A winter storm system is bearing down on the Pittsburgh area. Here's how you can pretreat your driveway and sidewalk.
A winter storm system is expected to dump snow on the Pittsburgh area this weekend. Did you know that you can pretreat your sidewalks and driveway in the same manner that PennDOT does to the roads and highways?
In addition to stocking up for the storm, you also have a chance today and tomorrow to get ahead of the mess, specifically making sure you are safe on foot and tread in the aftermath.
KDKA's John Shumway spoke with an expert about what you can do before the flakes start flying and the snow starts falling.
How many times have you heard about PennDOT pretreating the area roads and highways? Well, on a much smaller scale, you can do the same thing.
When the snow starts falling on an untreated surface, it seeks out the pores of the concrete or asphalt that make up your driveway or sidewalk.
"It kind of adheres to it," said PennDOT District 11 Assistant Executive of Maintenance Lori Musto. "It kind of sticks to it real hard."
That's why when they can, PennDOT pretreats the surface with a melting brine that gets into the pores first.
"What it does is it forms a bond breaker," Musto said. "So when you do start to plow or remove the snow or the ice, it comes up easier from from the surface."
You can make your own brine with boiling water and mixing in a heavy dose of rock salt. You can optionally add a bit of molasses.
The mixture can be put into a sprayer and then you can go for it.
Or as Musto does, you can put down a layer of dry material and the result is that the accumulating precipitation can tend just to peel up right down to the black surface of the driveway.
Musto does point out that if this storms performs as touted, you might need to do more than just pretreat.
"You may want to go out more than once and clean your driveway just because your snow blower can't handle it, or if you're shoveling it, your back can't handle it," Musto said. "So you might go out midway through the storm."
If you indeed do a mid-storm clearing, you'll want to put down another layer of melting material so that when the snow finally stops, you'll again have a leg up on clearing the precipitation.
When it comes to which salt to use for your mixture, rock salt is the cheapest, but it might not be powerful enough with the frigid temperatures that will be hitting the Pittsburgh area after the snowfall.
You might want to consider magnesium chloride or calcium chloride, which are better for the single digit and sub-zero temperatures.
And don't wait until Saturday to try and find your bags of melting materials. Supplies are already being stretched thin.