It’s Thursday, the fourth in our string of really unpleasantly frigid mornings. Sunlight has been good all week but the temperature has rarely ventured even briefly above freezing which means all that ice we got at the end of the weekend is still with us.
Being a one-legged geezer, one of my least favorite things in life is a slippery stairway, and the Lair’s entrance is in shade constantly from sometime in September to sometime in April, so I didn’t know when the ice would ever melt off the stairs on its own. Ice, unlike snow, is difficult to remove from wooden steps by mechanical means.
Fortunately it’s extremely easy to remove by chemical means. The desert didn’t teach me this; I’m from Michigan.
Being an unmutual hoarder, I’ve got a bucket full of 25 pounds of table salt. I’ve never used it, and to be honest I don’t recall why I bought it. For seasoning, I always use the little one-pound cylinders available very cheap at the dollar store, and I always keep three or four on hand.
Salt is also useful for melting ice. It works even in the shade, even when the temperature is in the teens. The melted ice mixes with the salt to form brine, which has a much higher freezing point. Just saying.
Salt will also damage the wood, eventually. I bought a five pound sack of “ice melt” salt stuff when I first moved here. The steps to my house were very steep, narrow and impossible to use when icy. The next year I had a small deck built, but it didn’t help with the ice problem much. I read the label on the bag and discovered it was not recommended for wood decks or steps, unsealed cement, or many other surfaces. You can use it on bare dirt, but nothing will grow there ever again.
I tried using the stuff on the steps anyway, figuring I could wash the salt stuff off before it could do too much damage. The salt stuff didn’t help a whole lot. As soon as the ice melted a little, and new snow or rain accumulated, the ice was just as thick and slick as ever. So I quit using it and went back to scraping the slush off when the ice melted a bit… and wearing those spiked rubber things slipped on the soles of my boots. Those work well, even though they are a pain in the butt.
Now I need to get someone to do a serious sanding and refinishing job on the deck where the salt stuff damaged it. One of these days….
True, of course, and important if you have a proper deck you’d rather not see ruined in a single season. But my treads are just raw 2X6’s, and easily replaced even if they take some fatal damage. I’m much harder to repair.
And as a side benefit, your steps will me goiter-free and more intelligent . . .
“In the U.S. in the early 20th century, goiter was especially prevalent in the region around the Great Lakes and the Pacific Northwest. David Murray Cowie, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Michigan, led the U.S. to adopt the Swiss practice of adding sodium iodide or potassium iodide to table and cooking salt. On May 1, 1924, iodized salt was sold commercially in Michigan. By the fall of 1924, Morton Salt Company began distributing iodized salt nationally. There was a gradual increase in average intelligence of 1 standard deviation, 15 points, in iodine-deficient areas and 3.5 points nationally.”
😉
. . . will BE goiter-free . . .
Spell-check doesn’t catch everything . . . perhaps I need more iodine.
So true! I’m not so easy to repair myself. LOL And, of course, you don’t get the consistent below zero temperatures that we usually do. None so far this year, but it ain’t over until the fat lady sings sometime in late March or, occasionally, later. This has been one of the more pleasant winters I’ve spent here.
Kentucky, I totally did not know that. Never did know specifically what “iodized” salt is for.
Water softener salt $4 for 20 pounds.
I like it because it has big crunchy chunks for traction.
OT, global warming ain’t all bad. Yesterday it was almost 40 above while the record low of just a few years ago was minus twenty friggin’ nine.
We occasionally salt (or sand), but the real hero is hardwood ash. It has (potassium, I think) salts in it, & works immediately by way of the ‘edginess’ of the ash particles themselves. I converted a discarded lawn spreader to drop the ash in a nice 18″ wide path. For stairs, we just fling ’em. They’re messy to track in, but not falling on my arse is worth the crud. This is NH, so we get ice!
The whole story . . .
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iodised_salt
I “fixed” the Brit spellings in my quote.
🙂
Our secondary entrance has 3 small steps outside that the previous owner covered with ceramic floor tile. Talk about slick as snot in rain or snow. For those, I put down kitty litter for traction and have thrown out a little woodstove ash. I did have some rock salt that I put out at the main entrance and it melted the snow like a charm for the walkway after I shoveled down a ways. I never thought of table salt. Good Hermitty hint.
It’s been kind of an unusual winter here with consistent cold, but thankfully not brutal cold. Although the last 3 days have had daytime highs of 14*. There’s about 2 feet of accumulated snow that just isn’t melting, even in the intense sun at 8500′. It’s going to be a muddy messy spring if that ever arrives.
I mix sand and Ice Melt 50/50, even if the melting stops the sand will usually provide some traction.
One has to remember that this mix will stick to the boots and if you do not remove your boots, it track through the house.
One more thing, about any brine mix is very hard on dogs feet, especially if it is cold.