Boiling water onto cold windscreen?

Really? How far is your tank from the tap? This am, one minute to fill kettle with hottish water, 2 minutes walking to car and back again. Neighbour still scraping when I returned.

Now you get people who leap into the car with the running engine and steal it. Regards Mike.

Is this like the boiling water freezes more quickly in the freezer thing? It's because some of the water evaporates, taking heat with it so you end up with less water which then freezes more quickly than if you'd started with non-boiling water.

IIRC anyway.

cheers, Phil

That's justifiable homicide. No court in the land would let you go down for that.

Done that.

Effects: nil.

I've told coppers to f*ck off in the past, and in that situation, I'd do it again.

F*ck, I hope not. I could have got a damn good car for what I had to pay to convert. Mind U, I did get a big f*ck off space for rooms in the attic out of it. Haven't seen the two teens I bred for ages since. Just got to figure out what to do with the 8 YO, who has taken over the whole first floor. Thank God for Wireless and MSN, otherwise no one would come down for supper.

-- Stuart, from the shed.

The message from "Malc" contains these words:

Yeah, I get that, too - only the car's closer. And there's Dave up the road, still scraping away like he was before I started as I drive off. What's with these people - can't they see a good idea when it happens right in front of them?

I'm scraping a Mini. the windows are not that big, and I have a decent scraper. It's not a big house but there are a lot of long pipe runs to get downstairs.

Maybe, I don't know. That's what I was told, and it seemed to make sense to me.

For 2 years, I used to leave for work at 7:10am every day, and if it was frosty I'd always boil a kettle. Not being the best at getting up in the morning, I'd always be doing everything at the last minute. To clear the windscreen as quick as possible, I'd literally stand by the kettle, and as soon as it boiled pick it up, walk 20 ft and poor it straight onto the windscreen. It never cracked.

You see people doing pouring water (maybe not necessarily boiling water, but it works a lot quicker!) out of a kettle onto their windscreens all the time, but never hear of people cracking their windscreen this way. You also hear a lot of people advising only to ever use warm water, and never to use boiling water.

So, it seems that boiling water can damage your windscreen in some way? If it's feasible that boiling water could crack a frozen windscreen, is it not even more feasible that it could create tiny cracks on the surface of the glass?

I don't know the physics of toughened glass, but this vehicles screen, after 2 winters of serious kettle abuse, and not a lot of mileage (2 miles of B roads, and 2 miles of town centre to get to work, and the same back 5 days a week, and maybe 50 miles of A road motoring at the weekend), the windscreen was noticeably a lot worse when driving in the dark facing oncoming headlights after I had had it 2 years, than I remember when I first got it. Yes, it was my first car!

Alex.

That's just damage with age, hot water if it has any effect would just crack it (try it on some untoughened glass & it just cracks, it doesn't chip).

Unecessarily stupid IMO but feel free.

Andy

The message from "Alex, Boosbeck." contains these words:

I don't know how you come to that conclusion.

No, read my post. I said 2 minutes to the car and back again which includes pouring the water.

Guy King ( snipped-for-privacy@zetnet.co.uk) gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying :

Then add in a driver wiping the windscreen clear with the back of their hand - whilst wearing a ring...

More to the point - you don't have to boil the kettle. That's the beauty of it. You use the water left in the kettle after you used it to make your cup of tea/coffee with your breakfast. By the time you come to defrost the car, the water is still warm, and defrosts the screen nicely. And to those you say it refreezes - turn the wipers on before pouring the water (but be careful where you stand unless you want wet feet). Nice clear screen every time. I do it every cold morning, and have done for years. Much quicker than scraping, and much more effective than de-icer.

Wrong! It takes 15min to traverse 1/4 mile, only if you walk briskly.

What! My rudimentary maths skills make that 1m/hr! I'm 59 years old and could probably crawl on my hands and knees faster than that!

A reasonable average walking speed on easy terrain is 3m/hr. 15 minutes should take you 3/4 mile. 2 minutes should be 176 yards?

Chris

Lin Chung ( snipped-for-privacy@the.Water.Margin.com) gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying :

EH?

You walk "briskly" at 1mph?

Chris' 12mph is more like a fast jog - 4-6mph is a brisk walk.