What is the best thing to melt ice off of the driveway?

My grandma called me after recently moving up to montana and she has never dealt with snow or ice before. She just asked me what the best product was to put down to melt ice. I told her just to use rock salt. Is there something better that she could...

use that she wouldn't have to buy the huge bags of salt? Her driveway is only 20 ft. but she is nearly 74 now so I want to find out the best thing to help her melt the ice off her driveway in the coming winter months.

As far as I know nothing beats salt (trust me I am canadian:-). You can of course mix the salt with gravel (that's what cities do to avoid slipping on the little pieces of ice leftover). Buy your grandma the big salt bag, tell her to use a small container to throw the salt on the ice (that way she needn't lift the big heavy bag). She should also hire someone to come shovel the snow and throw ice on the driveway. Maybe she can find a neighbors kid to come after every snow fall. Happy winter!

I believe that it's Potassium Chloride. It's sold as "Ice Melter". It's the same thing that is used in water softeners, but it's smaller crystals.
It works much better than Halite (Rock Salt) and at lower temperatures.

Once you start to get below 15 - 20 degrees, salt becomes less and less effective.

There is one way I'm for sure thats better than shoveling snow or buying dangerous chemicals that are bad for the enviorment to melt snow...A Radiant heat driveway. You flip the switch the heat come on in the drive way and the snow melts. I'm in colorado right now we have 4 feet where I live today. The important thing is, not to wait till a couple of feet to flip the switch if you want it to work fast. Radiant heating systems are also fantastic for the home too. Check into it.

We've always used salt, but as Tim stated above its effectiveness really dies down to nothing once it reaches a certain temperature. Once you reach that point your goal is no longer to melt the ice but to make it walkable by increasing the traction. We've always used very coarse cat litter to sprinkle over the ice to give you that extra grip you need.

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