, humid weather here. During my stint with the Volusia County Sheriff’s Office, I spent some summers riding a police motorcycle with a ballistic vest and a dark green uniform. In high school, I was on the beach in Daytona as a county lifeguard every day – before they invented SPF-50. By all rights, I should be eaten up with skin cancers – but I guess even my fair-skinned Irish heritage wasn’t enough to burn me up in the sun. I have successfully “acclimated,”
But these triple-digit temperatures are a little much.
In our shop we have three essentials for the hot weather. 1) refrigerator with an ice maker. 2) an office with air conditioning. 3) a large fan in the shop. Frequent stops to change into a dry t-shirt and cool off a bit in the office keep me from collapsing on the floor in a puddle – a “puddle of Duffy…” I have a cabinet near the fridge with as many as twenty shop t-shirts so that I can change them as needed, and the amount of work that I get done in the heat is measured by the number of shirts that I use. For example, today was a balmy 97 in the shop, but it was a four t-shirt day! Got lots done today! Ice water and frozen ice pops from the freezer are essential.
Understand that there is no complaints here! We have great weather for most of the year. There are a few days in January and February when the daytime temp doesn’t venture above 40, and some days in July and August where the nighttime temps don’t get too much south of 80. And the humid days and nights are tempered by air conditioning. But those few triple-digit days in the summer can shorten the work day.
Air condition the shop? Sure, but there is some expense there, and all it tends to do is lower the humidity a bit. Heat in the winter? Not enough days of cold to worry about it.
So what do you do when the weather – hot or cold – is too extreme to work on your projects? Let us know in the comments.
