Winter Home Maintenance Checklist: Tips for Keeping Your Property Safe

Every year, as I’m sure you can agree, the winter seems to descend upon the Lower Mainland and Fraser Valley as if from out of nowhere. One minute you’re enjoying a PSL and the next you’re bundled up in your Super Puff, teeth chattering and booking lift tickets for night skiing at Cypress. Winter Services for safety tend to be the last thing on our minds, but when the season strikes, it’s very important to be prepared for whatever comes our way.

In the Lower Mainland and Fraser Valley, our winter season may be short, but it tends to hit our city hard. Given the challenges that many homeowners and businesses have faced over the last few years (pandemics, material cost increases, etcetera), who can afford to lose valuable business or repair property damage caused by a snowstorm or icy conditions?

Here’s a great winter home maintenance checklist to help you stay on top of winterizing your residential or commercial property. This will minimize the chances of a snowfall causing damage to your place of business, and keep those doors open while your competitors are shivering in the cold.

1. Take the time to trim trees and remove dead branches  

The end of summer and beginning of autumn is a great time to assess your property and notice if any of your trees need attention. If you see any branches have become too close to power lines or are impeding light sources, your trees should be pruned back for visibility and safety purposes.

Additionally, while you are inspecting your trees, take note of any branches that may have shriveled buds, or no longer have any foliage. If you can reach, give the branch or twig a bend. Usually, if it bends easily without breaking, it is alive. If it snaps, it’s dead and needs to be removed.  

Of course, anything is DIY-able if you put your mind to it! There are many great resources that you can follow if you feel up to the challenge of managing your trees on your own. Or, you can go the easier and safer route by hiring a professional landscape company, such as Oak Landscaping. to take care of all this hard work for you. We can also maintain your property with offered once your trees are taken care of.

Either way, by taking care of your trees and shrubs before the snow season hits, you’ll be minimizing any potential damage to power lines, plus you’ll keep your property safe without the risk of dead branches falling and causing damage to property, or injuring someone.

2. Winterize water feature (irrigation, fountains, swimming pools)

We’re sure this tip comes as no surprise, but you guessed it, where there’s water, there’s a potential for freezing! As you know, water expands when it freezes. Repairing a damaged pipe can be a very lengthy and expensive process. So, rather than trying to track down a cracked pipe, your best bet is to stay ahead of freezing temperatures and winterize all of your exterior plumbing systems.

Of course, winterizing your exterior plumbing is done differently depending on the application, so it’s difficult to sum up the process in one blog post. We recommend leaving this to the professionals, who can offer a guarantee of service, just like Oak Landscaping does!

Depending on the scope of work, we will turnoff your water supply to the water feature in question, lower water levels if required, blow out all lines and turn off any programming or automation so that in the springtime everything is easy peasy ready to start back up.

3. Install proper lighting or markers if needed

As the days get shorter, we find ourselves waking up in darkness, with nightfall coming earlier and earlier each day. This can be exasperated when we experience a snowfall. While we love strategically-placed lighting and a well-lit property for those night time esthetic ambient vibes, having proper landscape lighting installed will provide substantial safety benefits as well.

It’s important to have clearly marked and well-lit pathways. This will help direct your customers and family members to designated traveling areas, which helps to avoid any unintentional steps into hazardous areas such as drop-offs, water features, and the like.

Proper outdoor lighting in your garden can help deter pests and also can help with preventing crime as it eliminates places where someone could hide.

Your outdoor lighting can be installed quite easily, even if you have pre-existing landscaping features in place.

Oak Landscaping Ltd. recommends installing your pathway lights between 6 – 15 feet apart, depending on the size of your property and also the size of the lights themselves. For piece of mind, consider including a timer so that your lighting comes on, even if you’re not home.

4. Inspect and confirm your drainage system is functioning properly

Once the temperatures start to dip below freezing level, the last thing you want to discover is a patch of hidden ice. As we shared in point 2, where there’s water, there’s the potential for expansion and damaged underground plumbing, and in the case of poor drainage, you also have the risk of potential slip hazards.

If you notice standing water around downspouts, or pooling in areas around your property, then there’s a good chance you have a blockage in your drainage system.

The DIY solution is to check around downspouts and in channel drains for debris that could potentially cause a clog, and throw some rubber gloves on to pull that debris out.

If this doesn’t solve your drainage issue, unfortunately this may require the help of a professional (aka – Oak Landscaping!) who can scope your lines to identify your drain blocking culprit.

Stay Prepared and Safe This Winter with Our Expert Services

We hope that these 4 steps will help you feel prepared for the upcoming freezing temperatures and snowfall. We want you to feel confident that your business or strata property will be safe through the winter season. If you’re feeling nervous about taking care of these areas on your own, we’d be happy to help!

Once the season has started, Oak Landscaping can also help you maintain the safety on your property, by providing reliable and quick ice management and snow removal services. We specialize in keeping businesses and strata properties safe, accessible and most importantly, OPEN! Don’t let the ice and snow stop your business flow.

Give us a call at 604-332-1269, or fill out the form and we’ll provide you with an estimate for your property’s winter services!

Stay warm out there 😊.