It's our first winter in a house, in Cornwall NY (Hudson Valley) to be exact, and we have had a LOT of snow (well over 3 feet in the past couple of weeks). We're just renting so didn't look into things such as how to winterize your house, yard & home winterization, ice dam prevention, etc. Coming from an apartment in Brooklyn, we just didn't think about winterizing!! And now we're faced with a concrete porch COVERED in inches of ice as a result of an ice dam melting down, I suspect. I don't know how to remove ice dams, but did a quick google about how to deal with the ice covered porch. We don't have an outdoor outlet so the heated mats and heated wiring for gutters Antifreezeseem difficult (and expensive) and I worry about continuously using salt melt will damage the concrete and the yard. So I decided to try the DIY Ice Melt I found, here's the recipe:
- half gallon of hot water
- a few drops of dish soap
- 1/4 cup of rubbing alcohol

It's meant to be one of those great life hacks, a cheap way of removing ice: to melt the ice and prevent ice from forming since the alcohol has such a low freezing point. But as you'll see, it didn't do a darn thing. Maybe our ice was too thick? I dunno. Plain old hot water also didn't do anything. Ugh!! Do you have another do it yourself winter hack for us to try? Winter hacks for ice removal, ice dam removal, or better yet, prevention?? Comments welcome over on the Community tab or social media @usjapanfam! Thank you!!

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