Hot Weather Workshop Issues

Problems in the workshop today. Too hot to work with the doors closed, but leaving them open attracts this load of cheeky visitors.

Chase them out and two minutes later they are back. Very noisy and persistent they are too.

I've just made a screen door today for the greenhouse with B&Q 10mm galvanised mesh and 3 strips of treated wood 25mm lath to keep this years cabbage whites off the tomatoes, would also work for ducks.

Time to prepare a good Orange Sauce

MichaelG.

Orange sauce? Luvverly! Just needs fortifying with Cointreau!

I have a white pigeon that walks right behind me up and down the garden luckily does not enter the workshop. He or She is also one of the first at the bird feeding station when I top it up as well as the bird bath when nice fresh cool water is added.

Orange sauce? Luvverly! Just needs fortifying with Cointreau!

Years ago, I had a hot workshop problem, my nosey cat kept trying to get in the open door, so I had to make a screen to keep him out. Sharp steel swarf on floor and moggie barefoot!

Peter, do you live on a duck farm? I would happily share my workshop with some ducklings

As for fancy pigeons, I am trying to train the local cats to hunt. They are all afraid of anything that moves.

JA

JA, no I don't, but at this time of year it can feel like it. I have a small river running through the garden, We get lots of wild(?) mallards and many families of ducklings. This particular bunch are very unafraid. However the cat is terrified of the ducks.

There was a fox in my garden this evening so ducklings wouldn't last long.

Lidl currently has a door fly screen kit.

My neighbours cat is all too frequently interested in getting close to recently welded or cut steel outside the workshop, he's a very sweet cat and I'd hate for him to get burned in pursuit of a warm place to curl up, so I am forced to sit in a deck chair and distract him with cat toys...

The hardship!

.

As far as keeping workshop temperatures down goes, I bought a pallet of spares and repairs air-con units at an auction some years ago, and managed to assemble 3 working ones from about nine, one lives in my office, one lives in the workshop, and one failed catastrophically during the day that reached 40°C last year.

It's probably a luxury, but one I would fully endorse if you have the space.

If anyone is tempted:

• December/Jan is (unsuprisingly) by far the best time to buy air-con units on the used market,
• when buying portable units the type with two hoses to the outside is substantially more energy efficient for real use cases because they don't create negative pressure drawing new warm moist air into the room, and
• Strategic use of draught excluders in the room to be cooled will save 5-8% more energy for a given set temperature .

My first own home was an 1850s 2-up-2-down with a small kitchen extension, terraced home. The Warco milling-machine was in the kitchen, the EW lathe, Denbigh horizontal mill and other such were in the very dark middle room, the front room was dominated by my steam-wagon chassis and an enormous drawing-board. The big lathe I had then, lived under a lean-to in the small back yard.

Access to which, and to the back doors of both neighbours, was communal with intervening gates.

Neighbour had a collie - not the place for such a dog, and one very lonely dog when its owner was at work. It would bark and bark at me through the lattice-work gate until eventually I let it in to be made a bit of fuss of. It worked. The dog stopped barking and settled down. Then saw the back door was open (to keep the house cool), and happily trotted in to explore my home.

I didn't mind, just kept on machining away. Until later I went upstairs and found a very unwelcoming "calling-card" on the landing!

Managing not to wretch too much I cleaned and disinfected the carpet.

A week or so later, thinking it wouldn't do it twice.... It did. Exactly the same spot.

After that I placed a stop-board across the doorway (no door) from the kitchen inwards. The collie studied this then turned and gave me such a reproving look.

Got a one legged pigeon at my bird feeding station atm. Hoppy.

Throw her a few peanuts when I top up but I'm not a pigeon fan

Got tons of cats around just now, very handy for keeping the vermin away from a bird feeder

I'm finding the heat quite easy to deal with by stopping eating and still drinking properly.

I never imagined that a buttered scone or two a day would be more than enough, but in this heat and humidity it is