What to ask before you sign for driveway snow removal in Omaha

Snow removal for a driveway in the Omaha metro gets lined up in the fall. The contract signed before it snows decides who clears the driveway in the winter and what they do when they get there.

We clear snow for homeowners as well as commercial properties from Elkhorn and West Omaha down to Papillion and Gretna, and in Millard, La Vista and Bennington. These are the questions to put to any snow contractor before you sign, us included. Most of the answers belong in the contract, and some get worked out in the yard, like where the snow gets piled and how the edges get marked.

What counts as a snow event

Start with what brings a crew out. Get it in words you could point to after a storm, and make sure they tell you if a light dusting counts.

Find out what happens when it keeps snowing after the crew has been through, and if ice counts when there is no snow on top of it.

If someone in the house leaves for work early, mention it when you get the quote and ask what the contract says about when the driveway gets cleared. While you are on the subject, ask how the price is figured and if a heavy Omaha winter would change the bill.

What gets cleared

Everything around the driveway is where a homeowner and a crew can end up remembering the deal differently, so have the contract name every surface.

Find out if the walk to the front door and the steps up to it are included, along with any parking pad beside the garage. Ask what, if anything, gets spread on the concrete.

The end of the driveway gets its own question. A street plow that comes through after the crew has left can push a packed ridge across it, and that ridge can leave a car stuck in the driveway. Ask if clearing that ridge is in the contract.

Where the snow goes

Decide where the snow goes now, and show the spot to whoever quotes the job. Whatever comes off the driveway sits there until it melts.

Snow pushed onto a shrub bed weighs down the branches. A pile against the house melts along the foundation, into eastern Nebraska clay that holds water.

The better spot sends the melt away from the house and off the driveway. In freeze thaw weather, melt that runs back across the concrete in the afternoon can be ice by morning.

Ask that the piles at the end of the driveway stay low enough to see over when you back out into the street.

Marking the edges before the ground closes

Under snow, the edge of a driveway disappears, and whoever clears it is working from memory and markers.

Think about what sits along yours. A bed edge, a strip of sod, a walkway or steps that meet the concrete, a low retaining wall, a shrub planted tight to the driveway, the mailbox at the street. We plant and build most of the things on that list.

Markers go into open ground far more easily than into frozen clay, so get them in this fall. Ask who sets them and when, and what happens if something along the edge gets hit.

Walk the edge with whoever sets them and point out anything that could break.

Who you call when it snows

Settle how you reach the crew before you need to. Find out who you call or text when the driveway gets missed or a car is parked in the way, and who picks up while it is still snowing. Save that contact in your phone now.

If you are away when the crew comes through, ask how you will know the driveway was done.

Putting the answers on paper

Before you sign, hold the contract up against these questions. That goes for ours as well, and for the quote Hunter gives after seeing your driveway. If an answer you got out loud is missing from the paper, ask for it to be written in.