Hi everyone,
Just a word of caution. The corner of the S Circular at Topps Tiles (Stanstead Road/Sunderland Road) had black ice this morning. Coming from Catford, I turned left, lost control, sashayed into the opposite lane before a 180 pirouette back into my lane facing oncoming traffic at about 7.50am this morning. I and the car are absolutely fine as there was no traffic, but with cold weather overnight again, please do be careful, especially as us locals will be on cold tyres if we set out from home.
Take care and enjoy the sunshine,
Alisa

Thanks Ailsa for warning everyone. Glad you are ok but no doubt you are a little shaken. It should have been gritted but I di nt see the lorry out last night.

It was extremely cold this morning even at about 11am. I used a mop and v hot water to get the ice of my car windows but by the time - about 5 minutes later- Id got into the car that water had itself frozen over and I had to do it all again. Amazing. Lets hope there are no more accidents this evening.

Roz, you're just asking for a cracked windscreen - use warm water only, if you must, but the best way to clear the screen is a combination of using the hot air blower/screen heater from inside, plus a scraper on the oustide. Use a de-icer spray if it's particularly tough/thick.

Never use hot water to de-ice anything - car windscreens, paths, whatever. The heat evaporates rapidly and you just leave water to freeze again into black ice. So what you describe as 'amazing' is actually a direct consequence of using hot water. And obviously on glass, even toughened glass, it's a really bad idea.

As the last poster said, turn the engine on and use the blowers to warm the glass while you scrape or use a de-icing spray on the outside. If the glass is still cold when you start driving, it could fog up really quickly on the inside and re-freeze on the outside. I once sprayed the windscreen just after starting to drive and it froze solid almost instantly. I had to pull over as I couldn't see. Very dangerous, and I'll never do that again!

This post was last modified: 11-02-2012 05:44 PM by rshdunlop.

Back to the original poster - I think someone had a repeat of your incident later on Saturday morning: there was a black Saab in the middle of the A205 just by the junction with Church Rise at around 9.45am.

Looked like no significant damage done.

Hi
I wonder if this is related to the long term leaking pipe outside of Topps Tiles? I reported this to Thames Water early last week as it had turned to a sheet of ice on the pavement and in the cycle lane (despite the salt strewn around). Thames are apparently discussing with Topps Tiles who owns the leaking pipe and were not able to take action until this is resolved.....