Snow Clearing Theories

[velvetfoot]

It comes up every storm for me: when to snowblow the driveway.
My preference is to do it after the snow stops and the snow plows have plowed up a nice plug in the driveway.
I prefer to do it at one time, for less effort.
Downside is that is usually gets windier around here a while after the snow stops, so there might be a sweet spot there.
That's what I'm planning to do (while hanging around the house tonight) tomorrow AM.
The next storm is supposed to have a mixed component around here with more precip, so maybe multi passes will be appropriate to avoid really heavy and or hard to move ice.
I guess it depends when you have to get to work or if you can go in late.
Any other theories?

(Just musing here while the snow falls.)

 

[Tarmsolo60]

I clear mine when I have a hard time getting to my house in 4WD.

 

[Mike Wilson]

If it's just a little snow, with some warmth in the forecast in the next day or so, I'll let the AWD on the cars handle it. If it's a lot of snow, I hit it as soon as I can after the conclusion of the storm. If I am feeling lazy, or if the driveway is a sheet of ice, as it often is, I utilize my secret weapon...

Flip open the ball valve, flip on the circulator, and the driveway clears itself... at least part of it.

-- Mike

 

[aknight]

forget plowing my drive, snowmobiles dont like gravel

 

[webbie]

The pros do it after the snow fall with a dry snow like this. The big guns just came down my street - a signal that the snow must be almost over.....no reason for them to waste time and do it twice.....

I will admit to doing it in the middle of the day today, but just for fun and to get outdoors.....gonna go out now and finish it off.

Different if it happens in the middle of the day and they have to clear major arteries - but when it comes to home or small streets, once is good for powder, many times if it is trying to establish a bed of ice - can't let that happen!

As you can see, it's over........

 

[eernest4]

I got really sick & tired of snow blowing my drive way, so this summer , i bought a 1985 plow truck , ready to plow for $600.oo

The guy that sold me the truck said that the truck had so much rust on it that he would only sell me the plow for 600.oo and that the attached truck was free. I am sure he was joking with me, but not about the rust. Boy,is it ever a rusty bucket, over 25% of the body
is missing, in rust out holes,here & there.

i started it up today, at 9 am, before the snow started & drove it around the drive way, just 2 be sure everything left still worked, so I'll be all set for tomorrow.

The next big question is will my toro 8/26 start will last winter's fuel still in it. Now where-- did--I see that can of carb spray, anyways. Where can it be???

All seriousness asside though; The most important thing is to get the snow up before it has a chance to melt and refreeze into a rock hard crust , because once that happens, asside from a 5 day thaw, only a pick axe with laberal amounts of manual labor will suffice to break through & scrape off that frozen crud.

Last year ,when that happened here,the snow blower would not touch it & neither would thw snow plow . They both, as well as my car, just skidded across the top of the snow ,without breaking thru the crust or removing anysnow at all.

I started in with the pick axe, for, what was it, , 15 or 20 minutes,before i got too tired to continue & then hired the neighbors kid to finish the next two hours of the job.

Two grand worth of snow removal equipment and only a $40.oo pick & shovel worked.
30.oo for the pick & 10.oo for the shovel. oh, yea, and 30.oo for the kid. he worked hard & was really beat at the end, so he deserved it.

 

[webbie]

It's a strange world these days.....no one has EVER asked to shovel my driveway for money. Ah, the olden days of my youth when we put a shovel on our shoulder and cruised the neighborhood.

 

[velvetfoot]

I too used to shovel snow as a kid when I lived NYC.
I remember getting very cold.
It also got very icy on top of a snow here a couple of years ago.
If you didn't remove the snow in a timely manner, it would not come up after embalmed in the ice.

 

[eernest4]

The snow is not done here yet, but I sure am done .
So, snow removal will have to wait for tomorrow, for me to regain my strength with a good
night's sleep.

No one else around here has done any snow removal yet, anyways, except for the city plows & commercial account contractors.

But tomorrow morning, --- "the hills are alive with the sound of snow blowers".

"The snow shovel's loud scrap, echos through the air!"
Shortly followed by the loud sirien of the cartiac arrest unit ambulance!

Yep, another old coot,too cheap to buy a snow blower, dead from a heart attack.

Don't let this guy be you.

It is so way cheaper to buy a snow blower that it is to buy a heart attack.

Just steal your visa card away from wifey for a couple of hours. She wont even miss it
if you put it back in her purse before she goes shopping,yet again.

And, if she should catch you at it, just tell her that you bought the snow blower so
that you wont get a heart attack while shoveling snow & therefore could still be around to spend the rest of your life looking after her.

It never fails, They just eat that stuff up like it was actually true.

 

[cmonSTART]

Snow's done and the driveway's clear. Time's a-wastin'

 

[Gibbonboy]

Snow was pretty much done here just after I got home from work. Took 15 minutes to move all the crap that accumulated in front of the blower since I gave it a test run back in October. Took me 2 hours to do the driveways and sidewalks of 3 houses, plus a little more. Bigger storms, I'd go out more than once just because I can. Nothing like the cookies and cases of beer that get left on my doorstep! I've never taken a dime, and never will. The treats are nice, but I just really do it because it's fun. Besides, I've got a blower with TRACKS on it!

 

[iceman]

well i got about at least 8-12 inches here in western ma springfield area and my driveway is clear..........
i love life ....PE SUMMIT INSERT THAT ROCKS AND IMPORTED HONDA SNOWBLOWER FROM CANADA THAT FREAKIN MAKES SNOWPLOWS MOVE!
(broken link removed to http://honda.ca/PowerEng/Snowblowers/HS928/HS928TCD.htm) CHECK IT OUT!!
But i bought mine when the us dollar was 1.59 -1.00 canadian

 

[cmonSTART]

Nice machine, Iceman! Honda makes a good snowblower.

 

[iceman]

i love (wife is watching)
1) my wife
2) (tie) my summit insert and my honda snowblower!
anything can kiss my arse
when the neighbors tick me off guess where the snow goes.....
my other neighbor asked about my honda and said he looked into it but could get a bigger Ariens from the chepo for less money ... i tried to tell him..
needless to say he showed it to me tonight and he was so happy at how far he was throwing snow!!
so i went and got my baby out.......
i think he is going to return his on monday after the next storm...lol
and when i raise my auger to go over the grass to make a path to my wood his jaw dropped!

 

[DaleZ]

I try to wait until it is over. 4x4 Bombadeir (can't seem to spell it correctly) Quad with plow makes pretty fast work of my driveway. It seems if I do it before the storm ends I usually have a couple inches of snow on the driveway and it does't seem to be worth the bother to clean up.

 

[kenora]

this makes snow clearing fun!

 

[tkirk22]

It's a strange world these days.....no one has EVER asked to shovel my driveway for money. Ah, the olden days of my youth when we put a shovel on our shoulder and cruised the neighborhood.

Kids today are too lazy.

When I was 12 or 13 my Aunt gave me an old snow blower in non running condition. I also happened to have just received a nice shiny Craftsman toolbox. Well me and a friend futzed around with that engine for days. We had to ride our bikes 8 to 10 miles to get parts but we finally got it running. Then the late 70s East Coast blizzards hit. Not a single vehicle was on the roads so we blew a bicycle path right down the middle of the road to look for customers. We made a few bucks but oddly enough a lot of people didn't want to pay two young kids with a snow blower to clear 2 feet of snow off their driveway.

That old blower was one dangerous beast. Nowadays kids can't even look at one without wearing a protective suit and a helmet.

 

[mayhem]

It's a strange world these days.....no one has EVER asked to shovel my driveway for money. Ah, the olden days of my youth when we put a shovel on our shoulder and cruised the neighborhood.

Sadly this is a thing of another generation. In today's world the owner of a property has to very careful about hiring a kid to shovel the driveway...if that kid hurts his back or something you can bet there's a 75% chance of the parents suing you for everything you have.

Personally I plow my driveway...too damn big to snowblow. If we're in for a big storm I'll plow every 4-6" if I can, for this storm I opted to let it sit until this morning when it was all done...for the record I measured 12" of fresh powder...about 30 minutes to dig out the trucka nd the wife's Audi, plow the drive, move the car, plow the parking area and go to work. I do the stairs, walkways and deck by hand...used to have a single stage snowblower but I gave it away as it was more trouble than it was worth to use...ran fine, but without driven wheels it was useless unless you have a perfectly smooth, hard surface to push it on.

 

[Wolves-Lower]

It's a strange world these days.....no one has EVER asked to shovel my driveway for money. Ah, the olden days of my youth when we put a shovel on our shoulder and cruised the neighborhood.

Isn't that amazing!
My kids look at me stupified when I tell them on snow days of my youth we would grab shovels and just do driveways, then knock on doors to tell them we shoveled them out. Sometimes we would get $1.00 somtimes $10.00, it mattered little to us. Usually by the end of the day we each had $20-30 bucks to go spend.

 

[Gibbonboy]

I sometimes get some attitude when I do a little extra sidewalk or clear part of a driveway that I haven't before- the people get all weird, probably think I'm gonna stick my hand in the blower just so I can sue them. Had one lady in town here call the police dept. about a friend of mine, because he cleared her sidewalk. Cop handled it by telling her "well, you should thank him, the code officer was coming to cite you for not shoveling the walk". She never called again, I'm trying to get a parade of 20 snowblowers to go by on her sidewalk one day.

Even when I do a neighbor's driveway that wants me to, I'm super-paranoid about my chute direction, don't need to pay for any windows or dings in the car. I usually tell them that I'll gladly do sidewalks and the ends of the driveway, but won't go near cars, to avoid damage. They understand this. There are several snowblowers on my block, we all kind of compete to get more "turf". I picked up two more houses last night.

I wouldn't want the liability of someone else doing my driveway, not to mention if the person clearing damages a vehicle or house (or worse, hurts someone) and doesn't have millions' worth of liability insurance. Luckily we don't live in a sue-happy area, the judges around here are tough on bogus claims/suits.

 

[Martin Strand III]

With this 400 HP baby, I blow snow, clear out of the county, anytime I want to .

Truth be known (esp to those meteorologists), all that snow on the east coast is coming from me just blowing snow off'n my driveway...

Aye,
Marty

 

[Gibbonboy]

Umm the guy who built that is from Ontario, and there's only one. Sorry, charlie!

 

[SlyFerret]

I like the 400HP snowblower! I'm forwarding that picture to my dad.

I usually don't clear my driveway. If the snow is too bad for my wife to drive her Cavalier, she takes my S-Blazer 4x4, and I drive my Chevy 1500 4x4 pickup. I can't afford to drive the truck on a regular basis though. For the most part, it's been relegated to "farm truck" status. With 33x12.50 BFG tires and 4.10 gears on it, it gets all of about 13 miles per gallon on a good day, downhill with a tailwind.

If we get any significant snow, I have a wonderful neighbor who has a plow on his tractor. He comes down the road and plows my driveway and a couple other driveways that are nearby.

I need to pickup some sort of Christmas/Thank You gift for his family. I love living out here. When I lived in town, I'll guarantee that none of my neighbors would have done anyone else any favors like this.

-SF

 

[Andre B.]

If you are going to blow snow do it up right.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exBrz5aQ9Hg

 

[thephotohound]

I usually only snowblow at the end of the storm, but it does depend on the storm type. Sunday, I'll probably be out there multiple times, watching the changeovers. Before (if) it changes to rain, I'll be out there getting the snow off first. If I don't, I'll never move the snow afterwards. This storm has the potential to be mighty nasty for a lot of people.