Jack Frost is Nipping at my Wood Deck

Oh the weather outside is frightful and then frost begins to cover my wood deck.  This frosting of my deck and sidewalks makes for a very slippery surface.  I do not walk to fall nor do I want my husband or my dog to fall and that does not even begin to address my concern for visitors. 

How do you keep your walkways ice free?  There are common means of addressing ice.  Quick Joe or salt has been used for year.  I do not particularly care for that method since I have a dog, my concrete walkway gets chewed up by the salt and lastly it is rough on the green environment.  You can use cat liter or sand as I have seen suggested on the web but that gets dragged into my kitchen and then all over the house.  My husband and I have found a method to deal with icy walkways that works for us.

It is black rubber mats.  When the first frost shows up my husband retrieves the mats from the barn and places them on the sidewalk up the ramp unto the deck to the porch door.  The mats are heavy and connect to each other so they are stable and do not slide off the walkway or the ramp.  I can easily shovel the snow and even the ice off the mats. 

We bought our mat when we needed them right that very minute.  When my mother was alive my husband and I had people staying with her while we worked as she had Alz.  We did no planning, it was a need rubber mats so our grandma sitters did not fall coming and going from our house.   We went to Home Depot, Lowes and several other stores.  We thought about indoor outdoor carpeting but it was too difficult to shovel.  Then we went into Ollie’s in Scranton.

I like to roam Ollie’s; I think of Ollie’s like an indoor yard sale or flea market.  The stock is not usually the same; their items are leftovers from other stores.  As I was wondering the store my husband was wondering the automotive department when he found these mats designed for garage floors.  They were perfect for what we needed.  After much looking we found our mats are Ollie’s.

Ollie’s motto of “Good Stuff Cheap”, did not apply to these mats.  They were pricey however they have held up over the last 8 years.  We do remove them at the end of snow season.   I will admit I once pushed the snow blower over the mats praying the entire time that I did not destroy the mat or snow blower.  Thankfully both were fine but I never did that again.  I strictly shovel the mats. 

The screen enclosed porch is another matter entirely.  Painting the wood floor with paint containing grit in order to be slip-resistant did not work.  With a light snow that blows in through the screen, the wood floor of the porch is super slippery.  My exuberant dog has splat several times.   In that area, we use an indoor outdoor rug.  That keeps the slide to a minimum and lessens the tracking in dirt.

We live in NEPA.  Other north east areas that experience snow, ice and wet weather demand remedies for the slips and slides.  We have tried these two methods at our home.  What have you tried?