In winter in Greater Chicago, you can’t let the people who frequent your commercial facility down.
Large piles of snow and thick sheets of ice can be incredibly unsafe. In fact, Chicago can average 28.1 inches of snow and an average temperature of 26.4 degrees Fahrenheit each year, with the winds from Lake Michigan making it feel colder.
The area occasionally gets polar vortex conditions, like in 2019, when temperatures dropped to negative 21 degrees with a wind chill of negative 51 degrees.
Situations like this can cause a lot of ice to form, leading to a lot of slipping and falling, accidents, or building maintenance issues on your commercial site. No one needs liability concerns like this.
There are quite a few benefits of pre-treating parking lots for snow, including:
What saves you from the negative effects of ice? Ice-melting products like rock salt and calcium chloride.
Pre-treating your commercial parking lots, driveways, walkways, and entryways can ensure safe surfaces for your employees, tenants, shoppers, visitors, customers, or guests.
Let’s discuss the commercial snow removal ice-melt products and review these pre-treatment benefits so you can better understand why this is an essential winter service for your commercial facility.
There are two main types of ice-melting products we use in professional snow removal in Greater Chicago.
Rock salt is like table salt but with larger chunks than what you add to your food. This gritty product creates an instantly grippable surface. It penetrates ice to form a water and salt mixture known as brine. Since brine’s freezing point is lower than water's, any water on your commercial hardscapes shouldn't freeze if there's enough salt.
Rock salt can melt ice as low as 15 degrees Fahrenheit. It’s also easy to find, safe for pets, and inexpensive.
Calcium chloride, while classified as a type of salt, is derived from limestone. It usually comes in pellets that resemble flakes or sand grains. This can melt ice fast, forming that brine quickly. So if you have a healthcare facility that needs ice to disappear fast at an emergency entrance, this could do the trick.
While more expensive and not as pet-safe as salt, this product can be less harmful to plants. Unlike rock salt, it’s less likely to burn them when adequate hydration isn’t present.
Which product or combination of products you choose depends on your goals for your specific commercial property.
For instance, if you have many landscape beds with precious plant material, rock salt may be harmful to use too close to those beds. However, rock salt can be great for large parking lot areas with limited plant materials.
You want to manage your commercial parking lot wisely during winter in Greater Chicago. This ensures safety when people are driving into your facility, walking on your parking lot surfaces, or entering and exiting your buildings.
One way to create the best scenario for visitors and guests is to pre-treat parking lots for snow. Properly doing this has many benefits, which we’ll review here.
Since salt lowers the freezing point of water, preventing ice formation on surfaces, pre-treating parking lots for snow can stop the slippery stuff from building up.
This reduces the risk of slippery conditions on your property even before precipitation begins, decreasing liability issues on your site. Any property manager would want this to ensure lower costs and reduced issues.
Pre-treating during professional snow removal on your commercial facility ensures you maintain a safe, secure site for everyone who enters it.
Pre-treatment also prevents the formation of black ice, which is the most dangerous because it is invisible to the naked eye and appears like a transparent layer on the road.
This means parking lots, walkways, and driveways are safer for employees, customers, and visitors and minimize slip-and-fall accidents and liability risks.
Creating brine for snow removal with rock salt and calcium chloride prevents ice from forming and prevents snow from bonding with the pavement.
This allows your chosen material to bond with the surface on your commercial site, making it easier to remove ice and snow later.
This prevents hard-packed ice layers from forming and reduces the time needed to clear your site when a snow event occurs.
Pre-treating parking lots for snow and ice reduces the amount of salt and deicing material that a professional snow service company will need to use after a storm.
Ultimately, this can lead to lower material and labor costs for you.
Professional snow removal is a service that can help commercial businesses in Greater Chicago by keeping their business access open even during the worst weather. This can be a huge time saver.
Since pre-treated surfaces are less likely to accumulate stubborn ice, snow removal equipment can quickly and efficiently clear these areas.
Freeze and thaw cycles are notorious for damaging hardscapes and concrete areas.
Early salting as part of commercial snow removal helps protect pavement by preventing ice from seeping into cracks, expanding, and causing damage that later requires time and money to repair.
If you’re looking to rescue the salt you need to apply on your commercial property to be more sustainable, then pre-treating parking lots for snow is a way to minimize your environmental impact.
How? By strategically pre-treating, you reduce the overall amount of salt you apply.
Are you concerned your business profits will drop during the winter months when snow and ice build-up, and movement into your facility becomes tougher?
Ensure continued business with pre-treatment of deicing products during professional snow removal so your property remains accessible during and immediately after winter events. This will help you avoid any disruptions to your operation.
With pre-treated pavement, snow melts on contact, so your parking lot and walkways can be used longer after a storm begins.
When you are a proactive property manager, you show your customers, tenants, employees, guests, and visitors that you care about them.
This shows that you prioritize safety and convenience, which can improve your relationships with your tenants and customers.
Ice and snow build-up during winter months on a commercial facility in the Greater Chicago area can be challenging for a property manager to manage.
You have to worry about how much snow and ice could form and how quickly it could melt. You also have to worry about your landscape areas being susceptible to that build-up and how they might be restricted.
In addition, you have liability concerns to consider. If you aren't prepared with the best commercial snow removal in Greater Chicago, it can add to quite a mess.
What you need is a solid plan and the right partner. And that plan must include some pre-treatment strategies for snow and ice so you can stay ahead of bad storms. You can’t always foresee how bad storms can get, so some pre-treatment ensures you can best manage what’s coming.
When winter arrives, you still have the interior of your property to manage, and you can’t micromanage snow and ice storms that arrive at all times of the day or night. You need your facility to have access when it’s needed.
Instead of staying up and worrying over and over again about the next storm, give KD Landscape a call instead. This way, you can ensure you have a partner looking at these things for you so you can stress and worry less, sleep better, and have a property that runs smoothly.
Putting a solid snow and ice management plan in place can also mean you save money and time, extend the longevity of your landscape and improve business access.
KD Landscape can provide a plan that best fits your commercial facility, meets your needs, and addresses your concerns.
KD Landscape would be happy to discuss specific ideas to improve safety and security during the winter months and fit within your budget so you can be the property champion at your Greater Chicago commercial facility. Request a consultation today. We’ll review your options together so you can make the best choice.