Why shouldn’t you put salt on your driveway this winter?
With storms raging, torrential downpours and the first signs of frost in the mornings, it’s clear that winter is almost here. But that doesn’t mean you should be putting salt on your driveway.
Yes, that cold, wet, winter weather means icy driveways and patios.
All it takes is a downpour at night and temperatures to drop below freezing, and all that surface water quickly turns into ice.
And yes, that ice becomes a nightmare to walk and drive on the next morning.
So how do you prevent ice and snow on your driveway – rock salt right?
WRONG!
Rock salt might seem like the obvious answer to sprinkle down outside and around your home – down paths and over driveways – but it’s actually a bad idea.
Here are 5 reasons why you shouldn’t put salt on your driveway this winter:
1. Normal rock salt isn’t very effective at thawing snow and ice
Firstly, normal rock salt just doesn’t work very well. It only works around freezing point, so when temperatures drop below say -3°C or -4°C, it pretty much stops working. It also doesn’t deal well with lots of snow, which ends up just covering the salt.
Compare that with a special Snow & Ice Thaw ice melt granules, which are specifically designed to melt snow and ice at temperatures as low as -30°C. (the lowest recorded temperature in the UK in the last 100 years was -26.1°C in 1982, so you’re covered there!)
It works much faster – and is 6 times more effective – than traditional salt.
2. And most rock salts don’t last very long
Rock salt quickly disappears too, so you always need to top it up. It melts the ice but then gets dissolved and diluted in the water, and before you know it, that water has frozen again.
But a product like Snow & Ice Thaw is designed to reduce the freezing point of water and stay on treated surfaces for much longer. It delays the re-freezing process so you don’t have to apply every day.
3. Rock salt corrodes surfaces – like concrete and metal
One of the biggest dangers of rock salt is that it can easily damage the surface underneath your driveway – the concrete.
The salt water mixture can seep into the concrete, finding cracks in the sealer (which is why regular sealing is so important). This water mixture then freezes again, expands, and cracks your concrete.
It can keep doing this, corroding deep inside the concrete through expansion cracks and breaking off edges of your driveway. And if you’ve got metal bars inside your concrete drive (often the case for extra support), salt can quickly corrode them.
When temperatures warm up, salt can be left behind, recrystalise, and cause the surface of your concrete to flake off. It doesn’t look good!
4. Salt can be dangerous to pets
If you’ve got pets at home – dogs or cats in particular – then a driveway that’s covered in rock salt can be uncomfortable at best, deadly at worse.
Salt in paws is not a nice feeling, and your pets may be tempted to lick or eat the salt you’ve scattered which could cause major health problems.
To de-ice your driveway this winter, make sure you use pet-safe alternative to salt – like Snow & Ice Thaw.
5. Salt gets walked into your house and your carpets
Still not convinced you shouldn’t use rock salt? Well how about you think about the inside of your home.
If you’ve got salt spread all across your driveway, you, your family and any visitors are going to walk across it. It’s going to get in their shoes, and they’ll come into your house, treading horrible brown sludge everywhere.
That salt can then get into carpets and upholstery which is very unpleasant. It could even cause irreversible damage.
So try a product like Snow & Ice Thaw as your go-to rock salt alternative for driveways this winter. It’s the better way to de-ice your drive and prevent patio slips.
It’s been tested inside the house, and won’t stain materials, won’t corrode carpet or upholstery and won’t scratch hard floors.