Clever Hack Saves Your Garage Floor from Road Salt This Winter
Winter road salt and sand give you extra traction and help to melt snow and ice on the roads, but it can take a toll on your vehicle in the form of rust. One often neglected side-effect of road salt is the harmful corrosive effects it can have on the floor in your garage.
Calcium chloride salt, commonly used as deicer, reacts with the calcium hydroxide in concrete to form a chemical byproduct that causes concrete driveways, garage floors, and roadways to crumble (source: Drexel University).
The best way to protect your garage floor is to remove the salt and sand before it has time to corrode your concrete. The problem is, simply shoveling or sweeping the floor isn’t enough. The salty water will stay put corroding the surface.
The key is to get the salty water out, but how?
My Mother-in-Law came up with this brilliant life-hack to use what you already have – to get the salt out and clean your garage floor in the process!
What you’ll Need:
- Fresh Clean Snow
- Rubber Squeegee
- Snow Shovel
Here’s the Hack for Eliminating Road Salt
This is what you are faced with! What a mess!
Take some fresh, clean snow, and sprinkle it onto the salt, sand and grime.
Use a rubber squeegee to scrub the snow into the salt and grime. The snow will soak up the salty water like cat litter, essentially binding to it so that it can be removed easily.
Scrub the snow into the salt, sand and grime until it is well-mixed.
Once the fresh snow has been thoroughly mixed with the salt and grime, shovel it out.
Use a scrape shovel to plow out the soiled snow. (This “Snow Plow” shovel is an excellent choice for this type of work. “Works better and faster than a snow-blower!”)
The fresh snow absorbs the wet salt, sucking it up so that it can be shoveled out. What you are left with is a spotless garage floor!
Conclusion
A few words in closing. This hack works best when the temperature of the snow is between about 15-30 deg F. Colder snow won’t absorb as well. Warmer snow will get too slushy.
If you have a lot of salt, use a spray bottle to add some vinegar to the snow mixture. The vinegar will help to neutralize the alkaline effects of the salt. Use the same process to squeegee and shovel out the snow/salt/sand/vinegar mixture!
I hope you find this helpful!
