The walkway outside of my building has a surface of bricks and concrete and little garden plots of grass. The bricks are not cemented into anything. Rather, they rest on their own little bed of concrete which is low enough to provide a level walking surface.<\/p>\n
When the first snow of winter arrives, the walkway is not yet cold and so the snow melts immediately. The water from this melting snow runs between the cracks in the bricks and settles into the lowest spots of the concrete brick bed. Later, when the weather gets really cold, this water freezes and forces the bricks above it to rise slightly.<\/p>\n
Now, the state has three methods for snow removal; chemical, snow blower and snow plow. These methods are used by themselves or in various combinations, depending on the snow depth.<\/p>\n
If it is a light snow, they will probably just use snow melting pellets scattered across the walk way. Of course, the snow melting pellets coat the bottoms of shoes and boots and gets tracked into the building which makes a mess.<\/p>\n
If it is a heavy snow, the snow plows will come through and plow the main walkways. The snow blowers will then come through and do clean up in the places that the plow can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t reach. Finally, they will cover everything with snow melting pellets.<\/p>\n
Now, this is where it gets interesting. The snow plow is expecting the plowing surface to be level, but it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not. Those little bricks with the frozen water under them have risen slightly. And when the plow hits them, they pop up out of their concrete beds. This, in turn, creates a walking hazard. Not only do you have to worry about stepping in the holes where the bricks used to reside, you also have to worry about stepping on the bricks.<\/p>\n
When spring rolls around, the maintenance crew works on replacing and leveling the bricks, while the lawn crew replaces all of the grass that got burned up from the snow melting pellets. And come winter, the process starts all over again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The walkway outside of my building has a surface of bricks and concrete and little garden plots of grass. The bricks are not cemented into anything. Rather, they rest on their own little bed of concrete which is low enough … Continue reading