Thawing Bay Drain Grates

[Wash Grunt]

Wondering what others do to clear drain grates in self serve bays from ice, frozen chunks of slush. Our in floor heat is struggling despite numerous service calls on our old boiler system. We have two bays that do not thaw properly, and frozen slush and ice build up and cover the grain grates. This creates an ice damn that requires shutting down the bay, chopping ice, spreading ice melt, etc.. I thought about using a propane torch similar to that used by roofers. Trying to use the spray gun to cut through the ice is time consuming and tends to make it worse. Any ideas would be appreciated.

 

[Randy]

Are you talking about just the grates or the pit water. I've used a hot water hose and a weed torch/burner to melt the ice build up on the grates. I bought my weed torch/burner at Harbor Freight, I think it was about $30 or so. When it gets to cold we shut down the car wash, sometimes it's not worth the effort or cost to stay open.

 

[Wash Grunt]

Right, the grates over the pits. we have four self serve bays and a touch free automatic bay. Unfortunately customers use the two bays with the worse floor heat. We close the bays when ice build up gets bad, throw ice melt on it to loosen the ice, chop the ice and shovel it out, open the bays then repeat. The weed torch/burner is what I was thinking about.

 

[PaulLovesJamie]

I use an ice chopper/chipper and a snow shovel

 

[washnshine]

If you have a hot water tap and enough garden hose to drag out, that will melt it down a lot faster than the hp gun in the bay. You’ll get a pretty good volume of pure hot water that should make relatively short work of it.

 

[Waxman]

I have a torpedo heater that runs on kerosene. I built a four sided rectangular box out of some scrap wood and some metal siding material. I put the box over the area that I want to thaw and blow the torpedo heater into the open end. thaws out the ground below pretty quickly. I use it on the thick ice that builds up on my entry pad for my automatic. I made a mistake when I built the wash several years ago and never installed the floor heat under that entry pad so it gets icy.

 

[Earl Weiss]

I like Torpedo heater that runs on both Kerosene and Diesel is best since diesel is Cheap and easy to get. II like Wax mans Box idea. Depending on How cold it is outside I wonder of some hooks in end wall that you could attach a tarp to might help everything melt.