WTF am I supposed to do about this?
https://i.imgur.com/FW66SPv.png
Buy a jackhammer?
an ice chipper and some salt.
shareI was thinking the same.
shareSalt doesn't have much effect on such thick ice. You can put as much of it on there as you can before it starts falling off and a day later it has only pockmarked the surface.
I've never used an ice chipper, but slamming the forward edge of my big aluminum grain shovel straight down into it does practically nothing.
you have to hit it hard
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zeyn3QCKn_0&ab_channel=What%27sGaryDoin%3F
I have hit it hard, obviously, and that ice in that video is nothing. You can tell it's all porous/brittle to begin with. The ice on my steps, the top step in particular, is solid ice, like you'd find on a skating rink. If you stepped on the poor excuse for ice in that video with skates on you'd instantly break through it down to the asphalt. On the other hand, the ice on my steps is the kind you could actually skate on.
I don't doubt that a sharp tool like that would work better than the comparatively dull edge of a metal shovel, but it would still be quite a job to get through a few inches of solid ice with it.
i am in canada. i have experienced all kinds of ice conditions. use some ice melt to soften it up.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irdXTW-4j8o&ab_channel=HomeAdditionPlus
"i am in canada. i have experienced all kinds of ice conditions."
I've lived in Maine all my life (nearly 50 years now), and so have I.
"use some ice melt to soften it up."
That's just rock salt, and that little container he's using would do practically nothing. I've bought 50-pound bags of the stuff, and like I said, when you have thick, solid ice to deal with, it doesn't do much. If you only have a thin layer of ice it works great. With thick, solid ice, it will melt a little into the surface over the course of a day or so, and then you can dump more on if you want, and if you did that every day for maybe a week, and there are no conditions during that week causing more ice to build up, you might accomplish something. Of course, a 50-pound bag doesn't last long that way.
I've been meaning to get an ice chipper for years. Like I said, I'm sure it would work better than a shovel, though I don't think it will work so well as to make it easy. A 5-lb. sledge hammer and a splitting maul is probably the way to go, if I didn't care about damaging the steps.