Discussions

So I live in the country, but have a neighbour about 100 feet on both side of my driveway, with the massive snowfall today, I’m going to need to snow blow my driveway for my wife to work in the am! How early is too early to attack this snow? Like 4am?

Depending on your town there may be bylaws relating to that which you’d have to check . 4am is really early though. However if you have to clean your driveway a bit so that you can get to work then I’d go and do it. I’ve never known anyone complain in my town in that situation.

Maybe I haven't been paying attention but I didn't think we got enough snow to crate much of an issue driving pretty much anything. Maybe you're in a spot where drifting creates an issue.  
 
Anyway, if you have to do it to get out I don't see as you have much of a choice. Your neighbors will let you know if it was too early.

I think 4am is too early. I wake up at 6am during the week to get ready for work, so if I was awoken by a neighbour blowing snow on a day that I'm not forced to be up I would not be pleased.  
 
That being said, the snow removal company I use does not come before 6am. The snow removal company for the neighbours across the street usually come later in the day, and has been as late as 9:45pm. So I would be led to believe 6am-10pm is fair game.  
 
Most important would be getting your wife to work so if you need to blow it at 4am to get her there on time I'm sure people would understand, as long as its not a regular occurrence.

I know city of brandon has a noise bylaw..i believe between 10pm-7am, unless its commercial. Our street have a neighbour that would go out and snowblow his driveway at 3am, 4am, 5am. We complained to authorities about him and he got a warning. So nothing has happened ever since, but the next time he would be fined.  
 
IMO... I wouldnt do anything prior to 7am. 6am is early as well. But out i the country maybe ok.

Blowing snow would surely go against our RM noise bylaw (no noise 10 pm to 7 am) but even then you are fine at 4 am as long as no one complains. Depends if your RM has a bylaw?

there’s something called common courtesy when you have neighbors in my opinion. On a weekend I try to wait until 9am. Now if there’s so much snow that immobilizes everything then all bets are off. Nothing more pleasing than being woken by the grader plowing the street

It would be common courtesy to wait as long as possible but if you or your spouse need to get to work especially an essential service worker (thank you for that) it should not be a problem. It is not like you are going to be plowing all night and how often do you have to plow. We haven't had that many storms. With this storm I could feel the temps dropping this morning when doing chores so get it done when it is the warmest.

Well plenty of snow west of Brandon and we’ve used snow blower more this winter then the last 2 so depends on where you live.  
And it has already been done again this morning-never an issue when neighbours use snow blower around here were so used to the trains all hours of the night no one would likely pay any attention to a snowblower. Our neighbour was out at 4 this morning got called into work. So guess just depends on what kind of neighbours you have and we have great neighbours!  
And I’m not complaining about trains the tracks were here long before we moved here  
 
Edited by Mac72, 2022-01-08 11:17:25

The way the wind is howling here I doubt anyone would hear the blower. My practical answer would be not to blow before the wind slows down, but it depends on your neighbors and if you need to go to work you need to go to work.

As others have said, if you need to push/blow snow in order to get to work, I'd go ahead and do that whenever it needs to be done. Maybe don't do any more snow removal than necessary to get out though???  
 
I have grain hauling to do next week. My tractor is parked outside and definitely doesn't like starting below -25ºC, even when plugged in! I watched the temps pretty close as they creeped up yesterday morning. As soon as they started to drop around 12:30, I went and started the tractor. Big 4WD with 14ft blade. Took me until 7pm to push out 4 bin yards and around the houses in our main yard. I was surprised by how much snow there was. I thought it had been blowing more than snowing and was only expecting a few drifts. The snow piles easily tripled in size from what they were after the Dec 27 storm!  
 
Andrew