Have You Prepared Your Snow Garage?
Those of us who live in the far north of our country have learned a long time ago not to fight the precipitation that we know will come. We expect it as the winter months come toward us and we just look at it as a different, if not more challenging way to live. Snow looks great when you can gaze at it out of the window, huddled around a nice warm fire and it does help to make the holiday time more authentic experience as well. We quickly learn that you need to take time to prepare for the arrival of the cold and convert the area that you store your car into a snow garage.
Our way of life in northern climes is an integral part of the weather that we experience during the winter. Our snow garage needs to be prepared for the onslaught and we must continue to function with as little disruption as possible. Don’t store anything on the floor level and relegate everything to the loft or high shelves. Your next step will be to get absorbent mats to put on the floors.
Your snow garage is basically a halfway house between the frigid outdoors and the welcoming inside. You will undoubtedly be able to close the garage door to keep the worst of the frigid weather outside, but understand that there is very little you can do to stop a lot of the snow from finding its way inside this room. This is why you need absorbent mats to capture and retain all of the melting snow before it gets out of control.
When you get ready for the winter season there is quite a lot to do. While this ritual is time-consuming and can be costly, we must take it in stride. Getting snow shovels together with snowblowers available to get rid of the excess layers that form ensures we can get in and out. Ideally it’s best to have a four-wheel drive vehicle as well, or certainly to make sure that you have winter tires, up to the job. The snow garage is the place to keep all these utensils as you position yourself between winter wonderland and safety and warmth.
Absorbent mats will indeed take care of all those solid clumps of snow that fall from beneath your vehicle. As the temperature in this room is slightly warmer than the outside, the snow will melt over time. Without these mats in place, though, just imagine the mess that would accumulate very quickly. With the mats in place, the liquid will simply evaporate.
It does not snow every day of the winter season, except, perhaps if you live in the really far north! When the snow clears, all that precipitation will evaporate from the retaining absorbent mats and you can then simply vacuum them when they are dry to get rid of debris.
The snow garage can be converted back to regular use when the season passes, but absorbent mats are equally as important during the summer. Heavy storms can bring a lot of water in when you return from a drive and during the summer you will also have to guard against potential buildup of nasty mildew and mold.
It looks like we’re in for a long, cold and snowy winter. If you have not done so already, now is the time to convert your way of thinking and to fit your snow garage with those absorbent mats.
