Reply to Snow shoveling 2026: I did it wrong

Forum Index » Off-Topic

Reply to "Snow shoveling 2026: I did it wrong"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Just got back in after chopping/shoveling my walkway/steps, which were totally covered by thick/hard snow. This was my third time shoveling. I did this totally wrong and am annoyed:

Bought two 25-lb bags of snow melt on Thursday. Salted steps, sidewalk, back deck Friday night. Snow starts overnight Sat. Sunday morning shoveled/cleared all areas. Salted again. Went out and did a mini-shovel Sun afternoon. Woke up this morning and it’s like I never touched anything, which is just accumulation, I get. But the snowpack this morning was so hard I had to chop through it with my shovel to break it up to shovel. I’m also now out of salt.

[b]Did I prep too early?[/b] I’m a new homeowner fwiw so help me do this better next year! Thank you!

- Now inside and grumbling into my coffee [/quote]

20-year Michigander. The answer to your question in bold is yes.

You went wrong in using the salt too early. There is no reason to salt pre-emptively when what is going to come out of the sky first is snow. Let it snow, remove as much snow as you can, and if you still have ice on pavement, then salt.

Salt is not a snow remover. It does not prevent snow buildup.

A lot depends on what kidn of snow melt you got, as well. Many of them do not work at all below 20 degrees, and since those are the temps we've had, you won't get much benefit. Calcium chloride works down to zero, but it's not pet-safe.

Finally, in addition to your shovel, you need an ice chopper. That is what you can use to break up the layer of hard snowpack/ice if you don't want to use excessive salt. [/quote]

Riddle me this. We removed the powdery stuff then the 2-3 inch layer of freezing rain was impossible to remove.
My dad didn't remove the powdery stuff (he's old) and when I went over to shovel, it was easy for the shovel to break through the crust and then I could lift it all away because of the powder! It wasn't easy but #2 was greatly preferable to #1![/quote]

You're exactly right. You need powdery snow or salt brine under the ice. Salt on top of ice can help, but it needs to dig its way down to the bottom to be useful, and the cold of the weather is, the slower that happens. [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics