Calgarians have been shown mercy by the weather deities this winter.
What is normally a cold, dark season spent huddling in centrally-heated buildings with hot beverages and cold viruses has, this year, been unusually warm and relatively dry.
It seems like the cold viruses are the only things that have stayed the same.
Yet hard as it may be to believe, we really have seen snow this winter. We’re also very likely to see some more before the start of summer. For this reason, we’re posting this article on snow removal – because this is Calgary and we get snow, sometimes even in the middle of summer.
According to the City of Calgary’s Bylaws, property owners must remove snow & ice from city sidewalks within 24 hours of the last snowfall or risk being ticketed. Yet for some Calgarians, snow removal is no simple matter – for many Calgary homeowners, health, age, and at times even plain ol’ motivation play important roles in getting out there and removing snow.
For businesses, snow removal is often just another necessary expense to cover when the weather turns Nordic.
In Calgary, there are a number of ways to remove snow from your walkways. From doing it yourself to hiring quality snow removal services like those offered by Superyards, to the City of Calgary’s Snow Angels program, there are a variety of options to choose from for avoiding that bylaw ticket.
By far, the most affordable option is to just do it yourself. It’s not only cheap, but also a pretty decent workout! However, there are about 11,500 injuries from shoveling snow every year in emergency departments throughout the USA. Surprisingly, around two thirds of these injuries happened to ‘young males’ with the most common injuries being to the body’s tendons and ligaments.
There are ways of preventing, or at least limiting, potential injuries though. A good guide on how to physically prepare yourself for healthy snow-shoveling practices can be found in this handy Huffington Post article. It includes such common sense (but uncommonly practiced) tips as doing pre-shoveling stretches and lifting with your legs.
Yet it’s not just the act of shoveling that can cause you harm – even snowblowers cause their fair share of injuries. In 2013 alone, over 6,000 people in the USA were injured while using a snowblower.
Tips for preventing injury from snowblowing include not sticking your hands in the snowblower, avoid touching the engine, using the pull-cord safely, and watching out for motor recoil just after the machine’s been turned off.
In Part Deux of this blog post, we’ll discuss the merits of hiring a professional snow removal company, as well as some of the things you want to ask when deciding on a company to do your snow removal.
If you have any questions, please just give us a call! We love what we do and we love hearing from you. Questions and/or comments are always welcome – click here to get in touch.
Sources:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20825768
http://orthoinfo.aaos.org/topic.cfm?topic=a00060
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/26/shoveling-snow-workout-gifs_n_6548946.html