A Tip for Shovelling Snow

If you find that snow starts sticking to your shovel wax it by rubbing with a candle. This will work even better if you heat the shovel with a blowlamp while waxing it.

I do the same with my garden spade when digging wet ground.

 

:hehe: What snow?

 

:tnp:

 

You could keep one in the car too

 

Could have told me that before I started this morning !!!
I`ve just finished it...
But the way its snowing at the moment you would not know it...

 

The snow here is so dry it won't stick to anything, not even itself. Tried to make a snowman for our little grandson today but it was impossible!

 

My plastic snow shovel broke on second use.
Why not cut out the shovel and use blowlamp on the snow?
Make a mess of cars paint though.
We've a good foot covering roads and garden in eggborough.

D

 

Last year we had quite hard packed snow and ice on the drive and I had to resort to a crowbar and pickaxe to break it up. I had the bright idea of trying my flame gun but it wasn't a success as although it thawed the ice, the water froze again quite quickly as the ground was so cold. A flame gun probably would work at present as although we've had a lot of the snow it hasn't been particularly cold (minus 3 at worst) and the ground under the snow isn't frozen.

 

I once tried to burn a hole in the ice on my pond with a blow lamp.

It doesn't work.

There is probably some scientific reason why it doesn't.?

 

Possibly, and I'm just guessing, the blowlamp only heats the water to just above 0C due to being a small heat source applied to a large amount of ice which may well be well below 0C. The surrounding ice will very quickly chill the thawed water to below freezing point again.
No doubt there's an equation to explain it, but I ain't got it.

I did make a discovery this evening while Googling - chlorine bleach works as a de-icer -

It works in two ways--by forming a solution with water ice whose freezing point is lower than water alone and by reacting with water to produce heat.


http://www.ehow.com/how_6058847_melt-ice-bleach.html#ixzz16tqtYgIf

 

I guess its the same reason that you cant solder pipes that contain water, the water just conducts the heat away.
Are you suggesting I throw bleach over my car in the morning to de ice it Dave?:D

 

Best test it on someone elses car first :D:D:D