Winter, even when you’re in peak health, can be quite a test. The freezing temperatures, harsh winds, driving rain, creeping damp and dangerous ice can all take their physical toll on you. It’s a season which hits older people much harder. They don’t have the resilience to deal with the cold and can suffer badly from at times quite brief exposure.
Much the same can be said about your signage too. A new sign should endure the winter season fine, but over time the ability to shrug off the elements gets harder. After a few years signs will begin to develop minor faults. And the winters season will gleefully exploit them.
The same goes for the façade behind any signage. In far too many cases they are not checked before a sign is fitted. Which means they may well be long past their replacement date and can be a liability. Rather than support your sign they will struggle to cope with the weight and impact of bad weather. Putting your staff and customers at real risk of injury should the signage fixings fail.
For ageing signage, this winter could pose a very real threat to its service life. The storms of the last two years, followed by a damp squib of a summer has resulted in may harbouring high levels of damp within their construction and their supporting facias. If, as some meteorologists believe, we have a cold spell later this year then more signs will inevitably begin to fail.
Signs, age & the law
Caring for signage is mandated by the likes of Management of Health And Safety Regulations. As a minimum, it is acceptable to inspect the fixings of your signage annually. And a fully structural inspection every 3 years. But this applies to signs that are less than three-quarters into their lifecycle. Older signs should be inspected more often. For the simple reason that they are much more susceptible to failure.
If your signage has not had a fixings check for more than twelve months, or no full inspection since the pandemic, you should have this diarised urgently. The life expectancy of a typical external sign is ten years. So, if your signage is more than seven years old you need to consider having more frequent inspections for potentially critical issues. And remember, you are legally obliged to ensure only competent, experienced engineers undertake inspections.
The best way to solve ageing signage issues
If this makes the idea of having your signage inspected an impossible task, Cygnia is on hand to help. With the largest network of signage engineers in the UK, we are your lifeline to making sure your signage doesn’t fall foul of the bad weather ahead. Calling our team now will make sure even your ageing signs will be better placed to cope with whatever winter can throw at them. So, act now and contact us before your signs – especially the older ones – are hit hard this winter.
