Year old Ice melt - still working??
March 2, 2009 9:46 AM   Subscribe

Exhausted filter: Year old ice melt stuff. Will it still work?

No appreciable snow fall for the last couple of winters and we got about 10" of the stuff last night. The driveway is all shoveled, but the only chemical ice melt stuff we have is a bucket (opened and a minimal amount used) from last year and we'd really like to forestall the possibility of the drive refreezing tonight by spreading some of this later this afternoon.

Will it work as it should and stop the freezing or am I wasting my time which, after I've recovered from the snow removal, would be better spent in front of the TV watching a movie with Mrs. 543?
posted by 543DoublePlay to Home & Garden (6 answers total)
 
Should work fine. The stuff doesn't "go bad" very quickly, if at all, and growing up my family often used the same bag of salt several winters running.

Still, if you've got concrete showing and there isn't already ice on the driveway, you shouldn't need it. In my experience, unless it has a place to pool and freeze, snowmelt doesn't actually produce much in the way of ice. It tends to evaporate under sunlight pretty well. By all means, use some melter if you want, as it won't hurt anything, but I'd probably just use it on the sidewalk and any tire-tracks on the driveway.
posted by valkyryn at 9:51 AM on March 2, 2009


If it's salt, it shouldn't go 'bad', really. If it's another chemical ice melt, I would think it would depend on storage conditions.
posted by Comrade_robot at 10:00 AM on March 2, 2009


"Ice melt" is usually just a salt or mixture of salts; the most common ones are sodium chloride (non-food-grade table salt), potassium chloride, calcium chloride, and magnesium chloride. It might absorb some water from the atmosphere over time, in which case the crystals may have fused together; but even then the lumps would still melt the snow & ice, they'd just be harder to spread around.
posted by Johnny Assay at 10:00 AM on March 2, 2009


Best answer: My ancient stash worked fine on my sidewalk recently, so chop up the lumps into smaller fragments and use it.
posted by maudlin at 10:01 AM on March 2, 2009


Yeah, bust up the chunks like you would a bag of fused ice cubes - beat the shit out of them. The stuff doesn't go "bad".
posted by notsnot at 10:23 AM on March 2, 2009


Best answer: it'll be fine. but i wouldn't put it on your driveway until tomorrow morning. doesn't work too well if it's not working on ice immediately.
posted by lester's sock puppet at 1:01 PM on March 2, 2009


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