Our suburban driveway is about a quarter mile long and features a steep short hill. We currently have a plowing service that does an excellent job, but the plow leaves behind compacted flat sections of snow in various places. After a day or two, especially if it gets above freezing during the day, these compacted sections turn into solid ice. So then I ask the folks who plow to come back and spread out a salt/sand mixture. This melts the snow/ice during the day and then it refreezes at night into more ice.
Would a snowblower do a better job? Suppose that it were possible to remove all of the snow from the driveway. Then there would be nothing to melt and refreeze.
A friend suggested that we get a Bobcat and a wide snowblower attachment. This would cost $12,000, would leave us with a Bobcat to store, and the driveway would be done in 15 minutes. Honda makes some pretty serious walk-behind snowblowers, e.g., this 32-inch wide model. A neighbor has a 28-inch wide Honda that we could borrow, but somehow I think it would be too painful to use on a driveway as long as ours and his has wheels rather than tracks.
From looking at the Ariens Web site, I see that they also make “snow brushes” (example). I’m not sure where the snow would go after being brushed. Wouldn’t it fall right back down on the driveway? Anyway, if the brush idea worked we could use it to clean up after the plow and skip the snowblowing step.
Any words of advice from fellow denizens of the frozen north?
If you’ve got a quarter-mile long driveway, how much do grass do you have to mow?
Get a tractor for mowing the lawn… buy the right one and you can slap a snow thrower attachment on the front (bobcat style) and you kill 2 birds with $12,000… or less if you buy a good piece of equipment used.
I’m in the Finger Lakes region of New York, and I have seen a number of institutional sites use snow brushes. However, they are usually tractor mounted rather than walk behind. Sometimes they are small tractors, and to be honest, the tractors have other purposes at other times of the year, so they would be sitting idle when it snows. If you have a tractor of any size, you might look into a brush for it. Maybe combined with a plow blade or regular snow thrower?
The brushes brush the snow to the side, not straight ahead. They can do a very good job of getting ALL the snow off the surface. But I’ve never seen them used to remove deep snow – say more than 8 – 10 “. I’ve seen them most commonly used to remove a heavy dusting to several inches. Then again, that’s the most common situation in this area.
I have seen them more commonly used for sidewalks/pathways than roads/driveways. One of the drawbacks on sidewalks is that getting so close to clear all the snow, if the brush is too wide or is mis-navigated (and it always is), they can scour the frozen ground on the side of the pathway, tearing up the grass and making work for the grounds crew in the spring. I also remember one site where the brush had bristle shedding issues, leaving brightly colored plastic bristles (really 10” long thin plastic rods) all over the campus.
Hope this helps. Contact me by e-mail if you have any questions.
Are the icy patches small enough that you could go at them by hand with one of these?
http://www.flameengineering.com/Red_Dragon_Propane_Torch_K.html
On the one hand it’s repetitive manual labor, but on the other hand it’s awesome fire.
You could hire neighborhood kids to clean up what’s left after the snow plow is done. I don’t know how much is left behind, but it could be easy money for some kid(s).
Personally I like the idea of a heated driveway. But for more affordable options, a good sized garden tractor seems to work for my more rural friends.
A snowblower won’t be any better.
When I lived in New Hampshire my driveway was about 150 feet and I had a large Ariens blower (around 28″ or so) and still had a problem with ice. Plus it took awhile even with that short driveway — I can’t imagine doing a 1/4 mile driveway with a walk-behind blower.
My solution was to just live with the ice, putting sand from the town sandpile on the uphill section from the road.
I knew some folks with a large garden tractor with a plow and none of them were happy with that arrangement — it just didn’t do that good a job since traction was a problem. Most lawn tractors have the motor in front and drive wheels in back. You can get chains but then the whole thing is getting complicated…
Here in Oregon in the mountains I know folks that use an 4WD ATV with a plow and they’re very happy with that arrangement.
Mike: That is depressing to hear. Maybe this is why people move to California. My neighbor’s snowblowed driveway does seem better than our plowed one. I wonder if it is simply the narrower blade. Our driveway is crowned so the highest point in the middle gets cleared pretty clean by the plow. The sides (where a car’s wheels would actually go) are a bit lower and have 1/2″ of packed snow on them.
JG: Hire neighborhood kids? Does that work for anyone else here who lives in a wealthy suburb? I’m not even sure how I would get a neighborhood kid’s attention. He would be ensconced in a McMansion playing Xbox or texting in the back of a Volvo or BMW SUV. Even if we did find a willing local workforce, I’m not sure what they would do without power tools. We’re talking about a quarter mile strip of packed-down snow. Scraping it with a shovel would be very time-consuming. Scraping it with a shovel after it turns to ice (which can happen quickly) would be pointless.
I would suggest the use of a 26,000lb road grader like I bought from the town of Wayland.
If the ice is a problem then just lift the 11 foot snow plow and drop the 12 foot belly blade and remove all the asphalt down to fresh gravel. Problem solved.
It makes you feel like a man and looks great in the yard. All the neighborhood kids will think your cool and want to go for rides. And on those special occasions you can take your wife out for a ride (works everytime for me if you know what I mean;)
Now back to your question, all questions don’t have answers but, I would start with your plow guy pre-treating the driveway similar to what the town does before a storm.
Leave the big Deisel stuff to guys like me and snowblowers to guys who can’t afford a plow guy. P.S Spread a little sand on the hill or black beauty (black sand for sand blasting dark color helps) and drive a little slower on the long flat part.
When I first got the house in NH it had a gravel driveway and we had a plow guy. Unfortunately, he wasn’t very good at judging how far down to plow and half my driveway ended up in the grass come spring.
On one hand, the ice wasn’t as much of a problem on the gravel, but between having to deal with gravel in the grass and gravel in the garage it just wasn’t worth it.
After having the drive paved I decided to get the snowblower so I could do it myself and not depend on the plow guy and never knowing exactly when he’d get to us. Plus I could blow snow off the sidewalk to the front door on the downwind side of the house where wind would often leave me with deep drifts to dig out by hand.
Yes, I’m glad I moved to the west coast!
Kids also open you up to liability & lawsuit. It’s not like the days when I was a kid in the rural Midwest and non-litigious snowshovelling/lawnmowing kids like myself were everywhere.
Multiple use devices (such as a garden tractor) make the most sense if you have a lot of other uses for them.
For a single-use device (snowblower), spend the extra money on a big self-propelled one. You may never have six foot drifts, but you’ll have an easy time and therefore do a better job. Then adjust it properly – you can get down to a very thin layer of snow. Like lawnmowers, most people never adjust them properly to get the most out of them.
If that’s not sufficient, go counterintuitive and use a modest blower followed up with a small one-stage snowblower (with the rubber paddles that scrape the pavement surface). Since I have a tiny driveway and we have little snow (but a lot of ice) I depend on salt/gravel and a single-stage by itself.
When I went to college in Salt Lake City, they used spinning wire brushes mounted in front of small tractors to clear the sidewalks. With the first light snows, these were effective, but later in the winter they did little more than polish the accumulated ice to a high sheen. The tractor did a great job of compacting the snow into ice.
In the spring crews came out with pickaxes and crowbars, and chipped away the 1-3″ icepack on the sidewalks.
Skip the brush.
I believe a snowblower would do a better job, but it’s probably not worth the trouble. I have a Honda HS828 (28″ wide, with tracks) that is adjusted to scrape the driveway closely. After clearing light, dry snow, the driveway is nearly empty of snow, except the really uneven parts–which I finish with a shovel. When clearing heavy, wet, snow, I typically leave a thin layer of slush that melts off when the sun comes out for an hour, which happens fairly consistently here in Lake Tahoe, where most days get well above freezing. (If this doesn’t happen, I am trapped at home behind a giant ice slide.)
It takes me about 45 minutes with the Honda to clear 1-2 feet of heavy snow on a driveway that sounds a third the size of yours, but almost all a steep slope. Driving over the snow first results in tracks of irremovable, packed snow that turns to ice.
I also have a service that comes with a giant, drivable snowblower ( this one: http://empirecontractors.com/Snow_Removal_files/shapeimage_7.png ). It often leaves behind 1-3″ of packed snow that is practically glued to the driveway and turns to ice. It takes some combination of a week of labor/salt/sunny days to remove this. When this happens, I regret not having used the snowblower.
I think the reason the snowblower clears well is because it’s so narrow; if it were wider, it would leave more residue because the surface is so uneven, as my service does.
You might look into some sort of ice-melt compound that is applied before it snows. I’ve read that this keeps the ice from bonding to the driveway, so your plow might clear more, and the remainder might melt off. “Bare Ground” looks intriguing: http://www.bareground.com/faq.htm . That site also has a “Facts about Ice Melt” section that I found very educational. I’ve been learly of using anything on my concrete driveway.
I agree with Mike’s comments but it is labor intensive and you have a LONG, shady drive.
Having a bit of skidloader, plow, and snowblower experience under my belt from the days when I was a productive member of society, I would heartily recommend continued use of a professional service. If you think aircraft maintenance is a PITA wait till you try frozen hydraulics, jammed impellers, and the joy of bending your truck frame when misguiding a blade (not that these things have ever happened to me). A small gas single stage blower may work for you- I have had good luck even on compacted snow tilting the cheap version blower with the rubber paddles onto the snow and breaking it loose. Oddly enough, the heavier two stage “snow auger” types don’t work as well on the thin, compacted snow in my experience. I would continue to use the pros for the heavy stuff and buy a cheap gas powered blower to follow up with. Asphalt is on borrowed time anyways (which I believe your driveway is made of) and needs annual maintenance, so the use of salts really is not too atrocious on the surface but some types are not kind to vegetation. Proper salt selection even works down to under zero fahrenheit which should keep refreezing to only a rare night even in Boston.
I say spend the money on salts and a cheap little blower.
steve
(fightin’ the urge to buy a road grader on Ebay after Adam’s comments)
I’m in NH. I use a snow blower and frequently have icy spots on my driveway. The walk behind snow blower will not clear all the snow off. I decided to not worry about it. It’s not worth my time to remove it all. Put a set of good snow tires (the kind with the silicates that grip ice) on the car and don’t worry about the ice.
I prefer snow blowing to plowing for the aesthetic results — we live with snow all winter
in a ski resort valley. I don’t like the ice-pack and dirt-streaks that go with plowing. My favorite service used a small Kubota BX24 tractor with a snow blower similar to this link. The proprietor also did landscaping work. He typically cleared our entire parking and opened a clean, three-abreast path right to our front steps. Once, when he got held up by a blizzard during an elk-calling contest in Nevada, his mother and young cousins showed up and cleared his entire route. And the day our house burned, he had just cleared the parking for a dinner party that evening, so the redistribution of furniture was as orderly as if choreographed. The rebuild made it all worthwhile.
There is very little you can do to remove all of the ice. Having lived and worked on a farm for 2 decades I’ve used just about every kind of equipment to move snow and they all leave small amounts behind that turn to ice.
Don’t waste your money on a brush as J Peterson mentioned above it will just polish the ice making it slicker, also don’t buy the “Snow Melt” products, a bag of rock salt (like you use in your water softener) works better and is way cheaper. I always carried three bags in the trunk for traction and with help if I got stuck, those Idaho winters got mighty cold.
Good luck with whatever you decide.
I sure don’t miss the snow!
How can you as a pilot miss the most obvious, fun solution: Buy a Harrier and fly it down the driveway, simultaneously melting the snow, vaporizing the meltwater, and blasting all surrounding snow far, far away.
We are only 35 yards or so and shovel clean, but still get runoff from the mounds we throw up on either side, which freezes overnight and creates an ice rink. If you have similar issues, neither equipment nor neighborhood kids will help. (Our neighborhood kids are good cheap labor, but can’t be relied on; I want a high-reliability solution.)
So if the problem is reliable clearance, I don’t know. If it’s just passage, I’m completely satisfied with all-wheel drive. My parents’ old driveway was perhaps 100yd and quite steep; despite the snowblower investment, they converted to AWD vehicles years ago.
Philip,
It strikes me that the people cleaning your drive aren’t doing it right. Most professionals in that business drive around in a truck with a snowblower in the back, or at least some shovels, so they can clear a sidewalk (if you have one) and walkways. Just hire people who do the job right.
As a Canadian we have some experience with snow removal. The point is not to get down to bare surface, it is to remove enough snow that you can drive over it. So a common solution is to just leave enough snow down that you can get a grip when you step/drive on it.
A property that big probably warrants some kind of tractor. They’re fun.
We have an electrically heated downsloping driveway and it’s terrific. It’s a bigger project, but I suggest a heated driveway on the sloping portion, including a drain at the bottom (so the melted snow and ice can drip underground), and then using a gas powered snowblower (either riding or walkbehind) for the remainder.
Unless your drive is the high-camber type that drains all water off to the sides, you will have some glazing on the surface as long as any melt water can drain across the surface. The recent temperatures with daytime above-freezing and nighttime below freezing are the perfect conditions for black ice forming. Salt and sand is about the best you can do unless you have a heated surface that keeps all water liquid. Pack ice, which is the icy compressed snow can be chopped off with a good coal shovel. The micro-thin ice, which is less visible and more treacherous to walk or drive on is what is best treated with grit and ice, as long as the ground temperature is not too far below freezing.
Russians use jet engines to melt snow.
http://www.automotto.org/entry/in-russia-jet-engines-go-to-work-as-snow-blowers/
After 9 years in Alaska I learned that you can wage war with ice, but you can’t win until springtime.
My Advice: Get a Subaru and a good set of winter tires such as the Consumer Reports top rated Michelin X-Ice XI 2, and just drive on it.
There is always Florida!
Could you provide more information?
Is your driveway paved or gravel?
Is the issue actually the condition, camber, or grading of the driveway?
Are your cars not four-wheel drive? What’s the big deal about ice?
Flat sections of ice implies sections of road the will hold the water in a cupped section or bad drainage flow or runoff.
Is there a hairpin turn in your driveway?
What are you hiding from us?!!
Also, you might consider http://www.katopark.com/image/carelevator1.gif
Michael: This is suburbia; the driveway is paved. As noted in my original posting, part of the driveway has a steep hill (it also includes a couple 90-degree turns, but those are on flat sections and not a serious problem). I do have a 4WD Nissan car, but 4WD doesn’t help when you’re trying to stay in control while proceeding down an ice-covered hill.
Scott: Thanks for the Suburu suggestion. The previous owners had two Suburus. One of them went off the driveway into the woods. So they called a tow truck. The tow truck went off the driveway and into the woods. So they got a bigger tow truck to pull the first tow truck out.
Phil- I live in NH and am continually feuding with my plow-guy who not only wants to continually decrease the size of my driveway by failing to plow it out (to the point that, by the end of the season, my driveway which can fit six cars in the summer, is a hard squeeze for one) but also hates my mailbox and attempts to bury the innocent receptacle every time he “cleans” my drive. After each of these episodes, I go out with my 13-HP Sears Craftsman behemoth snowblower and spend 45 minutes to an hour fixing what he has broke. If you get a snowblower with wheels be sure to get the wheel weights and chains!! I am seriously attempting to size a solar-heated radiant heating system for my driveway so that I can rid myself of both the plow-guy and the snowblower. (Of course, you rid yourself of one evil dependency only to assume another, I can’t get the damn plumber to come by to begin the installation!)
Phil –
No way is a walk behind snowblower going to do a 1/4 mile driveway in 15 min.
I’m in Needham with a driveway that’s a mere two cars long. Takes at least 30 minutes to do the job when there’s enough snow (like this week) to bother with. A good chunk of time goes to dealing with the heavily compacted pile at the end of the driveway that the town plows have blessed me with.
I’ve got a 7.5hp Ariens that’s been very reliable (starts right up after doing nothing the previous winter for putting it away), but you can only walk so fast when there’s lots of snow.
Whoa, Phil, it’s been months since you’ve generated this much response to your postings (i.e., snow removal, the real issue in life!).
But really: you did know what you were getting into when you bought this New England place with a long, long driveway, right?
Best wishes on the continuing saga of how to get through life . . . god! how I love reading your blog!
David
(enjoying another day in Southern California after growing up shoveling all winter in Minnesota)
David Lawson: I think this is proof of a principle in the book Parkinson’s Law. At a company board meeting everyone will have an opinion about how much it should cost to buy plastic cups for a party but nobody will comment on the proposed cost of a nuclear power plant. Nearly everyone has shoveled snow and has some practical experience to relate; nobody knows how to direct the health care industry from Washington, D.C.
It doesn’t sound like your plow company is actually doing an excellent job if the hill is covered in packed snow. Can’t they angle the plow so that it scrapes the side of the driveway that is not the “crown” i.e. where your tires go?
Buying and using a snow blower, or performing any additional effort on your part to clear the snow, on top of you having already hired a company to do that, is wrong on so many levels. Intellectually, morally, emotionally and so on.
I couldn’t clean a 13,000 sq ft surface several times per year with anything other than special-purpose vehicle. Ideally it would be a diesel with a glow plug, as you will be using it in cold weather and will want the better reliability. Diesel stores longer than gasoline too. The Kubota “front loader” (bucket in front) has a float position that is ideal for scraping ice off of pavement; the bottom, flat part of the bucket rests on the pavement, scraping off and sequestering all the ice it encounters.
I can attest that Kubota tractors are a delight to own, but to be honest mine was a bit of a frustration as it was idle so much.
Best luck.
Here is a simple solution, park the car at the bottom of the driveway and walk up. Easier than trying to remove the snow.
If the driveway is steep enough turn it into the neighbourhood ski hill. You can rig a simple rope tow system with a Honda Generator and some rope and a couple of pulleys.
Buy a cheap sled if you need to carry anything from and to your car.
Pavel: Thank you for the idea of walking up the small hill rather than driving. This has been tried by humans in shoes, who fell down. This has been tried by dogs. They fell down. This has been tried by humans in hiking boots. They fell down. The only consistently successful category of animals who have navigated the ice-covered hill is humans in boots or shoes with Yaktrax attached.
When I lived in Newton Highlands, we were at the top of a steep hill overlooking Crystal Lake. Our winter approach method was to speed along the residential street below, whip a 90 degree turn and rev on up the hill. About half way up the ice and grade stopped the car and there was a handy barrel of sand at the roadside, with a short shovel. Spreading sand in front of the tires always let me drive on up the hill. The overall effect of preparedness and competency was empowering for the minimal amount of time it took. Sand alone is better for your landscape life.
I’m finally going to bite the bullet and get some kind of snow removal device, but I’m now quite sure just what. I have a 1/4 mile-or-so driveway, paved and perfectly flat.. this is in South Jersey. We usually only get an annoying snowfall once or twice a year, but a week ago, we managed to get 25″. That resulted in me spending 6 straight hours digging out the driveway (and another two or so the Toyota Prius that got stuck during the storm).
So, I’m looking at either snowblower.. something pretty decent, or some kind of attachment for the lawn tractor. I guess I can see pros and cons to both.
The one advantage to the shoveling.. when done properly, there’s virtually no snow left, and what there is usually melts and evaporates as soon as we get sun. So, not much ice on the driveway. There’s a slight hill near the garage, so we do have the potential of some pooling at below, but any machine-assistance would make it easy enough to move that zone away from where cars go.