What has the weather actually done to your programme?
We have just had the driest four months on record and about the hottest two. It sounds like a gift for construction. It has been the opposite.
You cannot pour concrete in extreme heat. I was on a site in Swansea recently where the pour had been cancelled three times over three months. Three times. Add July and August annual leave on top and there simply were not the bodies on site to do anything about it.
And now?
All that water has to come back from somewhere. It usually does, and Britain does not do a gentle drizzle. When it rains here, it rains.
I would rather have this conversation now, while the ground is still dry, than in November when everyone is already up to their knees in it.
Why does wet change the job?
Because conditions decide the materials, not the other way around. A self-adhesive needs a substrate that is properly dry. A cementitious coat can handle damp, but it cannot handle wet. Get that wrong and you are not saving time, you are doing it twice.
It goes further back than the membrane, too. The mix itself matters. We will partner you with specialist ready-mix companies who can provide mix designs suited to the conditions you are actually working in, rather than the conditions the drawing assumed.
What about the products themselves?
We cannot control the climate. We can control what happens to the materials before they go on.
Storage conditions, temperature ranges, shelf life in a cold snap. Get it right and you cut waste dramatically. Get it wrong and you have paid for product that will not perform. It is one of the least glamorous conversations in waterproofing and one of the most expensive to ignore.
We are lucky in our supply chain here. Our partners work in Norway and they work in the desert. Whatever conditions you have, somebody has solved for them somewhere, and we will go and find out how.
What are we doing about it?
Something we should have done years ago, frankly. So this September we are running a technical session on building through a wet winter. Bring your questions. Bring the job that is worrying you.
Sign up to a technical session
If you’d like to talk through a project, you know where we are.
The best part of my month is meeting customers. Set up a time for us to meet below.
Always a human. Always available.