Have you tried, or is your municipality trying any unconventional methods for snow/ice removal?

Well around here, the Government is trying a VERY GREEN way of snow removal, they seem to want the sun to do it.

Some people would find the snow tasty.

Here, @SQUEEKY2, it’s been so damned cold for so damned long the streets have ice 6–10 inches thick ½ way out into the parking space. Another 3–10 inches of snow as I speak. It’s insane, and I can’t (for once) blame the government.

As long as all the sugar was out of the beets, @talljasperman, I think a ‘Frozen Street Slush’ might be in order. Frozen pickled beets and vodka from a blender with a cheese-cube garnish!

@SQUEEKY2 LMFAO!

Maybe they can leave a bounty on snow… Every Pound of snow is worth $.10 and make a huge piles for making a huge snow fort.

We have hydronic heating in our house. When the concrete guys were here to pour the foundation for a new building we had them build a new sidewalk out to our central boiler. it’s wood fired and it wasn’t fun walking in the mud to fill it. We had them put a few hydronic pipes under the sidewalk. When it is icy we just turn on that valve for a few hours and it melts and drys it. We were worried that it might cause the concrete to crack but it is working great!

This is Canada. People know how to remove snow. Don’t fix it if it ain’t broke is what my Karate sensei always says.

Note; I don’t have a Karate sensei.

I once tried putting fireplace ashes on the driveway to help speed the melting. It sort of worked, but what a mess! I had ash footprints everywhere. Now I rely upon my snowblower and sunshine.

I was surprised that one of the local counties is still using cinders, here, @LuckyGuy. Heck, I didn’t know humans still made quantities of cinders. Seems there are still a number of coal fired power plants. Works better than the other county’s salt or whatever.

Maybe you should make soap, instead – it’s a fad here, selling for several dollar s pound.

I burn a lot and make about 1 to 2 pounds per day. At the end of the week I have abut 10 pounds that I scatter around the property or alonf the sides of the gravel drive to the barn

If there was a local market for ashes I’d be a rich man. :-)

My mother’s Eco-friendly solution to improve traction on our walkways was to throw down birdseed, rather than kitty litter. It worked well and the birds were happy!

I thought that I read a while back that Atlantic coastal states were making a brine from seawater, but I haven’t heard mention of it this year amidst the reports of pickle and cheese brine. It seems that using salt water from the ocean would be a good resource.

I’m glad to hear that, @hearkat!! I actually considered it, myself. Now that I know it works, happy birds!

@hearkat Are you kidding me. Doesn’t that cost her a fortune? Is she plagued with squirrels, chipmunks, mice? Does she have sunflower husks all over the house?
I take my shoes off in the house and still somehow got ash all over the floor. I can’t imagine how others do it.

@LuckyGuy – She’s in a subdivision that is about 50 years old. There are squirrels and we’ve had chipmunks, possums and raccoons around through the years. She has sisal doormats, so we wipe our feet well and when my son was little and we lived with her, she put down an old shower curtain just inside the doorway for us to take of shoes and whatever other wet garments we had.

We’ve always put out birdseed and they’d splash it out of the containers anyway, so why not just put it directly on the walkway? We wouldn’t do the entire sidewalk – just the steps from the sidewalk to the house – about 100’ long, and along the porch and the sloped driveway so we could get in our cars without breaking our necks – maybe another 100’ or so.

You can buy birdseed without sunflower seeds, or they now have “waste free” seed with all the husks removed.

Waste free seed costs a fortune last time I checked. You are so dedicated. :-)
Are your cars filled with seed residue?

@LuckyGuy – I sit in the car with my feet outside then clang them together to get dirt, mud, snow and other debris off when I’ve been walking in a messy area. I usually get rubber mats, too; but I’m not a clean freak by any stretch.

I am fortunate that I no longer have to count every penny, so I didn’t study the prices of the different birdseed varieties.