What Is The Fastest Way to De-Ice Your Car?

1 December 2020

Rushing out to work only to realise you need to de-ice your car windscreen? Yup, we know the feeling. And it only gets worse as the days get frostier. While you can scrape the ice off your car with an ice scraper, this is not always the quickest method. Therefore, we want to help you by running through some of the fastest ways to de-ice your car.

The 3 main steps to quickly de-ice your car are:

  • Using De-Icer Spray
  • Defrosting your car from the inside by pushing the ‘defrost’ buttons in your car and turning the heating right up
  • Lightly scraping the ice off your car while the melting is taking effect

In this blog, we will look at each of these points more depth. Combining the steps will be sure to give you the fastest way to de-ice your car.

Use De-Icer Spray

You can buy a De-Icer Aerosol which will quickly melt the ice off your car. You’ll find this in almost every shop selling automotive products. This is a helpful way of de-icing your car without damaging any glass or paint. They also tend to work to temperatures far below freezing, such as -20ᵒC. What’s more, this can help prevent re-freezing. You can use it by simply spraying it across your windscreen.

Making your own de-icer spray to de-ice your car is also an option if you want to save some money.

How To Make Your Own De-Icer Spray for Your Car

  1. Find a spray bottle – you can buy these in any supermarket or use an old cleaning spray bottle
  2. Fill 3/4 of the bottle with water
  3. Add 2 scoops of salt
  4. Shake it until the salt has dissolved

This is an easy way to make a quick and effective de-icing spray. Because salt has a lower freezing point than water, it starts to melt away the ice on your windscreen. Road salt is more effective than table salt for this. The risk of a DIY car de-icer spray is that there is more chance of damaging the car’s glass or paintwork using this method.

If you are wanting to make a spray which requires a little more effort, you can mix 2 parts isopropyl alcohol to 1 part water in a spray bottle. This will be more effective and less likely to damage the glass on your car. However, you are less likely to have isopropyl alcohol in your house and it may be a bit more difficult to buy compared with salt.

Safety note: All De-Icer sprays should always be kept in your house at room temperature.

De-Ice Your Car From The Inside

You can make de-icing your car even quicker by ramping your heating inside the car up to full. By pushing the ‘defrost’ buttons most modern cars have, you will also be able to target hot air directly at the windscreens. You can see what these look like in the picture below.

de-ice your car with defrost buttons

Some cars such as some modern Fords go one step further with their Quickclear heated windscreen. The Quickclear Heated windscreen works by placing a powerful electrical element in the windscreen glass. Heat is generated by a current passing through the element which quickly melts away any ice and snow.

Lightly Scrape Off The Ice

Once you have followed these two steps of using a de-icer spray and heating the car up from the inside, you can begin lightly scraping off the ice. Because you have already started melting any ice away, the work will be much easier. You’ll find you don’t need to scrape so hard which in turn will mean less risk of damaging the glass or paintwork on your car.

Combining these 3 steps together will be the fastest way to de-ice your car. If you enjoyed this, you may also want to find out more about winter tyres from our blog ‘Are Winter Tyres Worth It?‘.

road covered in snow
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