If whilst repairing your property's pavement, a contractor has made one or more temporary trenches in it, these suggestions could be useful. Read in for more information about pavement trenches.

Check the condition of the trenches' covers regularly

It is essential to keep these trenches covered during the periods when the paving contractor doesn't need to access them, as this will greatly reduce the chances of anyone falling into them and will also prevent unwanted debris (like leaves and refuse) from accumulating inside them.

It is equally important to not simply put these covers on the trenches and forget about them until the next time the paving contractor needs to remove them. Instead, you should check the covers' condition regularly. If the pavement is on a busy commercial property and dozens of people will be walking across this covered trench each day, you should check the covers once in the morning and once in the evening. When you do this, you should look for indications that the covers might be damaged (such as cracks across the surface).

If you discover that one of them has been damaged, you should remove the cover (because if someone walks over a cracked cover, it might break and lead to them falling the hole beneath it), put up a free-standing safety sign by the uncovered trench that warns people of its presence and keep this in place until you have bought a replacement cover.

Be prepared to drain the trenches if it rains

Many pavement trench covers are not watertight. If this is the case with the covers you'll be using, you should be prepared to drain the pavement trenches when it rains. If the trenches fill with rainwater, this water could soak into the pavement's exposed base and sub-base and damage the parts that were not undergoing repair. This would then increase your paving contractor's workload. Additionally, this water damage could also make the parts of the pavement that surround the trenches unstable and, therefore, unsafe to walk on.

The way in which you will need to drain the trenches will depend on how deep they are. If they're just two or three feet deep, for example, you may be able to simply kneel down on the pavement and scoop the rainwater out with a large bucket. If however, the trenches are deeper than this, you might need to rent a commercial wet-dry vacuum and use this to drain them.