With winter comes snow, and with snow comes a frozen, snow-covered driveway that can make going about in your vehicle a hassle. Your employer won’t let you call it a day off when it snows unless there’s a snowstorm. It means that a snowy driveway won’t serve as a good excuse to stay home. This leaves you with one option – deicing your driveway so that you can pull your car out of the driveway easily. One of the most commonly used deicers is rock salt. Simply sprinkling the driveway with salt can prevent the formation of ice. Rock salt is quite an effective deicer. Most importantly, it’s cheap and readily available. However, it can have some unfavorable side effects, which may leave you looking for deicer alternatives that have lesser damaging effects and are equally effective at deicing your driveway.
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⦁ Urea
Another highly effective deicer alternate is urea (the common garden fertilizer). Urea doesn’t melt the ice as quickly as salt does, but it provides excellent traction. Urea is fertilizer but can be used as a deicer. It won’t pit your concrete, harm your pets, or corrode metal which is what makes it a better deicing option than ice. However, urea contains a lot of nitrogen which can be very harmful to plants. You’ve got to keep it away from your garden where it could get absorbed in the soil.
⦁ Use A Shovel
You can use urea or salt in very small quantities to loosen up the ice and then use a shovel to get the ice off your driveway. This is one of the simplest and safest ways to deice your driveway. It poses no harm to the environment. The only problem with this deicing method is that it’s very time-consuming and quite tiring. You can also shovel the snow off the driveway before you drive your car over it or have people walk over it which could make it tight and compact and hence difficult to get rid of.
⦁ Pour Hot Water
If you don’t want to use any sort of deicing chemicals to deice your driveway, simply pour hot water over the driveway and use a shovel to pick the loosened ice from the driveway. It does take longer to clear the driveway, but it’s one of the most effective and least harmful deicing techniques.
⦁ Buy A Snow Blower
Another deicer alternative for your driveway is a snowblower. When you use a snowblower, there’s absolutely no need to apply any sort of deicing chemicals. Snowblowers are powerful electric or gas-powered equipment that can blow the snow off your driveway and keep them clear for movement,
⦁ Invest In A Heated Driveway
If it snows heavily in your area and you don’t want to play any part in harming the environment with a chemical deicer, you should consider investing in a heated driveway. It sure is a hefty investment, but you’ll be sorted for good. A heated driveway will melt the snow and prevent the formation of tougher black ice, saving you the trouble and time that would otherwise go into shoveling the snow and ice off your driveway.
⦁ Snow-Melt Mats
A cheaper alternative to a heated driveway is a snow-melt mat. These are heating mats that you spread over your driveway. They heat up and melt the ice without the need for any deicers. They work in a way similar way to heated driveways, but you don’t have to pull the entire driveway off to install them. These are impromptu mats that you spread when it snows and store them away when the season changes. Who knew you could get rid of the ice on the driveway without salt or chemical deicers? Well, now that you do know, you should try to choose one of these alternative methods and reduce your contribution to harming the environment in ways that salt is known to be associated with.
