Snow Shoveling

37 Pictures: 1-20 , 20-37

The Art of Snow Shoveling

Snow is frozen water. "The art of snow shoveling" is a matter of figuring out where the water goes.

I live in the Salt Lake area. The county, bless their hearts, heaps salt on the road to help keep the streets clear of ice.

I had the habit of just pushing snow to the side of the driveway without thought about the run off.

One year I accidentally built a dam that caused the water from the street to run into a garden area. The salt killed the garden. It took several years for the garden to recover.

Since the garden incident, I started paying attention to snow melt and realized that the art of shoveling snow is controlling the run off from the melt.

The next year, I began paying attention to snowmelt and realized that the art of snow shoveling is matter of controlling the run off.

Paying attention to the snowmelt makes shoveling a great deal easier and it saves resources.

My first objective in snowshoveling is to channel all of the salty water into the county's drainage system. They are the one's who put the salt on the roads; so they should be the ones to deal with the salt.

So, I start shoveling by cleaning out the gutters that take the salty water away. I discovered that, by cleaning the gutters first, any water held by the snow will drain away ... making the snow substantially lighter. By cleaning a path for the water to flow away, I reduce problems with loose water refreezing into solid ice.

Now, I happen to live Utah, which is an arid state. Each year we spend hundreds of dollars watering the garden and lawn. To save money, I want all of the fresh water from the snowmelt to melt into the garden.

So, I designed a system of snow piles so that any salty water goes into the drain, but any fresh water melts into a garden.

Context: Nature