Free tool
How many calendar days are you actually owed
Put your baseline allowance next to the qualifying days you logged, add the dry out days that followed, and see the extension you should request and how much of it late notice puts at risk.
Free tool, no sign up
What a rained out morning actually costs
Enter your crew size, burdened rate, idle equipment and daily general conditions to see the real cost of a weather day and of every weather day you failed to document.
Superintendents tend to price a rain day as show up time and nothing else. That understates it badly. The crew that stood in the gang box for four hours is only the visible part. The excavator, the pump and the two lifts on rent all billed for the day. The trailer, the temporary power, the fence, the dumpster service and the salaried supervision kept running whether or not a single yard moved. On a mid sized commercial job those daily general conditions frequently exceed the idle labor.
This calculator adds the three pieces so you can quote one number in the next owner meeting. Then it does the part that changes behavior: it multiplies that day cost by the number of qualifying days each year that never got a defensible log entry, and divides the result across the fifteen minutes a proper entry would have taken. The value of those minutes is usually the argument that ends the debate about whether logging is worth the time.
Your result
Idle labor on the day
$2,912
Burdened cost of the people you paid who could not produce work.
Total cost of one weather day
$7,162
Idle labor plus standing equipment plus the general conditions that ran anyway.
Annual cost of undocumented days
$42,972
What you absorb each year on days that could not be defended in a claim.
Value of each minute spent logging
$477
Assumes a complete weather day entry takes about fifteen minutes to build.
These figures are your own inputs multiplied out, so use them to frame the discussion rather than as a submitted cost claim.
Why general conditions usually dominate the number
On a fourteen month commercial build, daily general conditions on a mid sized job commonly run into the thousands before anyone picks up a tool. Supervision salaries, the trailer complex, temporary power and water, sanitary service, dumpsters, fencing, small tools and the safety program all bill by calendar time, not by production. That is precisely why a compensable weather day is worth chasing: the extension protects the schedule and the extended overhead is where the money sits.
Run the calculator with your labor at zero to see it. On plenty of commercial jobs the standing costs alone exceed the idle payroll, which is why a contractor who only claims show up time is leaving most of the day on the table.
Turning the number into a logging habit
The value per minute output exists for one conversation: the one where a superintendent says the log takes too long. When a complete entry is worth several hundred dollars a minute in recoverable exposure, the argument is over. Print that figure and tape it inside the trailer door.
Use it in preconstruction too. When you are pricing a job in a wet region, this day cost multiplied by your baseline weather day allowance tells you what the anticipated days are worth before you sign, which is the number that should drive how hard you negotiate the day table and the notice route.
Questions about this calculator
Should I include subcontractor crews in the worker count?
Include them if you carry the cost or expect a pass through claim from them. Many subs will submit standby costs for the same day, and those flow up to you. If you are only measuring your own self perform exposure, count only your people.
What if the crew worked a half day inside?
Enter only the hours that produced nothing on the affected scope. If half the crew moved to interior finishes and stayed productive, they do not belong in the idle count. Reviewers look for exactly that overstatement, so keep it clean.
Can I submit this output with a claim?
Not as it stands. This is a planning and argument tool built on your own estimates. A submitted cost claim needs certified payroll, equipment records, invoices and the day by day documentation behind each number.
More free tools and working documents
Working document
The weather day log and notice template
A one page fill in record for the morning it rains, built so a reviewer who was never on your site can follow the day from the first gauge reading to the notice that went out.
Turn that figure into a day that survives review
What you have above is your own estimate multiplied out, which is enough for the next owner meeting and not enough for a claim. The version that holds up carries the measured amount, the source and reading time, the activities that could not proceed, the idle equipment hours and the notice trail. Book a walkthrough and we will stand up one site with your contract threshold, your named station and your monthly day table, so tomorrow's weather day starts documented.