The rule on your sidewalk
Denver treats the sidewalk in front of your house as yours to clear. Once the snow stops falling, you have 24 hours to clear the public sidewalk along your property, including the sides of a corner lot and the ramps down to the street. Businesses get 4 hours. 9News has the details as the city explains them each winter.
Enforcement is by inspection, not by a camera. If an inspector finds snow or ice blocking the walk after the 24 hours, they leave a notice. They come back a day later, and if it’s still blocked there’s a fine, reported at $150. Most years the city gets more complaints than it has inspectors, so a notice usually follows a call to 311 from someone who couldn’t get past.
Two more rules can be easy to miss. Put the snow on your yard or the strip between the sidewalk and the street. Don’t put it in the street, where it can refreeze into a ridge that plows push back at you. Clear a path wide enough for a wheelchair or stroller. In practice, that means the whole sidewalk, not a boot-wide trench.
Why shoveling strains the heart
Shoveling looks like a chore. The body treats it as a workout done in the cold, and those two things together are the problem. Cold narrows the blood vessels and raises blood pressure. Lifting a loaded shovel with the arms, often while holding a breath, pushes heart rate and pressure up fast. The American Heart Association, in a warning it repeats most winters, says hundreds of people in the US die during or just after shoveling snow each year.
The risk isn’t spread evenly. For most people, a sidewalk is fine. The people the association asks not to shovel at all are those who have had a heart attack or stroke, and those with the usual risk factors: high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, smoking, or a mostly sedentary life. If that’s you, hand this job to someone else.
For everyone else, the advice is about pace. Push the snow instead of lifting it where you can. Take small loads. Stop every 10 or 15 minutes and stand up straight. Skip the big breakfast and the drink before you start. And if you feel pressure in the chest, pain spreading to the arm or jaw, dizziness or a racing heartbeat, stop and call 911. Don’t push through those.
Technique that saves your back
Fresh snow weighs a fraction of what it will weigh at noon after the sun has worked on it. If you can get out early, the same sidewalk takes half the effort.
- Push first, lift last. Run the shovel down the walk like a plow and pile at the end. Lift only what the push leaves behind.
- Bend the knees, not the waist. Keep the shovel close to the body and step toward where the snow is going instead of twisting to throw it.
- Small scoops. Half a shovel of wet snow is plenty. Full scoops are how backs go out.
- Switch sides. Trade hands every few minutes so one side of your body isn’t doing all the work.
- Read the ice melt bag. Products differ in the temperatures they work at and their effects on concrete and pets. Spread a thin layer after clearing, not on top of snow.
A plan for the winter
The storms that cause trouble are the ones that land on a workday or when you’re away. A plan written in October beats a scramble in January.
- Decide now who’ll clear the walk when you can’t. It could be a neighbor, a teenager on the block or a service you’ve already lined up.
- Keep the shovel, the ice melt and a pair of gloves by the door you actually use, not in the shed behind a snowdrift.
- Clear the path to your own door and the public walk, then the fire hydrant if one is on your lot, then the driveway.
- Know your snow pile spot. It shouldn’t block the sidewalk, the street, a storm drain or a neighbor’s view at the corner.
- Check on anyone on your block who shouldn’t be shoveling. A cleared walk is the easiest favor there is.
None of this is complicated. The rule gives you a day, the body asks for small loads and breaks, and the sidewalk is the one part of your property the whole neighborhood walks on.