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Lifestyle

14th Jan 2016

THIS is the best way to defrost your windscreen (and it saves time in the morning too)

Cool as you like

JOE

If you’re like us you probably don’t have extra minutes in the morning to defrost the windscreen.

By the time you’ve boiled the kettle, wedged the door to stop it from locking, run in and out like a jack-in-the-box, you’ve lost valuable time and you’re bloody freezing too.

But what if there was a better way? Well, as it turns out, we’ve been de-icing our windscreens all wrong.

Like most things, the best way to tackle morning frost is a “prevention rather than cure” approach.

According to The Metro, scraping with credit cards and pouring boiling water are actually damaging to the vehicle, as we should be using salt water the night before instead.

Eis kratzen - ice scraping 03 

It’s simple to do. Just dunk a towel in some salt water and lay it out on your windscreen overnight.

The science bit? Basically, salt water freezes at a lower temperature (-1.8C) than regular water (0C) and so it melts away faster too. Just be careful not to get the salt water on the metal of your car, as it could corrode it away.

A less effective but viable alternative is to mix two parts alcohol and one part water and spray it on the windscreen the night before.

Although that just sounds like a grievous mis-use of alcohol to us.

Topics:

Cars,Winter