10 Ways to Prepare Your Commercial Property for Winter in Washington DC, Virginia and Maryland

If you’re sipping cider, watching football or figuring out your Halloween costume for the neighborhood contest, winter’s just around the corner.

Is your commercial property ready?

Winter brings with it safety and liability concerns, worries about property damage and a long list of commercial property fall tasks. Chances are, you could use a hand. 

How to prepare your commercial property for winter? There’s a lot, from securing snow removal services to leaf removal to winterizing your irrigation system. 

Keep reading to learn more about important commercial property fall tasks, including:

Sign a seasonal snow contract

Partner with a company that prioritizes proactive communication 

Get a pre-season property inspection 

Tend to tree branches

Plan for ice

Install snow stakes 

Leaf removal

Winterize irrigation 

Protect plants and trees with mulch
 
Fall fertilization for healthy turf

1. Have You Signed a Seasonal Snow Removal Contract?

If not, put this at the top of your list of commercial property fall tasks. Then, breathe a lot easier. 

A seasonal snow removal contract means Level Green will service your site whenever there’s a legitimate risk of snow or ice. You don’t have to worry or decide whether you want your property treated.

You'll absolutely receive constant communication on what's happening and the plan, but you don't have to be involved in making decisions. It’s taken care of, which offers you the huge relief of peace of mind about your property’s safety. 

Bonus: A seasonal snow and ice management contract means you pay a set amount for snow and ice services for the season — no matter how much snow falls or how many visits crews make to your property. 

Snow and ice crews show up dependably to keep your property safe and you have double peace of mind — your property is clear of dangerous snow and ice, and you know exactly how much you’re going to pay for it. No guessing.

2. Partner with a Company that Thrives on Proactive Communication

Commercial property winter preparation comes with some stress. Ease yours by partnering with a snow removal company that keeps you in the know about your property’s winter safety.

At Level Green, you’ll hear from us several times with updates before a storm even hits.

We partner with a professional weather forecasting company to receive expert updates on expected storm trends and forecasts. This helps ensure we’re providing you with the best data available to make decisions. 

You’ll stay informed throughout the storm, including timely phone calls from your account manager and photos from our crews who document their progress on your property. 

You’re out of town? No worries. Our account managers are on site, checking crews’ progress, making sure everything is clear and safe. Then, we‘re in touch with you about the details. 

You can rest easy.

3. Commercial Property Winter Preparation: the Pre-Season Inspection

Prepare your commercial property for winter with a thorough pre-season walkthrough with your snow removal company. 

They should walk your property with you, taking careful notes. Any potholes? Cracked sidewalks? Storm drains clogged with leaves? Now is the time to fix any issues, before the snow falls. 

Your input is valuable here. Point out storm drain locations. What areas get extra icy? 

Meanwhile, we’re gathering important information to help us prepare detailed overhead site maps of your property. Our snow and ice management crews use these maps as they work to quickly and efficiently clear your property for winter safety on your commercial property.

4. Tend to Tree Branches

Commercial property fall tasks don’t just involve issues on the ground. 

When weak or damaged tree branches are loaded with heavy snow or ice, they can crash to the ground. That’s a huge safety worry for commercial properties.

It’s important to prune and thin tree branches before winter, so remaining branches are sturdy enough to hold up to winter stress. 

If you have trees that pose a risk factor, we let you know throughout the year, so we can stay on top of overhead safety concerns. 

It’s a great example of how proactive attention helps prepare your commercial property for winter. 

5. Commercial Property Winter Preparation: Plan for Ice 

Slick treacherous ice is a huge winter worry. Slips. Falls. Traffic accidents. Property damage. How does your snow management company prevent and remove ice? 

At Level Green, we have strategic plans to prevent ice before it forms and melt it when it starts to accumulate.

Our crews use an engineered ice melt mixture that’s less corrosive than straight rock salt and friendlier to the environment.

When pre-applied, it prevents ice and snow from bonding to the surface area. Because it’s a time-released formula, the ice melt stays on the surface longer, helping to reduce the freeze and thaw cycle.

The Beauty of Brine

Brine is another crucial tool to keep snow from sticking and ice from forming. It’s a liquid mixture of water and salt that’s sprayed on roads, parking lots and walkways, usually before a snow or ice storm. 

As soon as we put it down, it starts to work, helping to ensure winter safety on commercial properties. Salt doesn’t work until the snow or ice starts to melt and it mixes with that liquid and activates. If it’s really cold, that dry salt just lays on top of the snow and blows around.

Brine is already in solution form, so as soon as crews put it down, it starts to work.
That first inch or two of snow is the most slippery, so preventing it from sticking offers a real safety boost.
Brine uses one quarter of the amount of salt as traditional rock salt, which means it’s better for the environment. One truckload of brine equals four truckloads of salt. Crews can treat a larger area with less salt per square foot.

Why does this matter? Salt, whether in solid form or in brine, makes its way into area lakes and streams, creating a hostile environment for the creatures who live there.
Some freshwater species can't survive. The environmental impact of dumping all the salt is a big concern.
Make sure planning for ice is part of preparing your commercial property for winter.

6. Prevent Broken Curbs with Snow Stakes

Snow plows can break curbs, but snow stakes that mark driveways and parking lanes can help prevent that. Level Green crews can put them in at the beginning of the season and remove them in the spring.

Then plow drivers know exactly where the curbs are for safer plowing. 

7. Commercial Property Fall Tasks: Leaf Removal

Soggy, decaying leaves smother your turf and keep it from thriving. Get them out of there.

Level Green Landscaping crews mulch leaves whenever possible, using a mulching mower that breaks the leaves down into nutritious bits beneficial to your turf.

But if you have a property with lots of trees, you may have too many leaves to mulch. In that case, crews remove them with a leaf vacuum, which shreds them and loads them onto a truck.

The leaves are trucked to a composting facility to turn into compost to enrich planting beds.

8. Prepare Your Commercial Property for Winter: Winterize Your Irrigation System

The number one priority is to get all the water out of the pipes, valves and sprinkler heads before the first freeze. If water freezes and expands, your pipes break, and that means a costly repair.

A pro should also inspect your irrigation system one last time before winter. If it needs any repairs, it’s good to find out now, so you can include it in your next budget.

9. Commercial Property Fall Tasks: Protect Trees, Shrubs and Plants with Mulch

You might just think about mulch in the spring, but that hardworking brown bark is a key helper in preparing your commercial property for winter.

A few inches spread around the base of your shrubs and trees adds a layer of toasty insulation.

It helps the soil stay frozen, to prevent heaving during freeze and thaw cycles. It insulates roots from the cold. And it holds in vital moisture. 

10. Fall Fertilization for Healthy Turf

Fall is for fertilizing — it’s the most important time of the year for feeding and a key part of your commercial landscape maintenance services. This fertilizer application isn’t designed to green up your grass or encourage leaf growth. It’s all about the roots. 

As the weather gets cooler, your turf grows more slowly, but there’s plenty of action beneath the ground. The roots are growing quickly. That means they’re hungry.
Fertilize in the fall and you give those roots nutrients to grow nice and deep now, with some left over for a healthy start next spring.

Prepare Your Commercial Property for Winter with Level Green

That’s a long list. How are you supposed to have time to finish your Halloween costume? 

Level Green Landscaping provides commercial maintenance services in Washington DC, Virginia and Maryland, including all the services you need to ensure your property is safe and secure for the winter months. 

We provide customized commercial snow removal and ice management to our clients we already service throughout the year.

We love maintaining your commercial property’s landscaping during the spring, summer and fall. It just makes sense to trust your property to us during the winter months, too.

Our goal: protect everybody who spends time on your commercial property, and minimize your risk of liability due to slips, falls, traffic accidents, and property damage

If you’re not already a Level Green Landscaping client, we’d love to add you to our growing list of happy customers.

Our focus is on commercial properties like offices, mixed-use sites, HOAs, municipalities and institutions in Maryland, Washington DC and parts of Virginia.

Contact us at 202-544-0968. You can also request a free consultation online to meet with us one-on-one.

We’d love to hear from you.