Office temperatures

[andyf]

Who works in the hottest temp office, or even just the worst working conditions?

28 degrees celsius, all day every day, in January, with the buildings air-con (now seemingly turned down for winter), two nearby windows open and a desk fan.

[JeRkY]

I used to have exactly the same, My desk was in direct blast of one of the aircon units. By the time the wind chill factor was added in...it seemed that 11 deg was as warm as you could get all year round.

[Zenith]

That's impressive.
My usual working environment is about 20ºC coz that's the temperature I've got the car set at.

The highest temperature that I've worked in was when I was loading glass formulations into a small-scale furnace at Pilkington Glass. The furnace was at 1200ºC and the ambient air temperature 4-5 metres away was 50ºC. To compound this, we had to wear flame-retardent jumpsuits as well. We were only allowed to work by the furnace for an hour or so at a time. Even with all the precautions, I went down to one of the lowest weights I've ever been purely from the water loss. I was 18 at the time. :)

[Brains-Lans]

18 Degrees according to our handymans building management PC.

[Mavykins]

I work in a basement, which is quiet nice cuase all the heat from the radiators just goes up so it doesnt get hot down here.

[oxy]

about 25 around the racks not bad, but the noise is the main problem.

got a big server rack next to me atm neway and the fans are a bit on the noisy side

[no friends]

school is cool (mildly cold :))

[Zatoichi.uK]

Just recently had air-con installed at the office by a bunch of monkeys. It seems to wait until it's roasting hot before blasting us with icy cold air for 10 mins to bring the temp down before it slowly rises again, rinse, repeat etc.

Rubbish...

[LozB]

sitting in a side office from a huge datacenter we tend to get the other end of the temp scale. cold and colder. wearing fleeces in the office is the norm. a few of our basement test environments are colder. its usual to lose feeling in hands quite quickly in one of them. huge big air con units the size of darleks!

[no friends]

i remember my work expierience in london
1 floor offfice and it has powerful aircon in the server room, it was bloomin lovely in there :D but not for too long :s

In the office, you could wear a t-shirt with the aircon on. It stayed about a lovely 25'c all throughout the day.

This was in the summer when you walked outside and it was boiling... so walking home was a bitch and we got proper sweaty :s

[Inferno]

Zenith i beleive youve got a new mirracle weight loss program there,

my office we have air con so were cool, altho when i first was here we didnt and the heat was about 30-40 in the summer

[KingDaveRa]

The aircon in this office is set to a steady 22 degrees celcius. Quite comfortable :)

[winbar]

Not an office, but work at a number of swimming pools/water parks, the hottest operating at around 30 deg c air temperature.

[Elbonio]

you know there are certain legal thresholds that you can refuse to work above or below


can't remember what they are... 6 degrees either side of standard room temperature (24) rings a bell but i dunno if that's accurate

[Pumpkin]

Our aircon is set here to 21'c

[bvark]

I used to work in the non-airconditioned eaves of our office in Munich.

Munich's outside temperature hits 35C several days in summer, and even with all the windows open the office temperature touched 39C just around 3pm.

PCs don't like 39C much, and nor do their operators - I didn't get much done that August (apart from go down to the hosting center a lot, and work from the beer garden in the afternoon).

There's no maximum legal temperature for an office in Germany or the UK.

[Baroness]

Ridiculously over-hot :/

[Switch`]

Working in the Uni during the Summer. Plenty of Air Con....but this was June.....then add the Laser Cutter which can get warm..... erm 25-28 iirc. then if it was a sunny day. for some reason the way the building worked. it just got hotter and hotter. something about air circulation.... which is a good plan. so long as NEW air is being let in.........
but yeh. got silly hot in some of the Labs that summer.

[King-Kodiak]

Originally posted by bvark
There's no maximum legal temperature for an office in Germany or the UK.

Don't know about Germany, but in the UK there is a limit to which is deemed "reasonable", outside of which you are entitled to refuse to work in those conditions

http://www.pcs.org.uk/Templates/Internal.asp?NodeID=883446

[Ratterz]

My school has had air con fitted into one of the blocks, keeps the air at whatever temp the teacher sets it at, usually around 20 which is nice

[Zenith]

Originally posted by Elbonio
you know there are certain legal thresholds that you can refuse to work above or below

can't remember what they are... 6 degrees either side of standard room temperature (24) rings a bell but i dunno if that's accurate H&SE regulations state that an office where most of the work is done sitting down must be over 16ºC within one hour of work starting. There is no upper limit so if your office is too hot, tough.

[Afty]

Originally posted by bvark
There's no maximum legal temperature for an office in Germany or the UK. Indeed, it's a bit silly... there is a minimum (I can't remember what it is) for work regarded as office work (no physical demands etc.) after which your employer must install heating units, else you can strike on full pay, and sue for unfair dismissal if you are fired for striking :)

[Cabe]

I used to work for a building materials firm, the big store was essentially outside, sure it had a roof, that was supposed to keep the rain off us (it didnt) it had no heating, no insulation, and it had a poured slab of concrete for a floor.


We used to get ice, inside....

[Eagle-NmF-]

i'm a CHEF in a kitchen busy at that,euff said,whatever u think is hot is nothing by comparison to us for CHEF'S :( and don't get me started on summer just gone 2 of our staff fainted it was that hot in there well to the furnace:mad:

[Cabe]

this my sound flippant, but if you cant stand the heat....

[Aardvark]

Couple of summers back I had to spend a few days in an isofreight container sorting through old drawings. That's a dark green container. In bright sunlight. With a white interior. Wearing basics + coverall.

When I compare the above to a sauna, I'm really not kidding. I hear Windscale suit work when the breathing air chiller isn't working is also quite fun. Temperature of 40 degrees plus, doing physical work type fun that is...

[Baroness]

Isn't that how those Chinese illegal immigrants *died*, Aardvark?

[Aardvark]

I wasn't cockling, thats a vicious rumour :D

[Murray-Mint]

In an office, with good aircon, so it's generally around 21 degrees depending on who else is in the office. Down in the DC it's a nice 20 degrees.

As with where Lozb works, we wear fleeces a lot of the time so generally have it quite cool.

[Minidisk]

working in a house with no windows or doors in the middle of winter, = cold ;)
Working anywhere in the middle of summer = bloody hot

:)

[Andy^]

British Summer + Portacabin with metal roof = HOT, no matter how many windows / fans there are.

When I used to work with St Georges hospital, their finance dept was located in a nice set of portacabins and they continually requested that I work in there -.- Usually broke at around 37 degree's. And then to top it off, it was bloody freezing in the mornings, enough so that the cleaners put the heating on. I mean WTF ¬_¬

-Andy :D

[LozB]

worst was in a building that had a partition wall infront of me / directly behind my pc. which i later then discovered had a non used loading bay door behind it! in the winter it used to get really cold. we are talking gloves weather. infact one of the devs used to wrap his legs up in a blanket! lol. when we moaned and asked for the heating to be put up, it got too hot in another part of the office and it usually resulted in a window being opened or someone requesting the temp down a cog.

dont u just love those micro climates within the office environment. ;)

[Nivek]

Where I work temperature controlled enviroment at 3-6 degrees, occasionall i have to do stuff in the other chiller which is slightly lower temp.

I know its not an office, but i thought i would make the point

at 6am that chiller feels even colder

[Jez_Gafys]

My office absolutly freezing until its time to go home. The main central heating is on but unless your physically touching the radiator you dont feel any heat.

And its even worse since my boss bought a usb dvb-t card and then found out in my office is a proper tv aerial on the roof so he as a cable out of his window then in my window meanig the window cant be shut .... pah!