I live on an acreage, I have a large deck, a three bay garage, and a teardrop style driveway. I have a small quad with a blade on it, and some shovels that are hand operated. When it snows a little, it may take up to 15 minutes to shovel off my deck before it's cleaned off. When it snows a lot I usually wait for it to stop before I start pushing it to the side.
This process can take up to 4 to 6 hours depending on how deep and packed the snow is. This is by using the ATV with a moose plow that I have modified and welded so that it works properly.
Over the last 6 days it has snowed just about every second or third day, with one of those days being extremely windy. Wind makes drifts that are hard and compact, they do not move that easily and take much longer to get rid of.
When you plow snow on a driveway, you have to have some foresight for the next time it snows, you have to push the snow further out than just to the edges of the driveway, you have to push it 5 or 6 meters past the edge. You do this in preparation of the next snow fall.
Once you move snow after it has fallen, it changes somehow and gets harder and denser, the next time you go to push it, it is almost impossible to move, so this is the reason you push it further out on the first snow fall. The second snow fall will not be able to be pushed as far as the first snow fall and will make your path less wide as the first one.
Subsequent snowfalls compound this fact with each snowfall. It is snowing right now, and for some reason I had forgotten my snow fall rules that I had come up with, and as a consequence, my driveway is becoming narrower than I would prefer.
We have had heavy snow 3 days out of a week, and the forecast holds a bleak future for my narrowing driveway, too many more of these and I will be out there with my pick axe, chipping away at my driveway to clean it off, then I'd have to blade it with the quad. A task no normal human being would look forward to.
But it would get clean, and pushed back as far as I could get it, and this time I would be ready for when the snow falls again.
Scott Goerz
