Winter time in Wisconsin gives you the changing of the seasons at its most extreme. Come the snow, the tundra is looking beautiful, but cold and a pain to maintain, and one of the most arduous chores of living with snow is shoveling it.
I hate shoveling snow. And let’s be clear, unless you’ve lived with it on an intimate level, you won’t realize that there are many types of snow. No, it’s not like cotton candy. And if someone throws a snowball at your face, it will hurt. Snow is ice. If someone threw a sandwich bag full of ice at your face, it will hurt. I guarantee it.
There’s snow at many different levels of frozen. Snow is compacted water at the molecular, which is why it is heavier. The heaviest snow to shovel is the really “perfect” snow. It’s the kind that when you break through it, it looks like Styrofoam. Next is slushy snow, the kind that slightly melted, and not only is it still a pain to shovel, it’s also probably the most dangerous type of snow to drive or walk in. Then it’s “frozen” snow, pretty much sheets of ice. You can pick that up with your hand. And the lightest, of course, is powder snow. It’s the same as any snow, except it didn’t snow enough to layer itself into a chore.
We have a 30 by 10-some-feet driveway and on average, when it snows, we get at least an inch or two. So I’d say when I clear some of it, here’s the math:
2 inches high x 12 inches wide x 12 inches long = 288 cubic inches of snow
which is how much water? I look it up:
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_to_convert_cubic_feet_of_snow_to_gallons_of_water
So, according to the answer there, 1 cubic foot of snow is equivalent to 3/4 gallon of water when melted.
Therefore, on average snow days, if I shovel 6 feet x 1 feet of snow, I get my cubic foot of snow, which is about 3/4 gallon of water. So my driveway is approx. 30 x 10 feet.
30 feet / 6 feet = 5 rows
10 feet = 10 cols
5 rows x 10 cols = 50 cubic feet = approx 37.5 gallons of water
Not bad for the average 30-45 minutes of shoveling. Now, let’s see what it’s like if the snow got harder…
For example, today is about 4 inches of snow.
4 inches high x 12 inches wide x 12 inches long = 576 cubic inches of snow
That means I need to shovel 3 feet by 1 feet of snow to get 1 cubic foot of snow.
30 feet / 3 feet = 10 rows
10 feet = 10 cols
10 rows x 10 cols = 100 cubic feet = 100 cubic feet / 3/4 = 75 gallons of water!
That seems about right. See how exponential the change is! Because we use a big shovel, and I estimate each shovel of snow is about a half gallon of water. And it takes about 75 shovel movements.
So, just for fun, lets see how much 75 gallons of water weighs in pounds.
A gallon of water is approx. 8 pounds.
75 gallons x 8 pounds/gallon = 600 pounds of water!!!
That’s a workout. No wonder I’m so exhausted. To move 600 pounds in an hour. As Bishop would say, not bad… for a human.
Until next time, shovel your own snow, not your own shit.
And this is how we do:
Tags: back, exercise, howto, injury, legs, lift, proper, shovel, snow, tundra, winter, wisconsin