With winter in full swing, you’ve likely turned your attention – and that of your maintenance staff – to some major seasonal operations. Ensuring walkways are clear of snow and ice and your HVAC system is operating at peak efficiency are important, but you shouldn’t overlook the smaller yet equally important tasks as well.
Your job as a facility manager is to maintain your building’s exterior as well as ensure essential infrastructure runs efficiently – but not at the cost of the safety of your maintenance staff. Efflorescence or cracked brick or stonework may damage your facility’s aesthetic appeal, but injuries to you or your employees should be avoided at all costs.
Salt weathering is a chemical process that happens to stone structures over time. Often, this will not harm the structural integrity of building, but it will mar its appearance.
If you’re unfamiliar with salt weathering, it might be easy to compare it to erosion – but the truth is that the two are quite distinct. Erosion occurs when some natural agent, such as water, ice or wind, moves past the stone object, changing its shape or position over time. Extreme examples of erosion would be the Grand Canyon or the stone structures in Monument Valley. Weathering, on the other hand, involves no movement at all. As the name suggests, the damage typically occurs as the result of weather events over a long period of time.
Clean. Restore. Repair.
