The company I work for has been busted by OSHA more than once. Harness and hardhat violations carried stiff fines. We were also once cited for an inadequate paint booth and no paint cabinets, and given 30 days to comply. Although no fines were involved this time, the cost exceeded 30,000 dollars total. The boss found used cabinets online somewhere and saved some money. He's a big Craigslist fan. I don't know what fines are for not having approved paint cabinets. The hard hat and harness violations were in the thousands of dollars. Our insurance company was not involved with any of these issues, at least not to my knowledge.
Brad in Kansas City
-------------------- Brad Ferguson See More Signs 7931 Wornall Rd Kansas City, MO 64111 signbrad@yahoo.com 816-739-7316 Posts: 1230 | From: Kansas City, MO, USA | Registered: Nov 1998
| IP: Logged |
-------------------- joe pribish-A SIGN MINT 2811 longleaf Dr. pensacola, fl 32526 850-637-1519 BEWARE THE TRUTH.....YOU MAY NOT LIKE WHAT YOU FIND Posts: 11582 | From: pensacola, fl. usa | Registered: Nov 1998
| IP: Logged |
posted
I was worried about this once. I thought what a load of crap. How many thousands of sign shops have their One Shot sitting on open shelves? Then, how many of them have ever had a fire because of that scenario? My opinion is that to lock up paint and solvent into a closed cabinet would be more dangerous than having them in the open where fumes can disperse. It can't be for fireman safety or all the paint stores would have to have their entire oil paint inventory in cabinets. Stupid rules. Joe, how did they find out? Did you switch insurance carriers and they came out for an inspection? First I'd tell them that OSHA has never had a problem with it. If that didn't do the trick I'd bring all my One Shot home and tell them I've switched to latex.
-------------------- Dave Sherby "Sandman" SherWood Sign & Graphic Design Crystal Falls, MI 49920 906-875-6201 sherwoodsign@sbcglobal.net Posts: 5396 | From: Crystal Falls, MI USA | Registered: Apr 1999
| IP: Logged |
posted
So much of that stuff is just pure crap, Dave. A good many years ago, when we had the shop in Cincinnati, we had a disgruntled former employee call OSHA on us. The inspector came out, did an "inspection", and about the only thing he really found was that we didn't dispose of our used thinner "properly". I told him that the thinner we used to clean brushes with, we later used to thin down paint for some other job.
He told us, regardless, we had to get these two waste containers from Waste Management, to put used thinner in....to the tune of about 400 bucks. Then we had to pay them every 3 months, to come and swap them out....and pay again. I told the guy that we'd probably not fill one of the drums even a quarter of the way in 3 months. THey were 16 gallon drums.
He was adamant. The drums came, and we paid the initial fee. Three months later, Waste Management came to exchange our drums. One drum had about a foot and a half of old thinner in it; the other had not been opened. I told the guy, no way am I going to pay your price, to pick up a piddly little bit of thinner.
The guy left, and we never heard anything more. Things may be different now; but that's how it was then.
posted
wasnt hard to find.......GOOGLE.....also when i was an outside salesman for NAPA, one of the stupid rules OSHA had, was the fire suppression trash cans. all the auto body paint rooms had to have one for rags that had been wet with reducers/thinners. BUT ALL THOSE CANS OF PAINT IN THE MIXER..out in the whole room)))))))))also this company is in a small town near where iam from, and there products were easy to come by. http://eagle-mfg.com/default.aspx
-------------------- joe pribish-A SIGN MINT 2811 longleaf Dr. pensacola, fl 32526 850-637-1519 BEWARE THE TRUTH.....YOU MAY NOT LIKE WHAT YOU FIND Posts: 11582 | From: pensacola, fl. usa | Registered: Nov 1998
| IP: Logged |
posted
I told the junk yard down the street from my vintage auto restoration shop to save me some large old refrigerators WITH THE LATCHES STILL ON. That was when refers still had latches that really latched. He called in a month and had ten of them. Cost was a dollar each. The fire inspector praised us for that one, but made us promise to cut off the latches if we ever disposed of them for children.
The paint rag cabinet was an old smaller round freezer that we had to make a hasp for. We rigged up a foot pedal and it worked great.
The lac thinner was always an issue. We dumped it into a metal heavy rag storage can and dumped it once a month, after skimming off the leftover good stuff and buried the sludge in a heavy metal can that was in a cement lined dump hole. I figured it would last a few thousand years in there ok.
The secret is to get smart with it and hope the government guys do not give you much grief. Generally when the inspectors came in, we were pretty on top of things and they saw that, so never gave us much grief. One time they insisted we store the welding bottles and torch in a metal cage at night, but never brought it up again. We stored it in a concrete block little closet we built for other volatile things and impossible to ignite with a steel door on it. The steel door came off a 50 Chevy panel back, including the latches. Fun project.
-------------------- Preston McCall 112 Rim Road Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501 text: 5056607370 Posts: 1552 | From: Santa Fe, New Mexico | Registered: Nov 1998
| IP: Logged |
posted
That thinner rag deal was a real eye-opener for me. Back in the early 70's, I was working for a auto restoration/body shop. We were restoring an old Austin-Healey, and the seat tracks were rusted off.
We got new studs to bolt the tracks to the floor. I had to weld them onto the tracks. The seat was clear on the other side of the crowded shop from where the welder and I were; so I took the track off the seat, brought it over by the welder and clamped the seat to an old oil drum that we used for a trash container. I didn't know somebody had thrown a lacquer thinner soaked rag in the trash can, and as soon as I hit the trigger on the mig.....BOOOOOM!
I found myself laying flat on my back, several feet away from the can, welding helmet blown off me head, with a storm of old sandpaper, bondo shavings and dust, dirt swept off the floor, and who-knows-what raining down on top of me.
Needless to say, it was a never-forgotten learning experience. Sounded like a damn bomb!
posted
I'm lookin' for a used one on-line right now. 60 gallons is what I'm after, so I want to try to get one close so we can go after it.
Most our paint nowadays is water based. I've got a collection of 1 Shot I rarely use except for panel jammin' & a rare occasional inside painted sign or mural. I've got the small cans of urethane striping paint, but nothin' bigger than a 1/2 pint.
What irks me is how insurance companies group the small shops in with body shops and commercial painters and industries that use a lot more paint than we do. By small shops I mean 1-5 folks who do mostly smaller signs where a couple quarts of paint will cover most projects.
-------------------- Bill Diaz Diaz Sign Art Pontiac IL www.diazsignart.com Posts: 2107 | From: Pontiac, IL | Registered: Dec 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
You're right Bill. When I was going thru that OSHA b. s., this clown was going on and on about hazardous materials disposal, protective garments, etc.....and all the precautions we had to take, and the costs involved, etc....
I told the guy, take all the sign shops in this country today; all the One Shot they use and consume. Figures roughly to probably about 1/50th of 1% (or less) of all the enamel paint used in the US. But we're still being treated like MAACO, or DuPont.
Might as well tried to talk to a tree.........Actually, I'd probably get a better response.
posted
yeah, Dale, I was also told to get a UL approved spray booth. I said any spraying we need to do would be done outdoors, but even then, I rarely spray, so that's just 1 more push to brush and roll waterbased paints.
-------------------- Bill Diaz Diaz Sign Art Pontiac IL www.diazsignart.com Posts: 2107 | From: Pontiac, IL | Registered: Dec 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
I'm surprised the guy didn't go into convulsions and fall on the ground, kicking and screaming, when you told him you sprayed outside!
Back when our "incident" happened, before the waste thinner container fiasco, this "official" was quizzing me on how we disposed of our used thinner. Before I told him we mixed it in our paint, I told him what an old bodyshop buddy of mine told me to say..."we put it in an old garbage can lid, and sit it out in the sun to evaporate."
Shoulda seen the look on his face.
-------------------- Dale Feicke Grafix 714 East St. Mendenhall, MS 39114
"I can do all things through Christ, who strengthens me." Posts: 2963 | From: Mendenhall, MS | Registered: Apr 1999
| IP: Logged |
posted
Well yeah, Dale. That's what I do is let it evaporate. Put bad paint out in the outdoors, let her dry solid and throw it in the dumpster.
With urethane, you clean up with lacquer thinner and the solvent evaporates before you have time to eat lunch. The left over paint in the mixing cup is solid the next day due to the hardener. I mean I have almost zero thinner hangin' around. But rules is rules says the supreme being of a government and the insurance companies capitalize on it all.
Insurance companies need to know that our shop doesn't weld cabinets 100ft in the air and we shouldn't pay the same rates as those who do.
Check out "care custody and control" clauses on your liability policy. That's standard with insurances and states that if you are working on a surface and it gets damaged -- then you aren't covered because it is under your care-custody & control. Years ago when I was denied a claim because of that, I got madder than an old wet hen and went to other insurance agencies on a mission to find a new insurance provider and told them that story. They ALL said, "that can't be," and "we'll get you coverage." But then they all came back and said the same thing, "we can't provide care-custody-& control coverage unless you pay up the ying yang for it.
My story was I was lettering a window in a beauty shop and it had excess moisture on the glass due to shampooing and such, I suppose, anyhow I put a space heater next to the glass hoping to rid the glass of the moisture and it cracked the glass. When I told my insurance company the facts, they said because I was working on the window, then it was under my care-custody & control and therefore I wasn't covered.
It makes you paranoid -- that's for sure.
-------------------- Bill Diaz Diaz Sign Art Pontiac IL www.diazsignart.com Posts: 2107 | From: Pontiac, IL | Registered: Dec 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
That's just one more issue of how our illustrious government mandates, from A to Z, have become so much more complicated, confusing, convoluted and written in a type of government-speak hieroglyphics, that few can understand them.
Couple that with an armload of loopholes, many of them take responsibility for basically nothing anymore.
I was up in Ohio, during my mom's illness, last year. A limb fell out of a tree in her yard, and hit the side of my car, putting a dent in it. In the past, it would have been covered by her homeowner's insurance. I called her insurance company, and was told "No" that I would have to get hold of MY car insurance company, to get it taken care of.....700 miles from the actual fact. That's just upside down to me (kinda like how this government operates). Why should something like this be charged on my insurance? Go figure.
posted
Some of those rules make sense, but most of them are carried way to far. The screen printing shop that I used to work for had a fire in 1994, over 4th of July weekend- somewhere down the road, the metal trash can in the print area got swapped with a plastic one- my old boss was also notorious for throwing down cigarettes on the floor. a butt ignited a thinner soaked rag near the plastic trash can, and within a few minutes the fire had engulfed the 80 year old wood structure. As the fire moved around the room it reached the only OSHA approved thing in the building, a metal storage locker that contained about 8 gallons of acetone. The fire department said that locker is the only thing that prevented a giant fireball explosion.
-------------------- Michael Clanton Clanton Graphics/ Blackberry 19 Studio 1933 Blackberry Conway AR 72034 501-505-6794 clantongraphics@yahoo.com Posts: 1735 | From: Conway Arkansas | Registered: Oct 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
insurance companies p me off..... 2004 HURRICANE IVAN.... took bout 2 weeks to get them to even come by. 1st thing they did WRONG... was they saw a bit of roof damage....and decided to only give us 20% of the roof as damaged. the company my wife worked for came out, assessed the roof as needing a FULL REPLACEMENT.. and told the insurance company no roofing contractor does a 20% repair...when the wholl thing needed replaced. 2ND ONE.... we had this giant pine tree 8-10 feet from the house. 36-45 INCH at the base, 60-70 foot tall...LEANING TOWARD THE HOUSE after the storm. i asked the insurance guy to add in some money for the tree removal...BEFORE IT FELL on the house.... this was hs reply: "oh we cant do that. when it falls on the house then we will pay for the repair." STUPID STUPID STUPID.....FEMA came into our yard, clean up 7 truck loads of fallen trees. THEN i watched this bunch of bureaucrats(fema/county/consulting firm)all argue with the tree removal crew as to how much they would pay ....to take this hugh tree down and haul it off. i talked to the tree people afterward....and FEMA/COUNTY.. didnt want to pay more then $400 to take this hugh tree down...DIDNT MATTER THAT IT HAD TO COME DOWN or destroy the house...they wanted it done cheap))))))
-------------------- joe pribish-A SIGN MINT 2811 longleaf Dr. pensacola, fl 32526 850-637-1519 BEWARE THE TRUTH.....YOU MAY NOT LIKE WHAT YOU FIND Posts: 11582 | From: pensacola, fl. usa | Registered: Nov 1998
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Bill Diaz: Check out "care custody and control" clauses on your liability policy. That's standard with insurances and states that if you are working on a surface and it gets damaged -- then you aren't covered because it is under your care-custody & control.
I checked my policy and I do not have that clause. Mine says "All inclusive" with a $250 deductible, $1 million per occurrence and $2 million total per year, $500,000 fire. Guess I'm well covered. My cost, $512.00 per year.
-------------------- Dave Sherby "Sandman" SherWood Sign & Graphic Design Crystal Falls, MI 49920 906-875-6201 sherwoodsign@sbcglobal.net Posts: 5396 | From: Crystal Falls, MI USA | Registered: Apr 1999
| IP: Logged |