How & where do you build the bot when it snows and your robo-base (school) is closed?
 

I'm posting this on behalf of one of my team's advisors.

What do those teams which build their robot at a their high school and live in an area which has snow storms and they don't allow the school to be used when it is closed, what do they do about building the robot????

When our town decides to close our school, they don't let ANYONE in at all, not even to grab some stuff to work on. This is really frustrating when your robot is due in 3 days and we can't get in the school to work on it.

How do you other teams deal with this problem?

ya be prepared
 

Tough one unless you can explain to the powers that be your problem. Is it a securtiy issue or safety issue. Maybe a liability issue. ID why they won't let you then work to find a solution. Last year in the infamous ice storm that hit us here in Northern Ok we were without power for 5 days so that really impacted building, would not have done any good to take somewhere else unless they had a generator.

Re: ya be prepared
 

I swear this is why they installed the fuel cell at my old high school.... so we could build in case of any power failures :)

Since the high school is now one of those emergency centers that will always have hot water and power.... they might let the kids work. seems logical to me, but then again... what's logical about school administration?

Tom

Since colleges rarely close because of snow, we always have a place to work. College Students and local HS students (and those not-so-local but highly-dedicated) will come and we'll get what we can done.

Although last time a major storm occured (2k1, when tons of teams couldn't ship their robots) we had a thumb-removing incident.. so maybe we won't do that again.

Hopefully there will just be no snow in New England this year (yeah right!)

We build at Appleton East HS ... As far as I know, we've never had a complete power failure during the build season ... we've had fire alarms go off (everyone went outside -- including the robot!) before, and a few snow days here and there. Usually, if there's a snow day, our advisors will call the super intendant and ask if we can still use the school. The answer to that is usually yes. In the event of a complete power failure, I don't know what we'd do ... probably work by candle (or flash) light ;)

- Katie

We can sometimes get a caretaker to open up the school if there's one in. But we're in Canada, so we're not afraid of snow, plus we don't do very much at the school itself. We get around such problems by doing a lot of our building in a teacher's garage, which he very kindly and selflessly donates every winter. It's a really good system, and we end up being pretty efficient that way.

Our workshop is an offsite, corner of a warehouse in the Public Utilities building, who are responsible for getting the power back on when it goes out :)

I should mention that, being in Wisconsin and all, we rarely ever have snow days ;)

- Katie

if we don't' need to be in school and there's a snow day, we just say fine, we'll go home, play, and make the school happy :p. if we needed to get in, we can probably have the custodian who lives on the school open it up for us, or i can ask my mom's friend (who is the vice president on the school board) to make them open the school ;). we usually get what we want though.

Depends how deep the snow is and How many of our coaches can make it to the School to supervise the students using the equipment. Other then that the bot is built withing the school and no where else

If it is so deep that we can't even walk through the snow, than don't plan on going. Either than that, we have our own room w/ (soon to come) keys!! Yea! Even a door for our selfs!

snow?
 

What is this thing "snow" you talk about. I have never seen it. :D

Guess thats one good thing about being a SoCal team.........

OUTSIDE
 

We build ours outside in the snow! We go to the school like every other day in the 6 week build period

Katie's right about that. Were lucky if we get two hour delay (more time to sleep):) ! So far this year, we haven't had any snow stay on the ground.

We can't get snowed out of our workshop. We have our own site, off school grounds, that has been donated to us for that last few years. (Thank you LandMark!!) It sits in the middle of downtown, facing both Main St. and a shopping mall on either side. No matter what, those are always plowed first and most often. We could have 2 feet of snow and still open up our workshop, if an advisor actually showed up, that is. :)