A well-built sign should look correct for a decade or more. Most of the ones that do not have failed for reasons that were entirely preventable with an hour of attention a year.
Clean it twice a year
Coastal BC deposits salt, and everywhere accumulates road film, pollen and organic growth. All of it dulls faces, stains finishes and — on illuminated signs — measurably reduces light output.
Use mild soap and water with a soft cloth or sponge. Rinse thoroughly. That is the whole procedure.
Avoid: solvents and ammonia-based glass cleaners on acrylic, which cause crazing. Abrasive pads on painted or brushed finishes. Pressure washing, which drives water past seals and lifts vinyl edges.
Check the illumination monthly
Look at your sign after dark once a month. It takes thirty seconds and it is the single most valuable thing on this list.
A single dark module is a small repair. Left alone, the adjacent modules run harder and the failure spreads. A sign with three dead letters says something about your business that you would not choose to say deliberately.
Inspect the seals annually
Water ingress is the leading cause of premature failure in illuminated signage. Once a year, look at:
- Any point where a wire enters the sign — the sealant should be intact and flexible, not cracked
- The joint between the sign and the wall
- Trim cap and face retainers for lifted or gapped sections
- Drain holes at the bottom of cabinets, which block with debris and turn a can into a bucket
Clearing a blocked drain hole takes seconds and prevents a failure that costs hundreds.
Understand your components' lifespans
- LED modules: 50,000+ hours, roughly 11 years of dusk-to-dawn operation.
- Drivers: typically five to eight years — usually the first thing to need replacing.
- Acrylic faces: 10 to 15 years before noticeable yellowing.
- Vinyl graphics: five to seven years exterior, seven to ten interior.
- Powder-coated aluminium: 15 to 20 years.
- Vehicle wraps: five to seven years with hand washing.
Knowing these lets you budget rather than being surprised. A driver replacement in year six is expected maintenance, not a defect.
Vinyl and window graphics
Clean with mild soap and water, working from the centre outward rather than scrubbing at the edges — edges are where lifting starts. Never use a scraper or blade on vinyl.
If an edge does start to lift, deal with it immediately. A small lifted corner becomes a large peeled section within one wind-driven rainstorm.
After a storm
BC gets real wind. After a significant storm, check that letters are still level and tight, faces are seated in their retainers, and no fixings have loosened. Projecting and blade signs take the most load and deserve the closest look.
When to call rather than fix
Do call a professional for anything electrical, anything requiring a ladder above single-storey height, water inside a cabinet, or structural movement in a freestanding sign. The cost of a service call is trivial against the cost of a fall or an electrical fault.
Most manufacturers, ourselves included, offer scheduled maintenance programmes. For multi-site operators these are usually worth having — problems get caught on a routine visit rather than reported by a customer.