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Pittsburgh, PA: Top Things to Know About Storage

Lubabah Memon | March 24, 2016 @ 12:15 PM

Weather Extremes

Pittsburgh is in the humid continental climate zone, which means it has four distinct seasons.  Winter is cold with tons of snow, spring and fall are usually mild, and summer is very hot and humid.  This can mean a lot when you are thinking of putting your things into storage.  To cope with the winter, we recommend that you find a storage facility that has covered and heated loading and unloading zones.  It’s actually pretty common for storage facilities on the east coast to have these to make things easier for their tenants.  You can’t always plan trips to your storage unit around the weather, so it would be helpful to have some protection against Pittsburgh’s bitter cold temperatures when you’re making a trip down to your unit.

Another very important thing you need is a climate controlled unit.  Pittsburgh is located in the midst of three rivers, and it can get extremely humid.  Humidity can damage your belongings in various ways, including causing rust on your metals, growing mold on your wooden objects, and ruining any wine you may have stored.  Almost all 44 storage facilities in Pittsburgh offer climate controlled units, and it’s a quick fix to potentially big problems, so be sure to take advantage of it.

Downtown Never Sleeps

Downtown Pittsburgh hosts a plethora of events throughout the course of the year, so it keeps storage facilities very busy.  The Three Rivers Arts Festival is a ten day event that begins on the first Friday in June.  The festival is one of the biggest art festivals in the area and hosts a series of performing and visual arts attractions that are free to attend and open to the public.  People from all over the states fly in to attend the vibrant event in which artists can display their artwork in booths, food vendors come to sell their finest food, and everyone is just there to have a great time.  The event takes place in Point State Park near Three Rivers, which is in downtown.

The hosts of this festival keep storage facilities in the area very busy in the weeks leading up to the festival.  They need to store things like the booths, tents, and electrical equipment needed for those booths so that they have them ready for the event.  They also need to store things in climate controlled units because of the strong chance that the humidity will damage the things that they are storing.  If you were planning to put your stuff in storage for the summer, be aware that storage units will be filling up quickly in downtown, so don’t leave it to the last minute!

Regatta

The Three Rivers Regatta is a three day event that takes place at the beginning of July.  This event is filled with bands playing throughout the day, food vendors, fireworks, jet ski stunts, a vintage power boats exhibit, a nomadic indie crafts marketplace, and face painting.  There are multiple events going on at the same time, so it can get a little crazy, but that’s what makes it so much fun.  Storage facilities actually get a feel for the madness of the event because of the storage needs of the vendors and hosts of the Regatta.  People participating in the powerboat exhibit need a place to store their boats in the days leading up to and during the event.  Vendors of the crafts marketplace need a safe place to keep all of their items so they can put them on display during the event.  It looks like storage facilities are busy in July as well!

Traffic and its Causes

As you can see, these events keep the downtown area very busy over the summer.  So what about the rest of the year?  Pittsburgh is full of huge sports fans, so people are attending games throughout the year.  The Steelers, Pittsburgh’s football team, keep fans busy from September through February; hockey season goes from October to April, so fans of the Penguins are out and about during that time; the Pirates begin their baseball season as hockey season ends, filling up the months from April to October.  Downtown is busy during all times of the year with events, and when you add regular rush hour traffic, which is usually from 7:30am-9:00am and 6:00pm-7:30pm, construction, and crazy drivers to the mix, there’s not much time for you to get to your storage unit without having to sit in horrible traffic.  Our solution to this is to opt for storage at a facility that allows for 24-hour access to your unit.  Planning around events, traffic, and possible road closures will make you miserable.  Instead of putting yourself through that, take the easy way out and have an easily accessible storage unit.

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