Would you pay for snow shoveling?

[MrMan]

No I wouldn't. And the driveway can wait till after play time. Priorities.

[gwat]

No I wouldn't. And the driveway can wait till after play time. Priorities.

^Ya. Go skiing. EVERYTHING else can wait.

[Name Redacted]

Worst thing is when you plow everything off, go skiing, and come back to a 3-4 ft wall of frozen chunks the plow driver left for you to shovel before you can even get into your driveway.

[Meadow Skipper]

Our driveway is on a hill and shaded completely by a wall. If the snow isn’t moved before a pass or two it ices up and is fuct for weeks.

Just get up early/earlier.

[MrMan]

Worst thing is when you plow everything off, go skiing, and come back to a 3-4 ft wall of frozen chunks the plow driver left for you to shovel before you can even get into your driveway.

Haha or when you leave for a 2 week trip and come home to......because it always dumps at home when you leave town or country.

[XXX-er]

Last town I lived in they either had a front end loader with a pusher blade follow the plow to clear the driveways after the plow or the plow had a gate that the op would drop over the end of the blade to momentarily stop the snow oming off the blade at a drive way which was very effective

[Name Redacted]

Yeah, our plow don't do dat. Actually, they will do that every once in a great while. But we don't pay city taxes so I'll shovel Whatever.

[adrenalated]

Worst thing is when you plow everything off, go skiing, and come back to a 3-4 ft wall of frozen chunks the plow driver left for you to shovel before you can even get into your driveway.

You need a bigger truck.

[gravitylover]

Sometimes when I'm out shoveling cement for hours at a time I consider it but then realize that there aren't any neighborhood kids that would even do it if offered $$ and to get a contractor to do it means signing an annual contract that's rarely worth what it costs. Sometimes when I'm trying to get through the plow pile I question that wisdom... My driveway is a pain in the ass, 75 feet long with a house on one side and wall on the other so most of the snow needs to be shoveled out before being piled up on the hill. I usually just do it slowly during the storm so it's not as hard and it keeps me outside in the storm for hours at a time. There's no good skiing close anyway so might as well do something active and outside while it's stormin'.

[AKbruin]

I have an $8000 snowblower and can barely stay on top of it without doing it at night or missing half a day every storm. I work hard all season and the snow clearing is a big additional drag on me. I get 450 inches at my house.

Worst thing is when you plow everything off, go skiing, and come back to a 3-4 ft wall of frozen chunks the plow driver left for you to shovel before you can even get into your driveway.

These guys get it. Fuck yes! I absolutely would pay for it . . . if I had the money. But I don't, so I mostly snowblow the driveway and shovel the decks myself. This last year, we had to pay some dudes to clear a portion of our roof that's steep and three-stories+ high. We also had to clear the rest of the roof three times. And, often times, we had to clear the driveway if we wanted to leave our house.

Honestly, I often enjoy snowblowing my driveway most of the time. But shoveling is literally backbreaking work. Again, if I had the money, I'd happily pay to have it done professionally like most of my neighbors.

Anyhow, this is highly location dependent. So let's put the last Tahoe winter into context at my house.

My street, which, without snow, is actually quite wide.


Me trying to clear the driveway with my commercial-grade Honda for the second or third time that day. There's a bear box in there somewhere.


Time to clear the roof . . . again.


Time to shovel the upper deck . . . again.


Those deck railings are 15 feet high.


To reiterate, I would 100% pay someone to clear my snow if I had the money.

[Mofro261]

On a big day it doesn't matter how quickly I can get the driveway done; if the big plow hasn't made a pass on the access road to clear the 1/4 mile stretch to the main road then I'm not getting anywhere until they do.

[Name Redacted]

And for the record, I would much rather have to shovel snow before going skiing a big pow day than not shovel and go ski hard packed wind fucked shit. CO doesn't get the snow Tahoe got last winter, but I'd take it and then some. I hate people that live in the mountains and bitch about snow and cold.

[MrMan]

These guys get it. Fuck yes! I absolutely would pay for it . . . if I had the money. But I don't, so I mostly snowblow the driveway and shovel the decks myself. This last year, we had to pay some dudes to clear a portion of our roof that's steep and three-stories+ high. We also had to clear the rest of the roof three times. And, often times, we had to clear the driveway if we wanted to leave our house.

Honestly, I often enjoy snowblowing my driveway most of the time. But shoveling is literally backbreaking work. Again, if I had the money, I'd happily pay to have it done professionally like most of my neighbors.

Anyhow, this is highly location dependent. So let's put the last Tahoe winter into context at my house.

My street, which, without snow, is actually quite wide.


Me trying to clear the driveway with my commercial-grade Honda for the second or third time that day. There's a bear box in there somewhere.


Time to clear the roof . . . again.


Time to shovel the upper deck . . . again.


Those deck railings are 15 feet high.


To reiterate, I would 100% pay someone to clear my snow if I had the money.

[Abol98]

Would love to pay forward (literally? figuratively?) the years I spent clearing nor'easters in Maine. In high school I was a 5-8, 115 pound groundskeeper for a 72-unit condo complex. I would get up at dawn for a storm, and shovel every walk, every front porch and 6-feet out from every garage door bay, while the bossman ran the plow and the sidewalk blower. I remember VIVIDLY staggering in after three hours, putting my frozen shit on the heater just long enough for it to melt, eating half a crappy sandwich and then heading back out after 15 minutes because it was piled up again. When my kids get older, this is the kind of crap I'm going to hold over their heads.

[pipedream]

AKbruin what's up with that roof pitch? It doesn't seem nearly steep enough for the amount of snow your area can get.

I'm anxious as hell to see what winter brings this year now that I own a cabin in an area that averages 400" of snow. But at least I've got an arsenal of quality shovels, a few bags of rock salt for the inevitable freezing rain events and a means of accessing the roof to break-loose any snow that doesn't slide-off (and the roof itself is steeply pitched). I probably should invest in a roof rake but I want to see how the snow sluffs off before spending the money on that.

[AKbruin]

AKbruin what's up with that roof pitch? It doesn't seem nearly steep enough for the amount of snow your area can get.

It's far from perfect. There's a big flat spot that doesn't sluff. It was built in the 90's by a reputable developer, so it's meant to take an extremely heavy load. Also, I'd say most of the house in my neighborhood have similar flat spots somewhere, which is weird. I'd have preferred a roof that sheds well in all directions, but I had to take what was available and affordable. Although sluffing presents its own issues:

[Shredhead]

I have the money.

I just want to put it where I want it and am kind of particular.
I've always had a garage or a barn to keep blower in.
This year I moved to a smaller place and the 30" blower is kind of killing my garage space.
Do many of you guys keep them outside under a cover or tarp?

8000ft @250".

[pipedream]

I don't have a garage. I have no idea what I'm doing. But I've got youth on my side... which is something.

I figure my place has stood since 1971, it's probably got at least a few more years in it until things really start going. Helps that the roof was redone in '94...

[Meadow Skipper]

Do many of you guys keep them outside under a cover or tarp?

Outside under a tarp under a portal (aka breezeway). Seems fine.

[Abol98]

. Although sluffing presents its own issues:

Ullr golf SMITE.

[steezybomber]

do what all those fancy mcmansion folks do out west and get a heated driveway. problem solved. may take longer, but less work. then again, most of those places are on hill, so theres that.

i just get out the shovel and salt and 6 pack and get after it.

[barkcity]

I bought a foreclosure in the Park City area back in 2010 (don't think I could afford it now), and the house has a driveway heater. The furnace room with all the plumbing and heating furnace looks like frickin Willy Wonka. Sure, it works great when you start it up before a storm hits, but if you turn it on after a storm, it takes a day or two to melt off a big storm dump.

However, I hardly ever run it, because the cost of running it for a single storm cycle (1-3 days) increases our gas and electric bill by $150-$300 bucks! I only run it when we have guests in town, or sometimes I'll run it to melt off ice after snow blowing. Basically, I'm too cheap to run it on a regular basis, not to mention it seems stupid to heat the outdoors in the middle of winter.

As for shoveling/snow blowing, I just bite the bullet and drag my ass outta bed early enough to clear the driveway and walkway before skiing. Luckily, my street gets cleared by the county plow driver around 6:30-7a, so I'm good to head to the mountain by 7:30-8a.

[TahoeJ]

Truckee last January / Feb at our place...

[::: :::]

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[XXX-er]

I think the question is do you need to pay for snow removal and some of you obviously do

In a big year I might get 2 feet which is totally managable with a 8hp snow blower or even a shovel if you wana real manly

but last year I think i only ran it twice