Sidewalk Savers™

Mid west USA Cities are increasingly following the West Coast offense and implimenting the Diamond Cup grinding solution for maintaining their sidewalks.   The benefits to homeowners are obviously lower costs and the availability of a mid term solution to a problem that they are made aware of each time they shovel snow or simply walk on their own sidewalk.    Most responsible homeowners would minimize the trip hazard if only they had a low cost, convenient method for doing so.

Now, by applying the methods used for many years in California and cities like Portland, Oregon,  mid-west cities such as Columbus, OH have approved this process for at least some of the observed problems.

The benefits to cities and neighborhoods are the elimination of problems while they are small by simple periodic grinding.  Some politicians refer to this as the “Broken Window” theory – take care of the small problems and the big problems will take care of themselves.

Even the relatively steep step shown below can be made safer with a grinding operation on the left side of the raised block, although this would clearly be a temporary solution as the codes and procedures in many cities would require blocks such as these to be removed and replaced.

The Sidewalk below shows multiple trip hazards caused by a single, relatively small  tree.  In order to repair this type of a hazard, the costs would be the replacement costs for 3 perfectly good concrete sidewalk blocks.     Of course, the tree will keep growing so that in 2 or 3 years the new blocks would need to be replaced again.

Rather than waiting for the problem to get worse over time, diamond cup grinding for these blocks would require a minimal amount of work and would eliminate the Stub-Toe Trip Hazard liability for a fraction of the costs, providing a temporary reprieve for the same 2 - 3 years when additional grinding could perhaps be used or not, according to conditions and local codes.

Grind It!  Cut It!  Fix It! ™            http://sidewalksaver.com/blog1/ 

                                                       http://sidewalksaver.com
Sidewalker

Artisans at Ohio’s Mohican State Park Lodge parking lot have turned Stub-Toe Trip Hazards into wonderful Works of Art.   It is truly beautiful how nicely and evidently with great care the trip hazards and stairs are painted Yellow to alert visitors of the hazards.

Some of these Trip Hazards, such as the one at the top of the set of Stairs shown below, are so great that a Diamond Saw or Slab Jacking would be required to eliminate the hazard with grinding being used for fine-tuning the concrete and smoothing it out at the end of the job or for future preventative maintenance.

The following close-up picture of the Curb at the bottom of the Stairway shows how it is necessary to step up from the sidewalk to the curb and then to step down from the curb to the street.

Wouldn’t it be better and lower in cost for the State Park Lodge to simply eliminate the Trip Hazard rather than creating this wonderful artwork?

Especially since our cities in Ohio are spending tax dollars to install wheel chair ramps and requiring us to eliminate stub toe hazards on our residential sidewalks.

It does make one wonder how the City Sidewalk Police would react to residents putting yellow paint on the stub-toe trip hazards in front of their houses.  Or perhaps on the curbs which are elevated above the level of the sidewalks?     It really is not worth the effort to find out when it is so easy to simply:

Grind It!  Cut It!  and  Fix it!

Don’t Paint it!   Eliminate that Hazard.

http://www.sidewalksaver.com/               http://sidewalksaver.com/blog1/ 

Sidewalker

Sidewalk Repair by Diamond Grinding is a Two Edged Sword.  The Sidewalk Saver process is so simple and so inexpensive that there is quite simply no reasonable excuse for not doing it.

Imagine that some person trips on a Stub-Toe Hazard in front of your house.  During the ensuing law suit, imagine the victim’s lawyer telling the jury that the sidewalk could have been rendered safe for an expense of $50.00 but that the owner chose to keep his $50.00 and to allow the hazard to wait for an unwitting victim.

Hmmmmm,  $50.00 worth of routine maintenance to avoid a settlement of $50,000.   Meanwhile, the pictures of the victim with his arm in a sling and his upcoming knee replacement surgery remind the jury of the very real medical costs and suffering caused by the Trip Hazard.     Does the word Negligence come to mind?

Why take the risk?              Grind It. Cut It. Fix It. ™ 

The complete tools and instructions are readily available:   http://www.sidewalksaver.com/documents/PEG_your_Sidewalks.pdf

Sidewalker