Cold Porches - Antarctica

 

A cold porch?

Medium Sized Cold Porch—Mostly Personal Gear



I'm an Aussie who when home, lives in a climate that is warm to very warm. Shall we say on a hot summers day at least 35 °C. Even the term "porch" is not one we use back home. That big open extension out the front, back or both on an Aussie house is usually called a "verandah or veranda". The verandah is used back home for getting out of the heat of the day and for having bar-b-ques on and is rarely used on a cold day. So, back to the original concept of this post. Our cold porch at Davis Station Antarctica, is an entry room from the fridged outside world where basically you either throw off, or on, all your cold weather gear. This room forms a barrier between the outside world and the nice warm inner world of the living or working quarters. Most of our buildings have an inner temperature of around 19 °C.

The outer door of the Cold porch is like a heavy refrigerator door (200kg +), the inner door is usually a normal fire rated house hold door. An individual expeditioner can have six or more different types of foot ware, hopefully not all in the cold porch at the same time. These range from “Crocs” or inside shoes, hiking boots, winter outside work boots, summer outside work boots, inside workshop boots, glacier boots, and gym shoes. Along with the foot ware you will have outdoor clothing. These range from lightweight outer shell type clothing, to heavy work jackets, overalls, safety helmets, gloves of all kinds, beanies, and balaclavas. Next Blog coming up - I hope.

Large Sized Cold Porch— Personal Gear as well as

Fire Fighting Turn Out Gear, Fire Alarm Panels

and Hose Reels.

 Horse's Shoes L to R

Back Row - Winter Glacial Work Boot ,Winter Glacial non-work

Middle Row - Summer Outside Work Boot,Inside Work Boot with spiked snow chains,Summer Hikers

Front Row - "Safety Crocs", Gym Shoes

 

Spiked snow chains on the bottom of my work boots. I put these on so I can get to the workshop without going "A over T" on the ice. I remove them once in the workshop, otherwise I will go "A over T" on the concrete floor.You can put them on what ever boot you need them on as the "red bit" stretches out and around your boot. They can be a bit of a bother with the larger glacial boot as the stretch of the "red bit" only goes so far before you wear the lot around you face!