Photo by Amanda Kirkpatrick
Transitional exterior home photo in Austin

Fu-Tung Cheng, CHENG Design • Interior View of Front Pivot Door and 12" thick concrete wall, House 6 concrete and wood home House 6, is Cheng Design’s sixth custom home project, was redesigned and constructed from top-to-bottom. The project represents a major career milestone thanks to the unique and innovative use of concrete, as this residence is one of Cheng Design’s first-ever ‘hybrid’ structures, constructed as a combination of wood and concrete. Photography: Matthew Millman

Example of a cottage beige wood gable roof design in Denver

jeremy bittermann
Contemporary exterior home idea in Portland

Organized Living freedomRail adjusts instantly to fit any closet storage need. Add shoe storage to one wall simply by adding one hanging rail at the top, vertical uprights and shelves. Learn more about freedomRail at http://organizedliving.com/home/products/freedomrail

Large farmhouse gray two-story wood gable roof photo in DC Metro with a metal roof

Concrete can be made to look like any substance. Tile, stone, wood, brick, etc. With unlimited color options, Ky-Kan Coatings can transform any room in your home or business using lightweight, beautiful concrete.

Nick Poutsma
Example of a small trendy wooden u-shaped wood railing staircase design in San Francisco with wooden risers

Wind sculpture by Lyman Whitaker. Photo by Jay Sifford.
Photo of an eclectic landscaping in Charlotte.

Example of a large classic hallway design in Tampa with yellow walls

jeremy bittermann
Contemporary exterior home idea in Portland

Inspiration for a mid-sized transitional wooden u-shaped staircase remodel in New York with painted risers

Details Matter! The hand crafted Baker's Table was defined with its plank back at the open shelf, the inset drawers, simple square legs and tongue and groove joinery. Each element of a design should speak volumes to how you LOVE to LIVE! What are you searching for? CMC Design Studio LLC is here to make it happen!

This previously unused attic space is now a sauna/yoga room. The left sauna wall follows the attic rafters down diagonally to allow a wider space for leg room on the twin sauna benches.

Leonid Furmansky
Inspiration for a small contemporary l-shaped concrete floor and gray floor open concept kitchen remodel in Austin with white cabinets, quartz countertops, wood backsplash, stainless steel appliances, an island, gray countertops, a farmhouse sink and shaker cabinets

Taragano Design & Build completed this stair landing as part of a whole house remodel in Contra Costa County, California. Split level houses have a circulation problem at the level change. The stair is usually enclosed, the landing is a dead corner, and the two floors read as separate houses. Here the enclosure came out and the stair was rebuilt as a wide open platform, so the level change becomes part of the room rather than a passage through it. Drawers were built into the step returns. On a stair that wide, the carriage volume is substantial and it would otherwise be sealed dead space. Putting storage there is the difference between an architectural gesture and a piece of the house that earns its footprint. The sliding door lets the upper hall close off without a swing arc, which matters at a landing where a hinged door would need clear floor area the stair does not have. Everything is rift white oak, including the treads, the risers, and the door. Running one species across the stair and the flooring means nothing announces where the millwork ends and the floor begins. Licensed general contractor, CSLB #1143420. Diamond Certified.

Every year, the same thing happens. The first real snowfall arrives, demand for de-icing materials spikes overnight, and the businesses that waited too long find themselves scrambling for supply at the worst possible moment. Facility managers, property owners, contractors, and municipalities all depend on a steady supply of salt and ice melt to keep their properties safe and operational through winter. The ones who plan ahead sail through. The ones who don't pay more, wait longer, and take on real risk. Sourcing de-icing materials well is not complicated, but it does require thinking ahead and understanding the options. The choices you make about what to buy, how to buy it, and who to buy it from have a direct effect on your costs, your reliability, and your ability to keep people safe when conditions turn dangerous. This article lays out what matters. Why Your Choice of Supplier Matters More Than You Think It is easy to treat de-icing material as a commodity, something you grab whenever you need it without much thought about where it comes from. That works fine until the moment it doesn't, usually in the middle of a storm when everyone needs supply at once and the casual sources have run dry. At that point, the relationships you built before the season become the difference between staying stocked and being stuck. Reliable supply is the whole game in winter operations. A property that runs out of ice melt during a storm faces safety hazards, liability exposure, and disruption, none of which can wait for a back-ordered shipment. This is why establishing relationships with dependable rock salt suppliers before the season starts is one of the smartest moves a facility manager or contractor can make. It locks in supply, often locks in better pricing, and removes a major source of mid-winter stress. The lesson here is to treat sourcing as a planning decision rather than a last-minute errand. The businesses that come through winter smoothly are almost always the ones that secured their supply chain early, chose suppliers who could actually deliver when it counted, and never had to gamble on finding material during a shortage. Reliability bought in advance is far cheaper than scarcity paid for in a crisis. Bagged or Bulk: Matching the Material to the Job One of the first practical decisions is whether to buy de-icing material in bags or in bulk, and the right answer depends entirely on the operation. Each format has clear advantages, and many operations end up using both for different purposes. Bagged material offers convenience, control, and easy storage. It is simple to handle, easy to distribute to different locations or crews, straightforward to store without special equipment, and convenient for spot application by hand. It suits smaller properties, businesses without bulk storage, and situations where portion control and tidiness matter. Bulk material, on the other hand, tends to make sense for large operations that go through high volumes, where buying in quantity lowers the per-unit cost and the operation has the equipment and space to store and handle it. The tradeoff is between the convenience and flexibility of bags and the volume economics of bulk. For many operations, the right approach is a mix: bulk for the high-volume core of the work and bags for flexibility, spot treatment, and locations where bulk handling is impractical. The key is to match the format to how the material will actually be stored, moved, and applied, rather than defaulting to one or the other out of habit. Thinking this through in advance avoids both the waste of over-buying bulk you can't handle and the expense of relying entirely on bags for a large operation. Rock Salt Is Not Your Only Option Rock salt, or sodium chloride, is the workhorse of winter de-icing for good reason. It is effective, widely available, and cost-efficient, which makes it the default choice for most operations most of the time. But it has limits, and understanding the alternatives helps you choose the right material for the conditions you actually face. The most important limitation is temperature. Rock salt becomes less effective as temperatures drop, and in genuinely cold conditions it can struggle to do the job at all. This is where alternatives come in. Calcium chloride, for instance, works at much lower temperatures than rock salt and acts quickly, which makes it valuable when conditions are severe or when fast melting matters. Operations that face hard freezes or need dependable performance in extreme cold often keep calcium chloride for sale on hand for exactly those situations, using it alongside rock salt rather than instead of it. The practical approach is to understand the conditions your property faces and stock accordingly. For many operations, rock salt handles the bulk of the work while a faster, colder-rated material like calcium chloride covers the extreme days when ordinary salt falls short. Matching the material to the temperature and the urgency of the situation is what separates an operation that stays ahead of winter from one that is constantly reacting to it. Securing Your Supply Before the Season Knowing what to buy is only half the equation. The other half is making sure you can actually get it when you need it, which means securing your supply before winter arrives rather than after it has already started. Timing is one of the most underrated factors in winter operations. The logic is simple. Demand for de-icing materials is highly seasonal and spikes sharply during storms, when everyone needs supply simultaneously. Prices and availability both move against the buyer at exactly those moments. By contrast, planning ahead, estimating your needs and arranging supply before the season, puts you in a far stronger position. Working with established rock salt suppliers ahead of time means your material is accounted for before the rush, often at better pricing and with the confidence that it will be there when the first storm hits. This kind of planning also lets you think clearly rather than react under pressure. You can estimate your seasonal needs based on your property and past winters, decide on the right mix of materials and formats, and arrange storage in advance. Operations that do this consistently spend less, worry less, and never find themselves making frantic calls during a storm. The effort of planning ahead is modest, and the payoff in reliability and cost savings is substantial. Storing and Handling What You Buy Securing supply is not much use if the material degrades before you can use it, which makes proper storage and handling an important and often overlooked part of the equation. De-icing materials are sensitive to moisture, and poor storage can turn a good supply into a clumped, hardened mess that is difficult to apply. The fundamentals are straightforward. Keep material dry and protected from moisture, since salt and ice melt readily absorb water and can harden if exposed. Store it in a way that suits the format, whether that means a proper bulk storage area or a dry space for stacked bags. Keep it accessible, so crews can get to it quickly when a storm hits and time is short. And handle it with the right equipment for the format and volume, which protects both the material and the people working with it. None of this is complicated, but neglecting it can undermine even a well-planned supply. Good storage practices protect the investment you made in securing supply early. There is little point in arranging your materials ahead of the season only to have them degrade before use. Treating storage and handling as part of the overall plan, rather than an afterthought, ensures that the material you secured is actually usable when the moment comes. It is the final link in a supply chain built to perform under winter conditions. Estimating How Much You Actually Need One question trips up operations of every size: how much de-icing material to buy. Order too little and you risk running short during a storm. Order too much and you tie up money and storage space in material you may not use. Getting the estimate reasonably right is a meaningful part of sourcing well. Several factors shape the answer. The size and type of the areas you treat, sidewalks, lots, entrances, and drive lanes, set the baseline for how much material each application consumes. The local climate matters too, since colder regions and those with frequent snowfall go through far more material than milder ones. Application frequency depends on how often storms hit and how quickly surfaces need to be cleared, which varies with the kind of property and the expectations of the people who use it. And the type of material plays a role, since different products are applied at different rates. Past experience is often the best guide. Operations that track what they used in previous winters, adjusted for the size of the property and the severity of the season, can estimate their needs with reasonable confidence. For newer operations without that history, it helps to plan conservatively and to work with a supplier who can replenish stock reliably, so that a low estimate does not turn into a mid-storm shortage. The goal is not perfect precision but a sound, slightly cautious estimate paired with a dependable supply relationship. That combination lets an operation keep enough material on hand to handle the season without over-committing to volume it cannot store or use. Thinking this through before winter, rather than guessing during it, is one more way that planning ahead pays off when the snow starts to fall. The Bottom Line Sourcing de-icing materials well comes down to a few straightforward principles: plan ahead, choose reliable suppliers before the season, match your materials and formats to your actual needs and conditions, and store what you buy properly. The operations that follow these principles move through winter with confidence, while those that improvise pay more and take on needless risk. Winter is predictable in one respect: it arrives every year, and demand for de-icing material spikes the moment it does. The businesses that prepare for that reality, rather than being surprised by it, are the ones that keep their properties safe, their costs controlled, and their operations running no matter what the season throws at them. A little foresight before the first snowfall pays off through every storm that follows.

Design rendering for a rear home addition in Pleasant Hill, California, by Taragano Design & Build. The addition is placed at the corner of the rear elevation rather than centered on it. That position was chosen to protect the existing windows along the back of the house. Extending straight off the middle would have added a room and darkened two others behind it, which is the most common way an addition makes a house worse while making it bigger. Set to the side, the new volume gets glass on two exposures and leaves the original rooms their daylight. It also creates a sheltered corner between old and new, and that corner becomes the patio without any structure built to define it. The roof runs as its own gable rather than tying into the existing pitch. On a house with a busy roof line already, extending the original would have meant a valley condition that collects debris and complicates drainage. A separate gable sheds independently and reads as a deliberate wing. Hardscape was planned to move water as much as to move people. The paver patio drains toward a rock swale rather than back toward the foundation, which matters in Contra Costa where expansive soils make foundation drainage the thing that determines whether the work holds up. Licensed general contractor, CSLB #1143420. Diamond Certified.