Grinding Iced Drive

scesnick · Jan 12, 2006

My drive looks the same way. Mine is up ( or down) a mountain though. It gets mighty slick at times and is 2.5 miles long. 1.2 miles of that is what I have to maintain.
I have found that when it looks like a sheet of glass the best thing for it, atleast the last 100' or so to the house is small gravel. Especially when it is 40 degrees or over. The gravel seems to melt down in it a tad and it works pretty good.

I hope it doesn't freeze until all this ice is melted and gone. Nothing worse than 2 inches of hard ice underneath 12 incehes of snow.

trlong · Jan 12, 2006

goaliedad,

I think I will "re-think" beating the tranny like that again. Worked today, seems no worse for the wear but, probably just lucky and the spirit of J.D. watching over...

It is clearing tonight but, heavy fog laying into the valleys. Hopefully some sun tomorrow. The ashes on the ice (what little I had) did nothing with no sun.

trlong · Jan 12, 2006

( Earlier this year (before our early spring) I put the chains on the tractor and left 'em on )

Same here. As soon as I had a sufficient frozen pack, I put on the chains. This #$%@$%!!! weather turned that pack into a very hard ice sheet. I started this morning just driving up and down. The chains hardly left a mark. That's when I got the hairbrained idea to spin them up.

I like the birdseed idea. Seems the birds and squirrels leave enough of the shells out on the lawn, from the feeders. Maybe I can train them to drop some on the driveway. At least that way they'd earn their keep /forums/images/graemlins/smirk.gif

trlong · Jan 12, 2006

I'd love to see a picture of that. Sounds like a pretty handy project.

trlong · Jan 12, 2006

Sounds like an even better solution than sand/salt. My drive is 3/4" crushed slate (locally called "staymat"). A pile kept dry would be pretty handy as the drive can always use a little more, especially after early season snows when I always lose a little to either the RB or the blower. Since no one is building or surfacing drives this time of year I think I'll check to see if any of the construction companies have a dry pile I could get a few yards of....cheap /forums/images/graemlins/smirk.gif

trlong · Jan 12, 2006

( 8 ton of salted sand delivered was 140 bucks )

Deerlope,

Thanks, gives me a comparison. No time to get firm prices on either sand/salt, or staymat, today. With more rain coming in before it turns back to snow, I'm going to see what I can get brought in tomorrow. We usually get a "January Thaw" but this is getting ridiculous. Everything is freezing up hard again tonight but it's supposed to be in the mid 40's tomorrow and rain before turning to snow this weekend /forums/images/graemlins/frown.gif. Blowing snow is a lot more fun than dealing with this junk!

trlong · Jan 12, 2006

( I have found that when it looks like a sheet of glass the best thing for it, atleast the last 100' or so to the house is small gravel. ....Nothing worse than 2 inches of hard ice underneath 12 incehes of snow. )

Sounds like quite a challenge of a driveway. Seems those "City Folk" just don't get to have half the "fun" we do out in the country. My BIL lives in urban DE. Even with a decent walk-behind snowblower, he spends more time clearing his 20' drive from what the city plows into it, than I do clearing 600'....and I have a lot more fun. Ofcourse, his neighbors might think a tractor was a bit of overkill for a 1/4 acre lot. However, I keep telling him if he could keep it from being stolen, he could probably make $500 per snow storm with all those drives so close together.

Sorry I digress, good luck to all with this crazy weather. [And please excuse my self indulgence, getting from "Gold" to "Platinum" member... /forums/images/graemlins/blush.gif]

Tom

scesnick · Jan 13, 2006

he could make a small fortune. I know i could make out pretty well plowing locally if I wanted to during a storm. I also have a Yamaha Rhino with a 72" plow that i use for the powered snows. I usually keep going down the mountain to the little neighborhood and start helping them out. most of these people are in their 50's early 60's and have 200 ft + driveways and are using itty bitty snowblowers.
I hit it usually twice and I'm done. 5 minutes tops.
I don't ask for anything but usually they will offer to pay. I just tell them to keep their money, afterall, I might need some help with something someday. It pays off to be neighborly in the long run.
I built a 30x40 pole building this summer and I guess a couple of them saw the delivery truck coming up the mountain. Before I knew it a few guys were there to offer their help. So Instead of paying 20 an hour for labor, it cost me a couple of gallons of gas to plow their driveways.
Won't see that in the city !!!!

rambler · Jan 13, 2006

That's probably not the best thing you've done to the tranny. I'm sure it survived, but - long term........

10 years ago or so we had an inch of ice followed by below zero temps. For a week. Trees, power lines, all down. The main highways were skating ponds, and the solutions they use to thaw don't work below 5 degrees.

They ended up pulling a heavy duty, _large_ ag or construction disk (disk harrow to some) down the concrete state highways to make some groves, so the salt solution would at least stay there, and give a bit of a surface edge for the tires to hold onto.

That was different, to see a big heavy disk going down the road.

--->Paul

LarryRB · Jan 13, 2006

this may sound funny, but, I am serious.. if you have a wood burning stove, take the ashed to the ice.. works very well and quickly too, especially around noon time, daylight.. gives good traction and ice melts down quickly

trlong · Jan 13, 2006

( You won't see that in the city!!! )

You've got that right, at least very infrequent.

Most of the time when I mow, I do some for the neighbors too. With 5' of mower, it's no big deal for me to help a few neighbors. I have a few elderly neighbors I always try to blow snow for too. Had a guy in his eighties, leaning on his snowblower last year, looking like he was going to have a heart attack. I talked him into going into the house. Then I went home and drove back with the tractor and blower. He tried to pay. I just said I'm hoping some one will do the same for me when I'm eighty. I'm fighting the mentallity of our area turning into a commuting bedroom community.

trlong · Jan 13, 2006

The big harrow going down the road would have been a great pic. With a lot of rain coming in tonight, then changing to snow by tomorrow night, hopefully it won't get that bad around here. I'm hoping the ice gets mostly melted before temps drop again.

trlong · Jan 13, 2006

Yup Larry,

See above. 600' of driveway and I ran out of ashes quickly. Unless they're hot coals, black body does no good w/o sun. Today's the 1st day with sun for nearly a week and the sun angle is pretty low this time of year. I used to have a neighbor who burned coal. Coal ash will give traction, with or without melting the ice. Wish he were still around.

scott_vt · Jan 13, 2006

Hi Tom,
Yeah, that kind of ice when it gets slippery is deadly when you have an incline /forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif

Any chance you could rig that 3pt log splitter up to use as a jack hammer /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif OK just kidding /forums/images/graemlins/blush.gif

scotty

Deerlope · Jan 13, 2006

I parked my truck yesterday on that kind of ice and 2 hours later it had slide 2 feet from the wheel track, by itself.

whoodle · Jan 13, 2006

I have a 1700 foot drive with 23% grades. I keep it scraped clean to avoid snow buildup, and I use straight salt in a hand spreader when it gets ugly. I generally use about 3 to 15 50-85lb bags a year, about $5 a bag at OliverSeed.

Paddy · Jan 13, 2006

ICE.

I live at the end of a 600' gravel hilly lane. When I've cleared the best I can with a grader blade and it's down to the 1" of ice... I put down sand. The critical issue most people over look is how much sand and where. On hills I take a bag of sand and walk up the hill and place a good 10 to 15 ' traction spot. (both sides!) leaving 20 to 30' of ice between. This will take you from 'spot to spot' with a bit of speed.

I can hit my hills with 2-3 bags of sand. It takes very little sand to give traction. Don't worry about melting ice, traction on top is what you want.

20 years on an icey drive
patrick

daTeacha · Jan 13, 2006

(
I don't ask for anything but usually they will offer to pay. I just tell them to keep their money, afterall, I might need some help with something someday. It pays off to be neighborly in the long run. )

Even if not directly, it sure makes folks think better of one another. And even if you don't see your reward in this word, you'll be driving the tractor of your dreams in the next one!

I'll see what I can do about posting some pics here this weekend of my little forkbar. I need to look into how to attach pics, and take some, too. I just looked and it seems pretty simple here. Another site I visit requires you to post them to a photo hosting site then bring the URL to your post in the thread, which is a bit of a pain for a guy who doesn't use a photo hosting site regularly. I presume I better use small size, low resolution, and it seems like only one photo per post, so I can run up my post count in a hurry! /forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif

scesnick · Jan 13, 2006

I have never tried using sand. I would imagine it is mostly for traction and not so much for its melting ability. Our farm, where I recently built a new log home, has been in our family for close to 100 years and I was always told to never put salt on the road.
My grandfather and father always said that "it will take the bottom right out of the road" I'm assuming they mean that since it is a mostly dirt and very little gravel that it will take away its strength in the spring and become a 6 inch deep mud trail.
Any thoughts on this theory?

daTeacha · Jan 13, 2006

This is pure speculation bolstered with a few scientific facts.

Salt works to melt ice by going into solution with the H2O, forming saltwater. The thing most people don't think about is the fact that the melting of the ice is accompanied by a lowering of the temperature. If you doubt it, think about a homemade ice cream maker. You add salt to the ice to lower the temperature to 0 F. BTW, that's part of the basis for the Fahrenheit scale and the lowest temperature easily attained in the laboratory at the time.

Anyways, getting back to your grandfather's comment, the melted saltwater will tend to percolate it's way down through the driveway or road if it's all dirt, taking the "frost" out of the ground as it goes. The driveway will soften ahead of the rest of the ground, leading to the soupy messy to which you refer.

Personally, I tend to avoid salt on my driveway because all that salt can't be doing the plants any good. On roadways, it gets carried off with the spring melt by the roadside ditches, but there is still some environmental impact from the salty dust and saltwater to the roadside vegetation. I just avoid it if I can. I'll use it when nothing else works or we have infirm parents coming to visit, but not much and not often.