Snow & ice — a seasonal agreement
Commercial Snow and Ice Removal in Lexington and Richmond, KY
Central Property Services takes commercial snow and ice work on occupied properties in Lexington (Fayette County) and Richmond, KY (Madison County) — lots, drive lanes, entries, sidewalks and accessible routes — under a seasonal agreement settled before the winter starts. This page is not written for the night it snows. It is written for the autumn afternoon when you have to decide what next winter’s arrangement is, while the budget is still open and the terms can still be argued.
Decide this in autumn, not in January
Winter work is bought on a different clock from everything else on a property. A wash or a repair can be raised the week you notice it. A snow arrangement cannot: by the time the lot is white, the terms are whatever somebody wrote in a hurry, and the argument you will have in February is about a sentence nobody read in December.
For a portfolio on a calendar fiscal year, the window to get a winter line into next year’s numbers generally closes in the autumn — budget submissions commonly land somewhere between the start of October and the start of November, with an owner-approval period behind them. Ask your own fiscal year and your own submission deadline rather than assuming ours; those two dates decide whether this conversation is early or late.
So the useful version of this conversation happens now: what the agreement covers, how it is priced, who decides a service has started, and what record you get afterwards. Settle those on paper in autumn and the winter is administration rather than negotiation.
What a commercial snow agreement has to define
Seven things decide whether a winter arrangement works. Most winter disputes are traceable to one of them being left vague in the autumn. This table is the specification — the decisions any commercial agreement has to make, and what each one changes for you. It is not a statement of our terms: the terms for your property are written into your agreement, not published on a website, because they depend on your lot and your tolerance rather than on ours.
| The decision | The choices in front of you | What it changes for you |
|---|---|---|
| How it is priced | Per event, a seasonal figure for the whole winter, or time and materials. | Who carries the risk of a strange winter. A seasonal figure gives you one predictable number and hands the weather risk to the contractor. Per event tracks reality and makes the budget line unpredictable. Time and materials is the most honest and the hardest to defend upward. |
| What starts a service | An accumulation threshold, a call from you, or a standing instruction for named conditions. | Whether anything happens without you asking, and whether you can be billed for a service you did not request. Whatever the threshold is, put a number on it in the agreement and name who declares it met. |
| Ice-only events | Treated as a service, excluded, or billed on a different basis from snow. | This is the clause that gets argued about. Freezing rain, refreeze after a thaw and black ice on a shaded approach produce no accumulation to measure, so an agreement written only around snowfall has nothing to say about them. |
| How deicing material is measured and billed | Included in the rate, billed by quantity applied, or billed per application. | The single largest swing in a winter invoice, and the one most often unspecified. Whichever basis you choose, agree how the quantity is recorded at the time it is applied — reconstructing it in March does not work. |
| The scope split | Lot and drive lanes · sidewalks and entries · accessible routes and their parking · dumpster approach · steps and rails. | Which surfaces are in and which are the building’s own problem. Walks and entries are frequently assumed to be covered and frequently are not. Accessible routes get named specifically or they get missed. |
| The priority sequence | A written order of surfaces, backed by a marked-up site plan. | What gets cleared first when everything cannot be first. Deciding this in autumn with the property manager is a different conversation from deciding it at speed in the dark, and the site plan is what makes the answer repeatable. |
| Where snow is piled, and what ends a service | Designated pile areas, no-pile zones, and whether stacking, relocation or hauling is included; then whether a cleanup or re-service pass is in scope. | Piles decide how many parking spaces you lose in February, whether the drains and hydrants stay reachable, and where meltwater runs and refreezes. Hauling snow off site is a separate scope with a separate cost, and it is worth settling before you need it. |
There is no rate card on this site, and no figure of any kind appears on this page. A winter price depends on the lot, the surfaces, the sequence and the shape you choose above; anything published before we have seen those would be a number invented to look confident.
The service record, and why you want it in a file
The part of winter work that outlives winter is the paperwork. Months later, the question is rarely whether a lot was cleared — it is whether anyone can show what was done, where, and when, without relying on somebody’s memory of a night in January.
A record worth keeping states, for every service:
- The date, and the time work started and finished.
- Which surfaces were treated or cleared, named the same way they are named in the agreement.
- What material was applied, where, and how much.
- The conditions on the ground at the time — what was falling, what was already down, what had refrozen.
- Anything found and not fixed: a blocked drain, a damaged bollard, a light out over an entry.
- Who to contact about it.
That is a description of what a defensible record contains, not legal advice and not a statement about anyone’s exposure. Ask your own counsel and your own insurer what your property needs on file. What we will say is that the record is easy to produce at the time and impossible to produce afterwards, so it belongs in the agreement rather than in good intentions.
What is not in scope
Stated before the season, not during it
- No snow or ice work above ground level. No roof snow loads, no ice dams, no clearing a roof or a roof edge. See the boundary below.
- No promise that a treated surface stays clear. Refreeze happens, deicing materials have working limits, and any page that tells you otherwise is selling you something that does not exist.
- No response-time commitment appears anywhere on this page, and none will until there is a staffed one to commit to. A published clock nobody is holding is worse than silence.
- No salt-damage remediation. Deicing materials are hard on concrete, landscaping and finishes over time. Repairing that damage is a separate scope, quoted separately.
- Residential property. No driveways, no homes, no residential associations. Commercial properties only.
- HVAC, electrical and plumbing. A frozen line or a failed heater is not ours in any season; those calls are referred, not taken.
Snow on the ground is ours. Snow on the roof is not.
Lots, drive lanes, walks, entries and accessible routes are ours. Roof snow load, ice dams at the roof edge, and anything that involves getting onto a roof surface or into a roof system are not, and we do not quote them.
That work belongs to a separate company at centralroofrepair.com. Gutters, downspouts and the wall transitions below the roof edge are ours in every season — that scope lives on the gutters, sealants and exterior repair page.
What your property has to tell us before winter
Publishing this list is the point. It is what somebody who has actually worked a commercial lot in winter asks for, and it is why the walk happens in autumn rather than in January. Every item is easy to collect in October and impossible to collect in a snowstorm.
- A marked site plan. Lot boundaries, drive lanes, entries, walks, accessible routes and their parking, and the dumpster approach.
- A staking plan. What gets staked before the first snow, and who installs and removes the stakes.
- An obstruction map. Kerbs, islands, bollards, wheel stops, low walls, speed tables, planters, charging equipment and anything else that disappears under snow and gets hit.
- Pile areas and no-pile zones. Where snow may be stacked, and where it may not — over drains, in front of hydrants, across accessible routes, against the building, or in the bays a tenant has contractual rights to.
- Drains and hydrants. Where they are, so they stay reachable and so meltwater has somewhere to go instead of refreezing across an entry.
- Contacts and escalation. Who to reach when a decision is needed out of office hours, who decides when that person cannot be reached, and who authorizes work beyond the agreement.
- Gate codes, keys and access rules. Including who to tell when they change, because they always change in November.
- Tenant obligations. Which surfaces your leases already make somebody else’s responsibility, so nobody clears the same walk twice and nobody clears it never.
The same vendor, still there in March
Winter does not only produce snow. It produces a bent bollard, a door that will not latch after it swells, a downspout torn off by an ice slide, a soaked ceiling tile under a failed joint. At most properties that means finding a second contractor in February, opening a second account, and reconciling a second invoice against the same building.
Here it is one vendor and one work order across the year: the winter agreement, the interior repair that follows it, the gutter and sealant work that stops it recurring, and the make-safe response when a building is open or unsafe. One contact, one paper trail, one company answering for all of it.
Related work
Commercial exterior and lot cleaning
The planned side of the same lot — washing, concrete and dumpster pads, debris and striping, bought on a work order rather than a season.
Emergency and make-safe response
When a building is open, unsecured or unsafe. Securing and making safe only, with the stop-list of calls we refer instead of taking.
Gutters, sealants and exterior repair
Gutters and downspouts cleared before winter, and repaired after it — the work that decides where meltwater goes.
Interior repairs and build-out
The February repair list, scoped and priced with the exclusions attached.
Vendor paperwork — W-9, insurance certificates, credentialing and work-order intake — is on the approved vendor page. Getting that done in autumn is what makes a winter agreement signable.
Before the season
Start the winter conversation while the terms are still negotiable
Send the property, the surfaces you need covered, the site plan if you have one, and who signs. What comes back is a walk of the lot in daylight and a written agreement you can read properly — the seven decisions above, settled, with the exclusions attached to them.
Serving Lexington (Fayette County) and Richmond, KY (Madison County).