To think pouring water on your icy car is just selfish?

[7hup]

Just fell on my face outside a neighbour who must have done this early morning.

So a stream of ice running across the pavement to the road which I didn't see

I fell hard. Am OK but if I were elderly or more fragile I could have bad injuries.

At least salt the pavement after!

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the carparks that have the carwashers in. They work all through winter around here, and create absolute death traps with all the car washing water turning to ice. I can't believe the car park managers let them continue through winter. Near me a couple are council ones, the other ones are Sainsburys.

" I'm originally from northern Europe where we get proper winters every year and I've never heared of this."

It doesn't work for snow and is not advisable if it is really cold as the water simply freezes onto the screen, and wipers, making everything worse. On a nice gentle English frost, the like of which we usually have about 20 times a year but which sets us all off moaning, yeah, it's normal and FINE to do it.

I wouldn't bother in, say, Austria, or Scandinavia.

Reminds me of the time someone watered the potted box hedges outside DS1’s nursery during a really cold snap. They watered them last thing before closing at the end of the day and next morning the front of the nursery was like an ice rink.

i want a heated steering wheel. hate driving in gloves but hands are bloody freezing

@Racecardriver
But why don’t they just use the windscreen heater thing?

I don't have a windscreen heater and have a high-spec modern car. I have a demister which blows air onto the windscreen to demist it, but that isn't going to melt the ice on the outside.

I scrape, then spray with de-icer and then put my wipers on and it's usually clear unless it's a really thick frost and then I just repeat the process.

I read that thread the other week, where he poster got a hauling over the coals for leaving her engine running while she defrosted the car, and was told to pour water on it. Fucking ridiculous.

I’ve got an oldish car, only heated rear window. I start the car, switch the fan/air con onto hot and only on windscreen, switch wing mirror heaters and back windscreen on. Get out of car, walk around it with ice scraper scraping ice off all windows. By the time I’m done, windscreen has defogged and its safe to drive off. Process takes maybe 7/8 minutes and the engine is running. But, my windscreen takes that long to Defog anyway, so I wouldn’t be able to drive off until that had happened anyway. I find it odd that people can’t sleep through a normal car idling, given 95% of us have double glazing these days.

I have a hot water bottle during the night and in the morning nip out and put it on the car dashboard. The residual warmth starts to defrost windscreen so it's much easier to scrape by the time I'm ready to go later. DD then gets to cuddle it to take the chill off whilst we're in the car on the way to school.

have a hot water bottle during the night and in the morning nip out and put it on the car dashboard. The residual warmth starts to defrost windscreen so it's much easier to scrape by the time I'm ready to go later. DD then gets to cuddle it to take the chill off whilst we're in the car on the way to school.

Any hot water bottle I’ve ever used is stone cold by the next morning!

Hey! Full circle.

I have now seen the following posts in mn and am calling House:

• YABU and selfish for using de-icer as it kills cats
• YABU and selfish for using your engine to melt the ice as it's polluting and making children's asthma worse
• YABU and selfish for spending several minutes scraping your car as it makes a noise and wakes the neighbours up
• YABU and selfish for using water as it creates ice

Presumably the answer is a knitted pullover for the car?

@clevs that’s the one (I forgot what it was called). If you leave it in for five minutes or so the ice will melt. I had to do this the other day.

@Holidayshopping it's in a cover during the night which I then take off. Not really warm but enough warmth to help...I loathe scraping my car with a passion and can't seem to find de-icer that actually de-ices so every little helps!

Is it too warm in the UK for the boiling water to damage the windshield? The sudden change in temperature can damage the windshield. Since this seems to be such a common practise.

Very clever, I must remember that.

Antifreeze and de-icer aren't the same thing and they contain different chemicals. Cars need antifreeze or their radiators would freeze and the engine would be knackered BUT yes it is very toxic to animals (a relative is a vet nurse and she says that cats with antifreeze toxicity suffer horrendously) which is why it's important to deal with leaky radiators etc quickly.

yeah, it's normal and FINE to do it.

Its not fine when you cause a danger to others. I'm sure my neighbour with the snapped ankle didn't think it was fine.

People just need to be sensible. I almost always use a scraper and occasionally the ice is so hard this isn't practical. Then I use lukewarm water but a small amount that doesn't drip onto the road at all as far as I can tell. I usually use less than 500ml.

Presumably the answer is a knitted pullover for the car?

Or cheap and readily available frost shields.

That was in reply to

If you put your sun shields down the hot air from the window vents hits these and comes back down so your windows demist quicker. If they are up the heat just flows up to the roof. I only heard this a couple of months ago and I find it really works - but again may depend on your make of car.

I live on a small road that doesn't get gritted, it's a sort of semi circle and there's a drain in the middle which the driveways slope down to. People chuck water over, it runs to the drain and makes the whole semi circle sheet ice. There's no way of walking around it or driving without going over it and it's lethal

Easier to just spray with deicer and put the car heater on. It is very dangerous to throw water about that is obviously going to freeze.

Antifreeze and de-icer aren't the same thing and they contain different chemicals

Many de-icers do contain toxic alcohols, same as antifreeze. My neighbour has one that contains ethylene glycol -same chemical.

They’re moving over to the less toxic alcohols but a) how many people know what their de-icer contains, and b) even if they did, would they know their methanol from their polyethylene glycol. No.

If you put your sun shields down the hot air from the window vents hits these and comes back down so your windows demist quicker. If they are up the heat just flows up to the roof. I only heard this a couple of months ago and I find it really works - but again may depend on your make of car.

What a top tip! I’m going to have to try this!

Mine was fine this morning. DH went out and started the car for me, put the heating on full blast and the seat heaters and it was toasty and ice free by the time I got out there.

My car is so old that it takes just as much scraping on the inside as it does on the outside! If it’s badly frozen then I use a bit of lukewarm water to start things off, then get the scraper off if needed. It has a blower but as that’s just whatever the temperature of the engine is, it doesn’t really help much with melting.
Haven’t noticed any water run off but we do have a driveway which maybe soaks it up?
I remember hearing about de-icer run off attracting and killing cats and wildlife so have stopped using it. Will have to see if there’s an eco friendly alternative nowadays.

Ditto people who wash their cars on a freezing day.