Winter means sub-zero temperatures – and sub-zero temperatures mean snow. While snow is fun in the beginning, it soon accumulates and turns into a chore that needs to be got rid of for clear roads, and driveways, and even in sidewalks.
You would face problems going into the driveway, and wouldn’t find it easy when you’re going to put the garbage outside. Thankfully, doing simple things can help you to get rid of this problem.
Commonly Used Methods
There are different methods that people use to get rid of this problem. Some methods merely prevent skidding on the ice, while others can get rid of it. Here are some of the commonly used methods that you may want to know about as well.
- Sprinkling sugar or dry syrup on the ice. Though this might prevent slipping, it has a severe disadvantage – wherever you enter next, you will be making your floor all sugary.
- Using sand to prevent slipping. While sand does help prevent slipping, it has the same problem – it can be notoriously difficult to completely get off your boots.
- Some people also use table salt. However, this salt is said to cause negative environmental repercussions as enormous amounts of salt tend to get washed into water bodies after winter.
- Rock salt is another kind of popular method, albeit it can get expensive as well as hard to come by, especially before a storm is due.
Most of such methods prevent slipping but do not get rid of the ice for you.
Using Water Softener Salt
Just because everyone is using the conventional methods, doesn’t mean you have to too. There is a much better alternative available which is not only cheaper but also extremely effective – water softener salt.
So, if you’re wondering does water softener salt melt ice, it does, and here are a few methods that you might just want to use during winters.
What Exactly Is Water Softener Salt?
The typical function of water softener salt is to remove minerals in the water supply. These minerals need to be removed because they end up causing a lack of suds and also leave a white-colored crust on your plumbing fixtures. While this salt is used in drinking water, it does not in any way make it salty. Water softener salt is used for the purpose of removing hard minerals for your water.
How Does It Work?
Since water softener salt is used to remove hard minerals in drinking water, it is made extremely safe for consumption by humans as well as pets. Thus water softener salt as a way of melting ice is equal in safety to alternatives like rock salt which are advertised as being ‘pet-friendly’ and are expensive because of it. So, you get a higher standard of safety without having to shell out a dime.
Where Can You Get It?
You can buy water softener salt at your neighborhood hardware store (the same place you might pick up a new saw). You can buy it in bulk, and it lasts for a long time. It is also extremely cheap when compared to the other alternatives.
On an even comparison, it seems that water softener salt is the best way to melt ice in hard winter months, and it ends up keeping you safe as well as saving you money.
3 Responses
Why does it melt the ice though? what makes the water softner salt melt the ice?
Anything that dissolves into water may change the melting point of the water. When someone says “salt”, chemically they do mean sodium chloride (table salt) but chemically, they can mean multiple things, such as calcium chloride, potassium chloride, magnesium chloride, and others, even without chlorides. usually when these mix with snow they dissolve into the water in the snow lowering the melting point and causing the salt-water mixture to become liquid and not ice.
Salt water has a lower freezing point than fresh water, so when you sprinkle salt over snow it creates a layer of salt Water that melts the snow above it.