DGB

Devastating Tornado Ravages Oklahoma

When it comes to massive weather events, I have always given them a special mention on here. I know it’s nothing to do with our industry, but at times of massive destruction, I feel that is has to commented on.

For those of you who were up late last night, and for everyone else waking up this morning, Oklahoma has been hit by an enormous tornado which has caused huge devastation and destruction.

The tornado hit ground in the middle of the day on Monday, just as kids were leaving school and people were starting to come home from work. Despite all the technology at our disposal, warnings really can only be given a maximum of 20 minutes in advance, so most remained in their buildings and bunkers hoping to ride it out.

There are varying reports, but the tornado that hit was between a staggering 1-2 miles wide and packed winds of 200mph. These are numbers which we in the UK will probably never be able to comprehend. As big as this storm was, it wasn’t the biggest. The same places in Oklahoma were hit in 1999 by an F5 tornado that was 3 miles wide and packed the strongest winds ever recorded on the surface of the Earth at 302mph.

Back then, 40 people were known to have died. This time around however, at the time of writing, there have been 91 fatalities and that number looks set to rise and search and rescue teams start to trawl their way through ton after ton of rubble.

There has been some amazing footage of the tornado captured by storm chasers Basehunters Chasing:

I know that all in the UK wishes the very best of luck to all those affected by this massive storm, and our condolences go out to those who have lost property, friends and family and hope that you will all be back on your feet as soon as possible!

FENSA Confirms Poor Start To The Year

Well, it’s not as if we needed any confirmation because I think we all knew this anyway, but @FenNews announced earlier today that the latest FENSA figures show a pretty poor first quarter of 2013.

In their report, which can be found here: http://www.fenestration-news.com/news/newsItem.aspx?id=11480 FENSA explains that residential window and door installations in the first quarter of this year were down 5.4% compared to the same period to last year. In a monthly break down, January was down 10.6%, February down 1.5% and March down 3.9%. You don’t need me to tell you that this is significant regression.

The end of 2012 saw somewhat of a recovery within the market, and I think the industry had thought it had turned the corner. However, given yet more negative economic news and a significantly long and cold winter, I think it is fair to say that any progress made last year has been well cancelled out.

Looking at the monthly break downs, it does tell a weather related story. January and March were particularly harsh months during this winter just gone. February was slightly benign hence only a 1.5% drop and the market naturally picking up slightly after the usual Christmas quiet period. But I think most of the industry was expecting/hoping March would be like March of 2012 and bring an early and warm start to summer. We couldn’t have been more wrong:

Not an early start to spring…

The prolonged winter has caused real damage to our industry for the first quarter. Though I think this was expected by most. It does call in to questions a lot of the uber-positive tweets of massive lead levels and sales. But that debate is for another day.

What would be good, to help clarify these figures, would be to know how many members FENSA have. Just to help shed light on the overall accuracy of these figures. By rough estimates by others, the number of members seems to lie between 9000-10000.

One thing I think we can look forward to however is a spring and summer bounce-back. We have seen this before when winters have been particularly bad. When the cold has forced people to put home improvement works back, the months where the weather improves sees a bit of an extra boost as more people venture out to do the work they wanted to do a couple of months ago. So not all bad. Just frustrating!

April for us personally has seen a marked improvement. The first quarter, has been generally quite tough. Tough in all respects; leads harder to close, footfall reduced, fitting schedules disrupted etc. Now we have had a few nice days though it does seem to have encourage people out of their homes and get into the housing season in full swing! Lets hope for a long, dry, warm and sunny summer!

End Of The Cold Snap

I always find it funny when the news calls cold weather a ‘snap’. A snap indicated that something is short lived. We’ve had this cold snowy weather for over a fortnight. I don’t think a fortnight in anyone’s book is a snap. But there we are.

After another big dump of snow on Friday evening and Saturday morning, the thaw has set in with milder, sunnier weather replacing it. I think everyone will be glad to see the back of the cold and hope that we get a long and early spring and summer. We have seen a decline in the number of leads generally coming in since the worst of the cold weather set in and a slow down in footfall to the showroom. It’s not for the want of trying. We’ve kept our yard clear of snow, everything has been open and all staff have come in. But when you get prolonged cold like this, it just put’s people off and there’s nothing much that can be done.

We have successfully got through all our fitting OK, so that side of the business has been unaffected. And we met our target quite early in this month so in terms of revenue and sales and are already working on knocking off February, so there should be little or no damage there either. But we may find a little hitch in the middle of the month, stemming from this quieter spell.

But with the cold weather now out of the way, it should help encourage people to get back out there and start spending again. Indeed, even the Government are saying that this extended spell of ice and snow risk the UK slipping into a rare triple-dip recession. We have already seen a contraction of 0.3% in the last quarter 0f 2012. I personally think that they are using the weather as a potential backup excuse if the news is bad in Q1 of this year. I remain confident though that providing February and March supply us with decent calm weather, business will kick back energetically into form.

Weather To Put Good Start On Ice?

As many of you are probably now aware, there’s a cold snap coming. It’s going to get cold. Nothing new there. But it’s the prospect of snow that has prompted a few nervous tweets in the twittersphere.

The industry seems to have had a strong start to the year so far, with many reporting good levels of leads and sales. But it’s not the cold that’s getting a few a bit nervous, it’s the snow. Depending on what report you read or listen to, we’re either getting some snow, or a lot of snow, in a lot of areas. From this weekend onwards it looks like the rest of January is going to be very cold and rather wintry.

Remember these scenes from a couple of winters ago:

The last few winters have seen some very harsh temperatures and more snowfall than we have been used to in recent years. Vans can’t get to site, tools aren’t safe to work with, silicone doesn’t dry and neither does concrete for conservatory bases if it gets too cold. Not only that, it really does put the customers off from venturing outdoors into showrooms and getting on the phone to get sales people out to visit them at home.

Normally, snow, ice and cold wouldn’t worry people so much. But I think due to this year starting well after the last 5 years of struggling, the industry is keen to make sure that nothing knocks this positive start off course. The last thing we need now is a spurt of bad weather negating all the good work that has gone on at the start of this month.

Hopefully, the weather won’t be as bad as what is predicted. Of course, we can always use the cold to help push the energy efficiency properties of our windows. No reason why we can’t use the internet to get our message out!

Wrap up warm and be safe on the roads!

Flooding Brings Misery

Those poor people across the country over the past few days. The worst September storm for 30 years has brought floods, devastation and misery to hundreds, if not thousands of homeowners, primarily in the North of the UK.

York has just seen it’s second highest flood, with the river Ouse topping out at 5.06m higher than it’s normal seasonal level. It brought floods to parts of the centre which have rarely seen such bad weather. York gets flooded regularly, but if they’re saying it’s bad then you know it’s worse than normal!

Further North it gets worse. Remember those flats which stood precariously on the concrete stilts because the immense amounts of water washed the foundations away? Well those are now having to be demolished after they have been up only a matter of months. Some more council houses next to it are also having to be demolished as they have also been left unsafe.

One thing that got my brain ticking over while looking at the terrible scenes in York was the buildings that were flooded and the windows and doors on the properties. Now I can’t know for sure if the buildings in the centre where it flooded are listed or not. I am tempted to say yes as I couldn’t see a single PVC or aluminium window or door in sight. But with storm proof windows and doors now easily available on the market, wouldn’t it be worth dropping those listed laws and let the owners of the properties fit better protecting windows and doors?

York and other places like the river Aire in Leeds flood on an all too regular basis, causing millions of pounds worth of damage in the process and major upheaval for families and businesses. Is it really worth going through all this nearly every year, just to keep poorly constructed, old timber windows and doors, just for ‘the aesthetics’ of the building? I’d say no, and I’m sure pretty much everyone else would agree with me!

Not that organisations like English Heritage would listen to common sense like that! What is important right now is the places like Boroughbridge, York, Morpeth and other flood hit places get their clean-up operations in full swing and get back to normality as soon as possible, and hopefully before Christmas!

Rain. Good Or Bad For Our Industry?

So 2012 is going to go down as yet another year where we have had NO SUMMER whatsoever! A couple of weeks in April and that was it, record rainfall and very little sunshine! Totally rubbish. But while all our Vitamin D levels suffer, is all this rain necessarily a bad thing when it comes to windows and doors?

The wet months, consisting of April, May and June have all seen above average sales and a general busyness not seen in the past few years. Obviously I can’t put all that down to the crap weather, that would be far too a fantastic claim. But I think it would be safe to say that out of the many house fulls of windows and doors, one or two might have come by way of the poor weather finally pushing people into taking action.

One observation I have noticed is that there seems to be less people coming into the showroom. Just like with normal high street shopping, whenever the weather is bad, it really does put people off stepping outside and going into store. Due to this, we have noticed more email inquiries coming through as people have been sat at their laptops in their homes rather than venturing outside.

This sort of weather really does put our products to the test. It is also a test of our fitter’s capabilities. Conservatories for example. Roofs fitted correctly should stand up against this bad weather. They are tested to conditions more extreme than even this weather has thrown up, so installed properly should hold up quite well. Up to press, I am happy to say that throughout all this awful weather, I can’t think of any remedial calls that are down to the bad weather.

All that said, I think I can confidently say that just about every single one of us is hoping for some sunny and dry weather sooner rather than later. We all understand that the British weather is relatively poor, but this is exceptionally poor and the sooner we get some dry weather the better!

Rain Stops Play

Much of England and Wales has woken up to yet more heavy and torrential rain. Like we really needed more of the wet stuff!

April was the wettest April on record, which began in 1910, after just weeks before a drought being declared and hosepipe bans in many areas. Then June just gone was also the wettest June since 1910. So no drought then.

Of course, weather like this plays havoc with fitting schedules. We had to cancel a couple of jobs this morning as the weather was just impossible to work with. One customer was very understanding and could see the rain was far too heavy to allow us to start and do a good job. The other customer however wasn’t. Our fitters rang the customer to say that the weather was just too bad to start today and that we would have to rearrange for the start of next week. Well, this just wasn’t good enough according to the customer. So our fitters stood outside in the rain while the customer stood under an umbrella saying to our fitters that it isn’t that bad and that it wasn’t good enough. Then, right on cue, a massive flash of lightning and a huge clap of thunder reinforced our lads’ point about the weather not being good enough to work through. So the customer backed down. Though this still didn’t stop them ringing the office to complain again! You just can’t win with some people!

My brother recorded the weather this morning. Look out for the flashes and the rather extreme thunder!

The one at the beginning was the loudest we could record, we missed the other loud ones!

We don’t usually get weather like this in a morning. And very rarely thunder which shakes the windows. Last time it did that I was in Menorca and was slap bang in the middle of a massive electrical storm with fork lightning .

It seems to have stopped for a little bit now. But the skies remain dark so I think we could get some more before the day is out!

Rain Stops Play

If you haven’t noticed, it has been raining. A lot!

Prior to April, we had one of the warmest and driest March’s in history. But since then we have week after week of heavy and prolonged rain. Despite this, we are still in drought conditions apparently! This is the wettest drought I’ve ever seen!

Rain obviously hampers the progress of window installers. Customers obviously don’t want holes putting in their home if the day starts with torrential rain. Nor can fitters install windows and door with power tools that shouldn’t be in the wet. Silicone can’t dry properly, tape won’t stick plus all the other inherent problems that come with rain and wind.

With this year seeing a marked improvement in sales volume, the last thing we need is prolonged heavy rain buggering up fitting schedules. Especially is you have 4-6 weeks work booked in already. A 6 week lead time can easily become 7 with the onset of bad weather.

We do try and get round it if the weather is bad. We usually work on the other side of the property, away from where the weather is coming from, at the permission of the customer.

Have any of you guys been hampered by the weather over the last few weeks? If so, how have you got round it? Have your lead times been extended or have you managed to keep on top?

“My Door Won’t Close Properly”

It’s that time of year. The sun has made it’s return and the heat is rising. And to all those that fit wood grain doors, this is also the time where many south facing homeowners ring up asking for someone to look at their door!

It’s door expansion season! We started to receive calls from our customers and some that are not about their doors not shutting properly and catching on the sides and bottoms. We ask if their doors are wood grained and south facing, they say yes. We then explain that if we come out to try and alter the door, we would create a problem rather than solve one when the heat goes out of the door and it returns to it’s original size. So we go through some heat reduction techniques with them and it seems to solves the problems.

It’s not an ideal situation as telling people there’s not much to be done sounds a bit half-arsed. But it’s the nature of the product we work with that is the problem. I know panels and wood grain doors are getting better when it comes to heat retention, but we are still dealing with a rather large old stock of dark doors which retain so much heat.

We have a double glazing industry which seems so affected by the weather in this country. Autumn and Winter causes us problems with external condensation with energy rated windows. Heat causes half the doors in this country to expand so they don’t shut! @AlumTradeSupply will like this one…is it time to move to Aluminium!?