Leaf It Be: Keeping Your Awning As Leaf-Free As Possible

A pile of leaves sitting on an awning is a common sight, especially after a storm or during autumn. But those leaves can make your own store's awning look older and not as well kept as a clean one, so keeping as many of those leaves off as possible is a good goal to have. While one of the tactics that you can use to keep the awning clean is pretty basic, the others may not have occurred to you.

Daily Sweeping

The basic tactic is to sweep the awning with a long-handled broom. You can do this once or twice a day, depending on your store's hours and when the leaves tend to show up on the awning. Bag up the leaves -- don't leave them on the sidewalk -- and dispose of them according to your city's green waste laws.

One thing to note is that you want to keep the awning as leaf-free as possible, with the emphasis on "as possible." On windy days and during autumn, it's inevitable that some leaves will land on the awning at any hour if there's a tree nearby. Don't worry about one or two random leaves; you'll get them during your next regular sweep.

Angle Adjustment

If you have a soft awning, you may want to adjust the angle or tighten up the fabric a bit to prevent leaves from settling in areas where the fabric has sagged. By creating a more streamlined path for the leaves to fall off the awning, you can reduce the number that stay on there after landing.

Sidewalk Care

One more tip is to also sweep up the leaves on the sidewalk around your store. If you're in a building with a line of stores on either side of you, you might not be able to get all the leaves, but if you're in an independent location, you have more control over the situation. On really windy days, leaves on the ground can get kicked up and thrown around a bit; on very windy days, the smaller leaf bits can travel rather far, and they're light enough to fly up a little higher, too. If you know some very windy days are coming up, clean up the debris around the front of your store.

One Thing Not to Do

Don't try to knock down loose leaves from nearby trees. You only add to someone else's potential leaf litter problem if the wind blows the leaves away from you before you can bag them, and you could damage branches and twigs. Let nature handle the leaves that are still on the trees.

If you're in the market for a new awning talk to a place like FI Sign and Awning and ask about materials that won't sag or catch leaves as easily. The cleaner your store looks, the better people may feel about venturing inside.


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