Ok, don’t make fun of the southern person who is inexperienced with driving on ice and snow. Be nice.
Earlier this week we had some snow, then ice, then snow, and now for 3 days some seriously cold frozen temperatures.
all major roads are completely clear and driveable. However here in my secluded neighborhood there are some shady spots on inclines that are sheets of ice that block both ways out of the neighborhood.
I haven’t had to go anywhere, so I haven’t gone anywhere. (Schools closed for 5 days, help)I keep walking to the smaller ice patch and checking, still looks very icy and slidey, though people are driving carefully in and out of the neighborhood.
I just really don’t want to the one loser who slides and ends up with my car in a ditch.
I’ve got this 50 pound bag of sand here left over from a school craft project. If I sprinkle a bunch of it over the ice might that make it less slidey? Is there any possible downside to this that I can’t see that will make my neighbors curse my name forever?
You could get a bag of rock salt and put it down. That will lower the freezing temperature of water and melt the ice if it’s not too cold where you are. Sand might help, too.
Should you treat the ice patch? If you do, and someone crashes anyway, you may be found liable.
I don’t think the sand is going to do much. If you have some salt on the other hand? Could probably even use some of the stuff they sell for water softeners (the finer the better).
I’m assuming that if they’re closing school for mere cold, that this wouldn’t be a useful skill for most of her(?) life. Even in Minnesota, where people do it for approximately twenty three months every year, there are a lot of accidents the first few days of snow and ice each winter.
Salt’s a better option than sand (rock salt ideally, but something “big” like kosher will help somewhat – don’t use table salt) if the temperature is close to freezing, but sand isn’t likely to hurt in any case. Dark sand is better, because it will heat more in sunlight. You can sue anyone over anything, but it seems unlikely that a valid, researched attempt to make things better is going to make someone liable for an accident.
That said, remember that the sand or salt has to go somewhere, so don’t use so much that it’ll produce and unsightly mess or kill the roadside plants when the ice goes away.
Municipalities (at least the ones I’m familiar with) have generally been moving away from sand on icy roads, preferring salt (and also using less salt when possible). The reason is that the sand sticks around in the environment, clogging up storm sewers and drainage ponds. Cities try to clean it up in the spring, and even so a lot of it sticks around.
How is water runoff/drainage handled on the street in question? Salt is generally used in areas that have sewer lines. Sand, cinders, and cat litter is generally used in areas with natural runoff.
Sewers generally run into water filtration plants and sand and cinders are hard on the mechanical parts.
Can’t you call the city and complain? It’s not your job to make sure the streets are clear, it’s theirs. Why risk falling over on the ice, or getting run over by a car, while you are out there taking care of it?
I can’t see all that much harm in spreading some sand around but depending on the grade of the hill, I’m not all that convinced how much good it would do.
It will help. The thickness and solidity of the ice, the smoothness of the road surface, and the grade may require more sand than the OP has though. Salt and sand mixes work much better, the salt breaks up the ice while the sand adds some traction.
Interesting notes about the sewers above, we have drains for runoff, but they aren’t going to the sewage processing plant, they’re draining into open land or down to the river.
Fine sand like you see for most craft projects may or may not help much. But it does beat doing nothing. Lacking rock salt I’ve sometimes used some kosher salt; works like a charm.
be careful spreading it by hand. standing on glare ice on a incline is not good footing especially trying to carry and throw sand, maybe while dodging a car and both of you loosing it.
call the city and they might send a truck with sand.
It is hard to learn how to drive on icy roads when you only see them every 25 years or so. Not like here in Colorado. So lighten up Francis! Be nice.
Carlotta, Heck, I would do it. Yet, you should know that I do what I think is best & almost never ask permission, and I rarely ask for forgivness afterward either.
Sand is useful – it gives traction and is second in quality only to Kochanski’s ashes.*
There are trade off between salt and sand. Sand does have to be cleaned up, but it does little real environmental harm. Salt dissolves, goes into the soil, and can kill plants. Homeowners here use ice melt – calcium chloride, magnesium chloride, and others – since they are harmless to pets, plants, and concrete (the latter is probably not an issue where you are, since you don’t use it that often).
it isn’t even about being “nice,” it’s about being realistic. ice is slippery, wet ice is slippery as shit. most tires (even winter tires) are impotent on slick ice. like I said, there’s no “learning” to drive on ice that doesn’t involve studded tires or tire chains.
A little sand on an isolated ice patch probably won’t hurt. Might help, even.
Research shows sand doesn’t do any good at higher speeds (i.e. highways), but can help with traction at lower speeds. Salt could help melt a patch of ice, if it’s not too cold (probably won’t do too much good near zero degrees, in a shaded spot where the ice never gets warm enough to melt even with salt). The real reason towns put down salt is to try and keep the very bottom layer of snow melted, so the snowplow can easily scrape all of it off, rather than leaving a layer of snow/ice permanently stuck to the road.
Environmentally, sand clogs up the plumbing and streambeds, and also creates dust in the air when it’s driven over (then the town has to clean it out of the catchbasins, sweep if off the roads, etc.). Since it doesn’t really do any good except at low speeds, most places are moving away from using much sand. But using salt continually is probably worse environmentally. Lots and lots of wells have become unusable because of all the sodium and chloride in the groundwater as a result of winter salting (not to mention what it does to roadside plants and of course the poor fishies and things).
Storm sewers generally do NOT flow into wastewater treatment plants. There are some older cities (primarily in the northeastern U.S.) that have what are termed “combined sewers” (in which storm drainage and sanitary sewers are collected in combined pipes), but the problem with these is that if a storm is big enough, it overwhelms the wastewater treatment plants, resulting in a sewage overflow. Because the flows are combined, you end up with untreated sewage going into the nearest water body, which is a violation of the plant’s discharge permit. For this reason, many cities with combined sewers are being required by U.S. EPA to separate their sewers.
For the same reason, other than these few aforementioned exceptions, virtually all storm sewers in the U.S. discharge into the nearest water body and do **not **get treated.
It’s important to keep this straight as many people apparently think that stormwater drainage is treated, and think nothing of pouring pollutants into roadway catch basins (like antifreeze or motor oil :smack:).
(As an aside, I watched someone in my neighborhood once draining a car’s oil into a catch basin, which I knew drained into the nearest water body (as our neighborhood had no sewers to speak of; everyone had septic tanks). I had absolutely no issue with reporting him to the spills hotline at our Dept. of Environmental Protection. The next day there was a vac truck sucking out the catch basin in question. I hope they billed him.)
Finally, neither salt nor sand are particularly good for water bodies. Sand at least mostly gets trapped by catch basins (if they are maintained), but you can still end up with a lot of sediment in streams and ponds, and the fines can cause problems for fish and other aquatic life. Salt is only marginally better, and has been linked to decreased populations of frogs and salamanders.