Winter is almost here and everyone’s talking about either preparing your house for the winter or glamming up your home for the holidays. However, there’s one thing that most people are failing to notice. Much like your home, your shops and offices also need winterizing. To avoid turning your source of income into a source of headache, winterizing your business is a crucial step in preparing for what’s coming.
With that in mind, here are some tips that you can follow to ensure your business’s safety when the snowfall comes:
Prepare your roofs, gutters, and pipes.
Unclogging your gutters and pipes is the first step you’d have to take. Searching thoroughly and making sure there are no clogs may be time-consuming but it would be worse to look for leaks during a blizzard.
Clogged gutters can lead to heavy roofs that might collapse and damage the whole interior. Clogged pipes might burst, especially if they’re not properly insulated. Leaks on overhead pipes might also freeze and become deadly icicles of various sizes. And you wouldn’t that.
As an extra tip, make sure to reinforce your roof and if you have enough time, trim the trees near your shop. This is important because branches overloaded with snow might fall and break your roof or worse, fall onto some customers.
Keep your heating, ventilation, and air conditioning in tip-top shape.
As all homeowners should know, regular HVAC maintenance is a year-long responsibility. This is especially true when it comes to business owners. You don’t only have to worry about your comfort but also the safety of your customers. With businesses that encounter a lot of foot traffic, heating, ventilation, and air conditioning is crucial in keeping the business afloat or at least lowering your utility bills.
Make sure you clean the vents and change the air filters regularly. Vacuuming air vents can be a fast way to clean them up by yourself. But if your HVAC system is showing early signs of possible malfunctions, getting it inspected by professionals as soon as possible is financially wiser in the long run.
Since you’ll be using your furnace now more than ever, double-checking your carbon monoxide and smoke detectors is also ideal. Especially if you plan on using candles during the power interruptions that will likely happen.
Focus on avoiding possible accidents and get your emergency kits ready.
As stated above, trees, gutters, and pipes might cause harmful accidents. But aside from them, there’s another common injury-inducing element during winters.
Slippery surfaces almost automatically emerge during winter. For the safety of both your customers and employees, make it a point to prepare a solution for this future continuous problem. You can place rubber mats at every entrance and walkway. You can also put eye-level warnings and signs in the common slippery areas you know of.
But as much as you try to prevent it, planning and preparing for when it ultimately happens is also important. Prepare first aid kits and emergency kits for accidents. Over-the-counter bandages and first aid medicine should be included. You should also put alternative sources of lighting in case of power interruptions. Thermal blankets and battery-powered radios are a plus.
Most importantly, include non-perishable food and water. Make sure that you have at least four of these kits inside your shop and one in each business vehicle. Hopefully, you won’t have to use them, but in case you’d have to, it would be life-saving if you have them.
Winterize your work vehicles.
Speaking of business vehicles, winterizing your work cars is also a must. Half of the accidents during winter happen on the road, after all. To avoid this, make sure you get your car battery checked and replaced if needed. You wouldn’t want to get stuck in the middle of a road on a freezing night just because you were too lazy to get your batteries checked.
Getting your brakes worked on is also important. The roads are will be slippery and reinforcing your brakes might just save your life.
Checking your tire pressure and making sure that they’re at the appropriate levels are also essential on the road. It would even be better if you can switch your tires to tires specifically designed for the winter. Winter tires are engineered to have better traction on snow-filled and icy roads.
The responsibility of keeping your employees, customers, and yourself safe within the vicinity of your business might be heavy. But there will always be ways to make that load lighter. By remembering to follow these steps, you’d be ensuring their safety and elevating their comfort at the same time. So, what are you waiting for? Winterize your enterprise now.