How to Remove Ice from Steps and Walkways Without Using Salt

With a ton of snow (and maybe ice) headed our way, THIS is a tip that we can surely use. 

I haven't tried it, but considering we don't have any ice melter in the house, and we DO have these ingredients, I'm going to give it a try. Certainly worth passing along:

Mix together:

1 tsp Dawn dishwashing liquid

1 Tbsp rubbing alcohol

1/2 gallon hot/warm water

First remove whatever snow and ice that you can, and then pour the mixture on it. 

It supposedly works like this: The dishwashing liquid helps prevent the ice from re-freezing, and the alcohol makes the ice melt faster.

Again, I have not tried this and I will be trying it during this snow event. I will report back if it, in fact, works. So, if for any reason it does not work, don't shoot the messenger. :-) As with anything, you never know until you try it.

Good luck and stay safe. And if you haven't seen our snow cream recipe, that might also be something to try out if you're going to get snow.

***************************UPDATE TO ORIGINAL POST***************************

I promised that I would give this a try and let everyone know how it worked out. Well, first let me say that over the course of three days, North Carolina was walloped with a winter storm of epic proportions. It has already been documented on Wikipedia, if that tells you how significant this weather event has been in this area. So, it should come as no surprise that not everyone was exactly prepared (including yours truly), and we've turned to scouring the Interwebs for methods of de-icing steps and walkways.

My findings regarding this particular method follow. Here's the "before" shot of my front steps. I left these photos completely untouched:

As per the instructions, I shoveled off as much snow as I could and found that there was a good bit of ice on the bottom layer. I mixed up double the recipe using tap water that was as hot as I could get it and poured it on the icy layer that was left. That layer immediately turned to slush (no doubt because of the hot water that I used). I swept major bits of slush off the steps, and this is what they looked like later that same day and since.

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