Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We just bought our first home last month, and the builder sent us an e-mail not to salt the driveway, but to put sand down. How necessary do you think the sand will be? I don't get off work until 3:30.

He doesn't want you to salt the driveway because a year from now you will have massive cracks in it if you use salt or ice melt.

OP here. Yes, he specifically said if we use salt, we will have big cracks in the driveway!

Anonymous wrote:DH is out right now putting down some salt/ice melt to hopefully forestall the craziness. He'll shovel before bed tonight and hopefully this will help keep the amount down. But honestly nothing is going to really matter if we get 20 in. Sand is useless at this point as it's just for traction.

Yeah cuz all that salt is going to do is make the bottom layer really heavy and harder to shovel.

Anonymous wrote:We just bought our first home last month, and the builder sent us an e-mail not to salt the driveway, but to put sand down. How necessary do you think the sand will be? I don't get off work until 3:30.

He doesn't want you to salt the driveway because a year from now you will have massive cracks in it if you use salt or ice melt.

Please, please don't just dump salt everywhere before we get 18+ inches of BLOWING snow. It is POINTLESS and it is not good for the environment. Once everything has been shoveled and you are trying to keep ice at bay next week, I get it. Still not good for the environment, but reasonable.

Colorado native here-- if HOA covers then you are fine. Put down some salt after they come through. For walkways best bet is to head out every 2-3 hours and shovel. If you get behind it is a huge pain. And for those who don't have HOA-- shovel the drive or my cheat was to run the car up and down the drive every few hours so I at least had grooves to get in and out.

If you have a concrete driveway salt is extremely corrosive and will "pit" the concrete and eventually, over several years, cause good size holes.

-Speaking from experience

I would go with salt too

DH is out right now putting down some salt/ice melt to hopefully forestall the craziness. He'll shovel before bed tonight and hopefully this will help keep the amount down. But honestly nothing is going to really matter if we get 20 in. Sand is useless at this point as it's just for traction.

Sand provides traction and salt melts things. Sand is less corrosive than salt. You can sand the walkway after its shoveled to get traction as stuff refreshes. No sense sanding before the snow.

Anonymous wrote:OP here. I forgot to mention that shoveling of our driveways and roadways is included in HOA.

Then open a bottle of wine and relax.

OP here. I forgot to mention that shoveling of our driveways and roadways is included in HOA.

Salt and sand have different functions. You don't really use sand instead of salt. Salt is going to help melt the snow. Sand will help you gain traction.

Honestly, with this much snow, nothing is going to make a difference in terms of melting. Just shovel it, as PP said.

nah. Pointless. Just shovel it.

What a mess that will be when it's over. At least salt washes away.

We do neither. Shovel it.

We just bought our first home last month, and the builder sent us an e-mail not to salt the driveway, but to put sand down. How necessary do you think the sand will be? I don't get off work until 3:30.