The winter mornings; although, seem to be fresh & beautiful to enjoy a morning walk out with your family members, there still exist a lot of safety concerns that you need to be careful about. And those concerns are especially related to how to anti-slippery driveway and walkway that you follow.
Let me tell you that the sideway and driveway that you go through every day sometimes during the winter season or colder days; can become slick or slippery. And that becomes a great concern for the people living around. This sort of thing happens especially whenever sudden freezing occurs.
Beware! It can be very much risky for you and everyone else living in that area to get out of your homes during such days when snow refreezes after melting. Have you ever imagined the risks of landscaping that you might have due to such incidents?
No, right?
Well, let me tell you, okay?
Such incidents can lead to a lot of other incidents; from very minor unintentional landscaping or slipping to dangerous accidents in Milton.
And I’m sure that you wouldn’t ever want such an incident to happen in your area; would you?
Never, right?
Well, bearing this fact in the mind, I’ve collected some of the best tips about how to slip-proof walkways and driveway during the winters. Go through this blog to its end. I bet you’ll find the best tips to keep yourself and your family members safe and protected from any type of ache or ailment or accident.
PREFER USING A BLOWER
If you really want to keep yourselves along with everyone around you away from the dangerous effects of snow during the winter season, I strongly suggest you to prefer using a blower. In fact, it’s one of the most-effective ways to prevent the walkway & the driveway around your house from getting icy.
Although shovelling is one of the effective methods of removing ice from roads, it is a time-consuming process. Using a snow-blower to remove snow from roads only takes half of the time. Frankly, it even takes sometimes less than that to deal with the task.
So, why would you waste your valuable time roaming hither-and-thither in search of some other ways of making your walkway & driveway slip-proof for the chilling winter?
Snow-blowers can easily be used by people with back injuries. Also, those with certain physical disabilities can easily operate this device to make the walkways and driveway anti-slippery during the winter season. anti-slp
Talking about the types, a snow-blower comes in three different types: a single-stage blower, a two-stage blower and a three-stage blower.
The difference in stage helps in working with different levels of effects caused by snow. A single-stage snow-blower is the cheapest blower that works for snow up to one-foot of height.
Meanwhile, the two-stage and the three-stage snow-blower are used in times of heavy snowfall during the winters.
CHOOSE THE MOST-APPROPRIATE DEICER
Reading the topic given above, you might be wondering about what a deicer is; right?
Well, a deicer is a chemical-agent that helps the snow in melting.
Now, you might be thinking what is a deicer used for?
No idea?
Guess what, It is used to loosen the snow on the walkways and the driveway anti-slippery.
Talking about the types of commercial snow removal deicers, there are three different types: rock-salt deicer, chloride-based deicer, and salt-free deicer.
Rock-Salt Deicer
A rock-salt is the cheapest deicer that can be used in order to remove snow. You might be wondering about how a rock-salt can clear the snow; right?
Well, let me explain that to you; okay?
A rock-salt has the capacity to lower the freezing point of water easily and within no more time. Let me tell you that this prevents the snow from getting frozen on the sidewalks and driveways.
Despite this feature, a rock-salt is not found to be effective when the temperature goes below 15ºF-20ºF. Here, let me tell you that this is the reason why water thaws in the warmer temperatures and gets frozen once again when the rock-salt stops working.
Hope you do have the knowledge about the fact that when the water thaws, it trickles down into small cracks in the concrete. Similarly, whenever the
volume expands, the temperature falls down and the water freezes.
Let me tell you that the expansion in the volume of the frozen water is the reason for the formation of cracks in the concrete. With time, as the volume keeps expanding, the cracks widen to cause more severe problems. This is the time when rock-salt comes into use.
One thing that you need to care about while using rock-salt to wash away snow from your walkway driveway in order to make it slip-proof is that you must always remember to maintain it’s an appropriate amount. Else, it can cause the vegetation in the surrounding area to die-out untimely.
Chlorine-Based Deicer
These certain deicers are made up of different types of chemical components combined with chloride. For instance, the combination of potassium with chlorine gives potassium chloride which acts as a very good deicer. In the same way, the other chlorine-based deicers are; namely, calcium-chloride, magnesium chloride; which are less corrosive in nature to metal, vegetation and concrete.
Let me tell you that these chlorine-based deicers work up to the temperatures of 0ºF.
Salt-Free Deicer
A salt-free deicer is the most expensive type of deicer. It’s also found to be the most-effective even in the areas with the most extreme temperatures. For your information, let me tell you that it works very well at a temperature of up to -25ºC, too.
A salt-free deicer is free from the harmful ions of chlorine. And this is one of the top reasons for a salt-free deicer being one of the most-admired ones among all the types of deicers. Moreover, the added advantages of this type of deicer include the presence of useful elements like Calcium and Magnesium. Can you guess how they are advantageous?
It’s because these are the elements that help in fostering the growth of plants.
Let me tell you that the mixture of the salts of Calcium and Magnesium; namely, calcium-magnesium acetate; is non-corrosive to vehicles, driveways and walkways. Moreover, these types of deicers are harmless and pet-friendly.
Alternatives to Deicers
Besides using deicers to wash-away snow to slip-proof your walkway and driveway during the winters, there are a few alternatives that you can use to replace them. While doing so, you also prevent the damages that can potentially harm your anti-slippery driveway
walkway and, car, and lawn, too.
You might be wondering about what those deicers might be; right?
Well, that includes sand, litter, gravel and kitty.
The above four best alternative deicers to the chemical-deicers help create traction on all the types of icy walkways and driveways. Meanwhile, let me tell you that these deicers also cause no harm to anything.
People also use pelletized fertilizers containing ammonium sulphate as deicers. Let me tell you that this chemical composition of Ammonia with Sulphur reacts with the concrete. Can you guess what happens then?
It leads to dissolving your concrete.
However, pelletized fertilizers have a high amount of urea which is harmless to both concrete and vegetation. Moreover, such fertilizers are one of the safest alternatives to make your driveway or walkway anti-slippery during the winters.
Now, that you’ve found out the ways to make your walkway and driveway slip-proof for the winters, I hope you can deal on your own to slip-proof your walkway & driveway.
Still, if you’re in dilemma or feel that it would be better if you could get some helping hands to help you out with the task, Halton Landscape Group is always on-the-go to help you out.
