So, as hours of daylight continue to shrink and temperatures remain below zero in the morning, I have found that I must add 5 to 10 minutes to my morning commute to wait for my engine to warm up and my car’s defrosters to render my windshield and windows transparent.
Instead of waiting, I have hit upon the tactic of filling a small pot with hot tap water and carefully splashing it on my windshield and windows, ensuring that enough water flows across the glass to heat it and prevent the water I just poured from refreezing immediately.
I don’t see how this can be worse for my car than any other warm shower of water, but I also see a lot of other people heating up their cars normally in the morning, and would like to know if they know something I don’t about the dangers of this method of window defrosting.
It depends on the temperature of the glass, the temperature of the water, and the coefficient of thermal expansion of the glass. I certainly wouldn’t do it if I had any nicks on my windshield.
The less the temperature difference the better so a lot of warm water is better than less hot water. I used to do this all the time and never had a problem but I assume no responsibility for others.
I suppose another option is to heat the car with an electric space heater. Plug it in while you have your cup o’coffee. Even better if your engine has an electric block heater.
Because hot water is cheaper. I’ve seen a sparkletts water bottle sitting in the sun spiderweb with just one squirt of cold water. I’ve seen engine blocks crack from the water in them freezing. No telling what might happen. Water is one of the most violent forces in our world. Most people don’t treat it as such.
Warm water is better than hot water. You want to minimise the heat applied to the glass while melting the ice. Theoretically, you could use cold water (it’s above 0 degrees C), but in practice, it gets overcome by the freezing cold.
I drink a lot of bottled water, and always have some 2L bottles sitting around.
So on any cold, icey morning, I fill a bottle with warm water from the tap,and use about half of it to clear the windows on the car…
And the other half? It stays in the bottle, which sits on my lap keeping me warm untill the heater gets going.
Who says hot water bottles are just for beds…
As an aside, having sold about a bazillion cans of de-icer over the years, I say dont waste money on de-icer, just use warm water, you should be fine.
Up here in our cold climate, the general solution seems to be putting the electrical heaters on a timer to start 30-45 minutes before planned use of the car, and then use scrapers on the windshield and windows just before departure. I’ve never heard of anybody using warm water for this, and I don’t know what temperature gradients a car windshield can take.
I use warm water when it’s just below freezing or we’ve had an ice storm. I don’t use water when it gets to be 15F or less in temperature. The colder the weather the colder the water I use. Your windshield could crack at anytime when you do this so remember that. My brother’s windshield cracked from the defroster on a morning when it was below 0F.
I’ve always been told that this will crack the windshield. However, I invariably wind up doing it every winter (usually on the coldest days) with lukewarm water and it’s never once cracked it. There are some days when you just don’t feel like scraping through a 1/2 sheet of ice.
I don’t own an icepick or an ice axe. Anyway it would defeat the purpose, since the warm water does it fast.
Is it possible it will crack? Sure. But I do it as spairingly as possible, just enough to loosen the ice enough to push it off, not melt it.
Let’s put it this way, I’ve probably done it 50 times in my life and it hasn’t broken yet. As they say, I like them odds. And if it does break someday? What the hell…shit happens.
Besides, pounding your windshield with an ice pick? Excuse me for saying so, but that doesn’t exactly sound foolproof either.
Several times I have personally witnessed the aftermath of someone tossing water that was too hot onto a windshield in the winter, where the windshield spiderwebbed and was shot to hell. It might work for most people most of the time, but the risk of having to pay $500 for a new windshield, plus the lost time of getting it replaced, mean I’d rather scrape.
I’ve seen someone break their windshield once before doing this… Though they said there was a hairline crack somewhere near an corner that went directly over to another edge. It was a really really really cold day (probably 20 something below).
I don’t know if they were using warm or boiling hot water.
I’ve had remote starters on several cars over the years. Can’t live without them! Nice warm car to get into in the winter, nice cold car to get into in the summer!
And yes, they can put them on stick shift cars.
