This year, I am making a point to keep the lower half of the driveway very clear by shoveling any snowfall and sanding and salting. I have boxes of salt and sand placed along the driveway in three spots, to minimize the back-and-forth walking up and down the steep hill. I have also put my old Maxwell House blue plastic coffee canisters to work by using them as scoops. The older model canisters work better because the handle was separated from the body and not just indentations.
As the temperature grows colder, I am having a problem with my sand. Instead of nice granular sand – sand-sand – so to speak, I have large chunks of sand the shape of my boxes. The canisters do nothing to break-up them, and my gloved hands (and puny biceps) can’t punch through them. Thus, I’m left to dump the entire box on the driveway and stomp on it, then disperse some of the sand and rearrange the remaining chunks back in the box.
Short of keeping the sand at garage-temperature, is there a way to prevent it from bricking-up?
The salt is fine, but I try to use less of that than the sand. The other thing about the boxes of sand are that if you’re not careful, they can go shooting off like a self-propelled ground rocket. I was chasing one this morning.