It’s almost an incredible relief for many individuals when winter finally relaxes its grip on the region. This winter has been no different than previous years, with incredible amounts of snow, sleet, freezing rain, and extremely cold temperatures. As spring continues to bring in warmer air, there’s this false sense of security, as though all winter precipitation has finally ceased.
That can cause some commercial facilities to plan accordingly.
Using walkoff and scraper mats is a great way to help reduce the amount of road salt, sand, and slush, ice, and other precipitation from getting tracked in and onto the floor surfaces, but once spring arrives, are they really still necessary?
Yes, they are.
In fact, we who live in this area year round understand winter precipitation can fall well into May and, in some rare instances, the early parts of June. While most of the time April is the last month for winter precipitation in the Greater Toronto Region, sleet, freezing rain, and snow are still possible.
But, that’s not the only issue to be concerned about.
As the snow continues to melt, those mounds of compressed snow and ice along the edges of parking areas and sidewalks will take far longer to completely melt away than that which is along the grass and other flat regions. In those piles and piles of snow and packed ice is a lot of sand, road salt, pebbles, and other debris. As everything melts, people will be walking across these areas, tracking a lot of that debris along with them.
This is just one of many reasons why those walkoff and scraper mats are still important to help protect commercial floor surfaces. It’s also crucial that maintenance personnel remain diligent and mop up any areas getting tracked right away in so they can help protect those floor surfaces best.