do you guys salt your driveways?

[veeman]

having moved not too long ago from a townhouse (where everything on the outside was taken care of), to a house with a much bigger semicircular driveway, I was wondering how many of you salt your driveways in the winter (obviously only relevant if you get snow where you live).

I know it'll help but are the tradeoffs in having that stuff get into the soil/grass and damage to the driveway and car (rust) worth it?

it'll make snowblowing the ice and shoveling the steps much easier though.

[Soup DeVille]

I use calcium chloride, or dragon melt. Salt messes with my flowerbeds.

[giant_mtb]

Depends on how much snow you get, I suppose.  Have you noticed what any of your neighbors do?

[VTEC_Inside]

Nope. Ice generally not a problem for me. Most of the time it solidifies in jagged enough form that you can't slip. If it is an issue I'll chip it up with a spade.

[Raza]

Didn't used to, but now we do; the driveway, the front stairs, and the sidewalk in front of the house.

[Lebowski]

Of course not.

[veeman]

Depends on how much snow you get, I suppose.  Have you noticed what any of your neighbors do?

most of my neighbors get a service where a guy in a pickup and some of his minions plows and shovels their driveway.  I had that done last year for the month or two of winter left (i moved in about february).

The problem with that for me is i hated (just hated) shelling out 80 bucks every time they came.  So I bought a snow blower (a decent two-stage) push kind.  Snow blower doesn't do so great when there is hard ice though and I can't do our steps with the snow blower.  Plus I'm a lazy guy so I thought the salt would make shoveling the ice from the steps and driveway much easier. 

Soup DeVille's calcium chloride thought sounds real good and it appears from googling to work at much colder temp and has less harmful side effects on the concrete and soil.  I don't have a gravel driveway where calcium chloride doesn't work so good so I'll check it out.

[Soup DeVille]

most of my neighbors get a service where a guy in a pickup and some of his minions plows and shovels their driveway.  I had that done last year for the month or two of winter left (i moved in about february).

The problem with that for me is i hated (just hated) shelling out 80 bucks every time they came.  So I bought a snow blower (a decent two-stage) push kind.  Snow blower doesn't do so great when there is hard ice though and I can't do our steps with the snow blower.  Plus I'm a lazy guy so I thought the salt would make shoveling the ice from the steps and driveway much easier. 

Soup DeVille's calcium chloride thought sounds real good and it appears from googling to work at much colder temp and has less harmful side effects on the concrete and soil.  I don't have a gravel driveway where calcium chloride doesn't work so good so I'll check it out.

My cars get exposed to plenty of salt on the roads, so that's not likely to change for the four hundred or so feet of driveway they drive down, but the salt does kill a lot of things at the edge of the asphalt.

[Mustangfan2003]

It snows maybe twice a year here so no. 

[NomisR]

Never!

[Galaxy]

Imo, only really needed when you have freezing rain.

[Mustangfan2003]

Putting salt on the driveway would help attract deer but I don't need people shooting toward my house. 

[Northlands]

Nope. I have a concrete driveway. Most ice melters will wreck concrete.

[dazzleman]

having moved not too long ago from a townhouse (where everything on the outside was taken care of), to a house with a much bigger semicircular driveway, I was wondering how many of you salt your driveways in the winter (obviously only relevant if you get snow where you live).

I know it'll help but are the tradeoffs in having that stuff get into the soil/grass and damage to the driveway and car (rust) worth it?

it'll make snowblowing the ice and shoveling the steps much easier though.

I use salt only the most extreme conditions, and on the steps rather the driveway.  I don't think I've ever used salt on my driveway.

[Catman]

I don't use anything. My driveway gets a lot of sun.

[veeman]

I bought some calcium chloride.  Expensive stuff (20 bucks for a 50 lb bag).  Also bought a spreader.  We'll see how it goes. 

[Byteme]

Nope.  I park the pickup at the bottom of the front drive and that's the vehicle we use when it's slick.  When snow and ice hit no one is getting up (or down safely) either drive.  We werehit with ice and snow last Friday.

My wife wanted to buy a snow shovel.  I asked why.  If it snows, just roll over and go back to sleep.   


The front drive

The back drive  Both are steeper than they look in the pics

[Onslaught]

My driveway zigzags across 9 acres of land and I live in the south so the answer is no. And even if we had a huge snow I still wouldn't do it because I like my cars.

[SVT_Power]

I didn't know people salted driveways. We used to salt the steps in front of the house, but never anything else...

[Morris Minor]

I had to shovel some last winter, & sprinkled on a little of the ice melt stuff, but generally it's notworth it. If there's even a hint of snow & ice in Atlanta, everything stops and everything closes down, so there's no point in going anywhere. The only traffic on the roads is TV news crews doing roadside frenzied panic pieces to camera.

[saxonyron]

No salt on my driveway.  But I'll use the calcium chloride sparingly on walkways and patios. If we get ice, I'll spread some sand. If it's real bad, I'll break out the salt and throw it around everywhere.  A little early degradation of patio pavers is better than a spiral fracture of the tibia.