Preparing your home for snow and ice can help prevent the slips and fall that account of 300,000 serious injuries and 20,000 deaths in the United States each year.
Reduce the risk of falls by following some of these simple steps:
Prepping the areas around the entryways of your home to help prevent the chance of a slip or fall during the colder months. You can lower the risk by making some permanent changes to your home:
- Ensure that there is adequate lighting – both indoors and outdoors.
- Adhere Safe Way Traction’s deck strips to wooden and concrete surfaces like your porch, walkway, deck or patio. These products are lightweight, easy to apply and can be installed any time of the year.
- Paint outdoor surfaces with Tuff Coat from Safe Way Traction, a paint-like product containing a non-slip additive that comes in many colors to match or enhance your home’s décor (minimum temperature requirement).
- Apply traction tape or stair treads to stairways and areas of concern. Safe Way Traction’s tapes and treads are self-adhesive and come with options of color and grit size for most environments (minimum temperature requirement).
- Indoors, keep floors as dry as possible. Have a floor mat available and check the bottom of your feet each time you enter the home. Clean off accumulated ice, snow or water.
- Outdoors, shovel and treat pathways with salt of sand immediately after storms. Prevent dangerous ice buildup by clearing sidewalks before snow is compacted by footsteps or melts and re-freezes.
- Salt lowers the freezing point of water and can be spread on sidewalks or driveway to keep them from getting icy, or to help melt ice that has already formed. Salt works in temperatures above 12 degrees F, but can be touch on grass and shrubs and can eat away at concrete and steel.
- Sand does not melt ice and is an abrasive material that is applied to icy walkways to provide traction. Sand can be effective, even when it’s too cold for salt to do its job, but if you use too much sand you’ll need to clean up drainage areas when spring rolls around.
- If you don’t have sand on hand, other abrasive materials such as kitty litter, saw dust and wood ashes can be used to create traction on icy sidewalks. Be advised that these also accumulate and will need to be properly cleaned up come spring.
- Adjust downspouts to drive water away from pathways. In winter, it doesn’t take long for pooling ware to become icy patches.
Contact Safe Way Traction today to learn how we can keep you “on the path of safety”.