Preparing Your Office Campus Exterior for Winter

The best time to get a commercial building ready for winter is before the first hard freeze, not after. A last exterior clean in the fall clears summer dust, sprinkler spots and leaves before snow, de-icer and inversion season add their own layer on top. It also lets you book the late-winter and spring work while schedules are still open.

Here's what to look at on an office campus or multi-building site, and how to get it done without disrupting tenants.

Why fall is the window

Whatever is on the building in October tends to stay there until spring. Dust, pollen and hard water spots from summer irrigation don't wash off in winter weather; they get covered. Then the inversions arrive. Utah's Division of Air Quality explains that during an inversion, cold air is trapped at the surface under a layer of warmer air, and pollutants from vehicles, wood burning and industry stay near the ground instead of mixing away. The same agency notes a typical Utah winter has about five to six multi-day inversion episodes.

That grime settles on glass and facades. Starting the season with clean surfaces means you're dealing with one winter's buildup in spring, not a whole year's.

Exterior glass and facades

Give the building envelope a last pass before the cold sets in:

• Ground-floor and storefront glass. Irrigation overspray beside entrances and planters leaves mineral spots all summer. Left over the winter, they keep building, and spots left for years can start to etch the glass.
• Upper floors. Dust and pollen film the higher glass where nobody looks closely until the sun is low and every streak shows.
• North-facing corners and shaded facades. These dry slowest and are where growth starts. A facade clean matched to the material, soft washing for stucco and EIFS, clears it before winter moisture sits on it for months.

We rinse with deionized water, which dries without mineral spotting, so the last clean of the year doesn't leave its own marks behind. See how exterior window cleaning works on multi-story buildings.

Entries, walkways and parking

Tenants and visitors judge a building at the door. Before snow arrives:

• Clear leaves and ground-in grime from entries and walkways. Anything left on the concrete gets packed down under snow and tracked inside all winter.
• Clean parking structures and loading areas. Oil and tire marks are easier to lift before winter road grime and de-icer are added to them. Commercial flatwork like parking structures, loading docks and sidewalks is pressure washed from the ground, by our crew rather than the drone.
• Note what needs a spring clean. De-icer residue and winter grime on concrete are a spring job. Put them on the schedule now so they don't wait until someone complains.

Why winter scheduling is easier without rigging

Winter work on a building is a matter of fitting into short windows between storms and cold snaps. That's hard when the job starts with days of scaffolding, a swing stage or a lift permit. When the work is done from the ground, there's nothing to rig, so it's simpler to move a clean to the next good day.

Nobody works at height outside your tenants' windows, entrances stay open and parking stays available. Our pilots are FAA Part 107 certified, we're licensed and insured, and a certificate of insurance is available on request.

What to book now for late winter and spring

Most exterior work for a portfolio falls into three seasons:

1. Fall, now: glass, facades, entries and parking before freezing weather.
2. Late winter: parking structures, docks and walkways once the freezes ease, to clear de-icer and winter grime.
3. Spring: glass and facades again once pollen season starts and the inversion film is still on the building.

Grouping buildings into one recurring monthly, quarterly or seasonal schedule means one plan for the whole portfolio instead of a call every time something looks dirty. Our guide for property managers covers how that works across several buildings.

Getting started

Tell us about the property, or the portfolio, and we'll arrange a walkthrough to look at the elevations, surfaces, access and a schedule that fits around your tenants. Request a free site assessment. We work across Salt Lake, Utah, Davis, Weber and Tooele counties.