Buffalo, NY (WBEN) - It's been a winter. A weird one, at that. Plenty of snow, at times, and recent bouts of heavy mixed precipitation and freezing rain.
As we brace for another round of snow and possibly a wintry mix, your first instinct is to break out the snow blower. But if you encounter ice, you may want to shelve the snow blower until you clear away the ice.
Ken Sfier of Hector's Hardware says the only time you have to worry about it is when there's ice on the driveway. "If we have Ice like we had last week, the snow blower is not going to move ice under any conditions, you're just going to damage your machine," says Sfier. He says ice gets in the auger and then it jams and probably blow a belt or ruin the gearbox.
Grant Szmanek of Ed Young's Hardware agrees. "With the single stage snow blowers with a rubber paddles, that's probably they're gonna get caught up in the chute and it's gonna get all jammed up could cause you to burnout about the two states snow blowers which had the augers and um, they'll break up some of that ice but if it does jam up, it will snap your shear pins and again, it's not a great thing for your belt to put all that strain on it," explains Szmanek.
Szmanek says repairs could cause a storm in your wallet. "The materials themselves are not too bad, but labor, you could be talking $150-$250 for a repair on a belt," estimates Szmanek.
Sfeir says nothing's made for removing ice. "You can use ice melt or scrape or shovel it away before you get your snow blower out there," suggests Sfeir.
We saw an icy wintry mix last week and that is possible Friday.
