"Green" Winter Windscreen De-icer Clearer????

Savvy_Sue

gazhawkins wrote:

How about methylated spirits (99% alcohol) as a de-icer? Also makes a good bottle wash additive (smells lovely when you use it too).

Available at hardware shops, some chemists and cheapjack shops - about 1.75 for 500ml.

Just don't drink it as methanol is added to make it taste bad (methanol is poisonous to humans)!

Won't that strip your paintwork? I know that de-icer can do that as well, and maybe meths doesn't, but ... use with care!

Personally I think the smell is an acquired taste!

talksalot81

Seakay wrote:

What sort of price is it, and is there anywhere to look to find out how much to dilute it by for various tasks?

Find a local chemical manufacturer/supplier. It basically costs pennies wholesale and you should easily get someone willing to hand you a 5l bottle for £10 cash.

I will note that one of the above posts might sound a tad frightening about the ingredients. Most of the chemicals noted are basically harmless unless ingesting. Also dont forget a great many things in your house will have significantly higher dangers (bleach, over cleaner, toilet cleaner etc.).

Etheco_2

What's wrong with a plain old scraper?

Tempting as it is, I'm trying to avoid running the engine with the car just sat in the drive to de-ice. It takes a few miles of driving for the engine to warm up so the air blowing isn't warm and the emissions are worse because the engine isn't running efficiently - all in all, a bad habit.

Liney_2

I scrape mine off using an old cd case!

Savvy_Sue

Etheco wrote:

What's wrong with a plain old scraper?

The advantage of warm water is that if you get a lot of condensation on the inside of the car (like we used to on our old leaky Saab!) then warm water on the outside clears the inside as well whereas a scraper doesn't!

getcarter

I just put a towel across the windscreen tucked into the doors, that keeps the worst of the ice off.

Etheco_2

Savvy_Sue wrote:

The advantage of warm water is that if you get a lot of condensation on the inside of the car (like we used to on our old leaky Saab!) then warm water on the outside clears the inside as well whereas a scraper doesn't!

For the sake of argument, I wonder if boiling the kettle to make your hot water produces more or less Co2 than running your cars air con which clear's condensation very quickly....

If you don't have air con, you can use a sponge and a towel. I have to do that sometimes in our 3 year old picasso, I think one of the doors might be slightly misaligned letting in more moisture than normal sometimes.

Savvy_Sue

Etheco wrote:

For the sake of argument, I wonder if boiling the kettle to make your hot water produces more or less Co2 than running your cars air con which clear's condensation very quickly....

If you don't have air con, you can use a sponge and a towel. I have to do that sometimes in our 3 year old picasso, I think one of the doors might be slightly misaligned letting in more moisture than normal sometimes.

That's a good question. Personally I find the kettle produces fewer exhaust fumes in my back yard, and I'd have thought it would be a more efficient use of energy. Plus I either use water left in the kettle from the morning cuppa, or hot water from the tap.

And in our case, the air con was long gone ... :rotfl:

gromituk

Still far better to cover the windscreen with something so no chemicals or energy are required to defrost it. But that requires planning ;-)

SusanCarter

I bought a cheap old sheet from a charity shop and use that. It's good when it's snowy too as it can cover the windscreen, the roof and the top half of all the other windows so reduce the snow clearing before setting off. Where I used to live, my car was parked in the street and although my car was once carried down the road, nothing ever happened to the sheet.

When I was a child, I can remember my dad throwing buckets of warm water over the car with a little bit of washing up liquid in it. I don't know whether the washing up liquid made a difference but I don't remember us having any problems with ice on the ground.

Perhaps if you used a bottle of warm water with one of those sports caps on it, you would be able to de-ice without having to throw gallons of water everywhere.

With regard to smells in de-icers, smell is not necessarily a good indicator of safety as the concentration required for you to smell a given chemical is unlikely to correspond with the concentration which can cause harm. However, I believe manufacturers often put nasty smelling or nasty tasting additives into things which we shouldn't drink. Having said that, obviously water or some kind of barrier is likely to have much less environmental impact than chemical de-icers.