Waking up to a frosted windshield is one of the worst starts of mornings you can have. They can be tedious to clean if you don’t know the proper protocol.
Luckily, we know just the right chemical that is able to do so (hint: it’s in the title!).
So, is hydrogen peroxide really that effective? And if so, how can you deploy it to use?
We will be answering all of those questions and much more. Let’s begin!
Frosted Windshields – The Nuisance
If you are someone who lives in a tropical region or a place where there is high precipitation and humidity along with cold, you must have woken up to a frosted windshield of your car.
People who live in significantly colder regions like near the Arctic ring have to keep their car engines running all day and night to prevent this nuisance from happening. A feat that is both inefficient and ineffective in an already low-resourced place and season.
The thing about a frosted windshield is that it is not a simple process of freezing water that we see inside our freezers. Your car may suffer a frosted windshield even if the temperature is way above the freezing point of zero degrees Celsius (or 32 degrees Fahrenheit).
What really happens is that the material that your car body is made up of is an excellent conductor of heat.
During the day, when the sun is at its peak, it absorbs the heat effectively. However, as the night approaches, the body cools down just as fast. Leading to the temperature far below the surroundings.
And that’s the reason why people suffer frosted windshields even though the temperatures seldom touch the zero point!
How to Defrost Your Windshield Quickly Using Peroxide?
Now that the mechanics of frosted windshields is out of the way, we can talk about how you can get rid of them. But more importantly, how you can get rid of it fast with effective means.
Because during snowing weathers (which is probably what you would experience during frosted windshields), is to use whatever resource you have available at homes, without going out in the open to search.
And we believe almost every household has some form of hydrogen peroxide available (predominantly inside the first aid tool boxes).
Here is how you can use hydrogen peroxide to your advantage and begin cleaning frosted windshields with little or no resources available.
What You Need
As the procedure for removing frosted windshields using hydrogen peroxide focuses on using whatever minimal resources you have available at home, you need not much for this procedure.
However, these are the few must-haves:
- Spraying bottle
- 3% hydrogen peroxide
- Warm water
- Cleaning clot or a debit card (any plastic card works fine as well)
- Gloves
The Procedure
We can formally begin the cleaning procedure now that we have collected everything. What you have to do is:
- Before beginning the procedure, make sure to wear gloves or other snow-protective gear
- In order to make the defrosting solution, you have to make a solution with 1 cup of warm water and 1 cup of hydrogen peroxide
- Now start by spraying this solution all over the windshield and make sure to cover all of the glass
- After you have thoroughly sprayed the solution, let it rest for about 2 minutes
- By now, hydrogen peroxide would have seeped into the ice and started to melt it off
- Now, this softened glass can be easily wiped off using a cloth or a plastic card
- If you feel that the texture is still too tough to be wiped off, repeat the spraying part
And that’s all there is to it! You will be amazed at how easily hydrogen peroxide is able to loosen up the icy coat of your car’s windshield, saving you a lot of time, energy, and resources.
How to Prevent Frosting Using Hydrogen Peroxide
Now that we have treated the windshield using hydrogen peroxide, we can move on to the next step: preventing this from happening altogether. And that using hydrogen peroxide as well.
That’s the great thing about hydrogen peroxide. It benefits the user by being a highly resourceful chemical with high functionality. And as always, prevention is better than treatment!
What You Need
Quite similar to the treatment part discussed above, using hydrogen peroxide gives you the benefit of saving quite a lot of other equipment. For this procedure, what you need is:
- A tarp or a couple of thick cloth pieces
- 3% hydrogen peroxide
- Old stockings or socks
The Procedure
In this procedure, we primarily focus on keeping the windshield safe by covering it with a warm material or something that prevents ice from accumulating over the glass panel and sticking.
Before we begin the procedure, we highly recommend parking your cars inside the garage. This will keep them in a neutral environment and away from humidity seen outside due to grass. But by chance, if you don’t have one, hydrogen peroxide has got you covered as well!
What you have to do is:
- Soak the cloth or trap it with hydrogen peroxide; you can also spray hydrogen peroxide on one side of the material to prevent excessive contact with the material
- Lay down the cloth over the windshield (with the hydrogen peroxide side directly in contact with the windshield)
- Hold the cloth down with wipers of your car (consider them as clips)
- To protect the wipers as well, cover them using stocking or knee-high socks
- The stockings between the wipers and glass shield will prevent them from sticking directly over the glass panel
This little maneuver will save you so much time and trouble! It is remarkable how hydrogen peroxide is able to keep ice from reaching the glass panel and sticking.
Melting Ice Using Hydrogen Peroxide – How Does It Work?
Now that we have completely gone over how frosting is caused and how we can treat and prevent it using hydrogen peroxide, it’s time we ponder on the question as to why that happens.
The Mechanism
To sum it all up, it’s the melting point difference that causes windshields to melt away. Hydrogen peroxide is designed in such a manner that it remains in the liquid form at much lower temperatures than water. Rubbing alcohol has the same chemical property and is used to remove frost from the windshield as well.
The liquid hydrogen peroxide delivers the necessary heat to the ice and causes it to break away. This lets it seep into the external coating and come in between the glass and ice. At this point, you can easily scrape off the ice and remove it!
Hydrogen Peroxide vs Other Agents
By now, you might be wondering, yeah, hydrogen peroxide is great. But what about other agents? My grandad says you needed a bucket of hot water and a debit card. Why should we waste so much time preparing hydrogen peroxide solution and then spraying it?
That’s a good question, only that it lacks the newest findings. Like all things, old ways get outdated through time, only to be replaced by newer and more efficient ways. Hydrogen peroxide is the newest and latest substance that people have started using to clear frosted windshields.
Below are some discussions and comparisons of hydrogen peroxide with other old-school agents that are thought of as “effective”.
Manual Scraping
We have all been there, the temptation to pop out your credit card and start scraping away all of the ice like an ice candy. Only to realize a few minutes later that ice is not even moving an inch and all you managed to do was warm your body and a few scratches on the windshield here and there.
Well, that’s about it. Though manual scraping is effective, we have also mentioned it is our procedure to clear off frosted shields, but only if the ice has loosened up and is a wipe away from cleaning.
Running Engine
Out of all the procedures, there are to clean frosted windshields online, leaving your engine opening and running is by far the most energy inefficient way of clearing off frosted ice.
Here is the thing, fossil fuel is rare. And by each passing day, we are rapidly consuming its already depleted supply. Leaving your engine running all night long will not only waste your money but also drain a non-renewable energy source.
So folks, don’t keep your engines running. Hydrogen peroxide will give you the same results without spending so much time and money.
Hot Water
Hot water looks like the perfect candidate to remove a frosted screen on the surface. Even, we have mentioned it in our procedure, why is it wrong?
Well, here is the thing, hot water is not ineffective per se. But people generally go a tad overboard with the heated water and pour down piping hot water directly over their windshields. Now, a bit of scientific knowledge will tell you right away how wrong this procedure is.
By rapidly heating the windshield, you will also cause it to expand rapidly. This, in turn, will lead to cracking off the glass. And if done at a high enough temperature difference, the windshield itself may shatter.
So it is best to have hydrogen peroxide with warm water.
The Takeaway
Hydrogen peroxide is one of the best household investments you can have. Just having a brown bottle of 3% hydrogen peroxide saves you so much time and money. And if you are someone who lives in a colder climate, all the more reasons to do so.
This resourceful chemical can be used to clear off frosted windshields effectively. Adding this to a long list of procedures that hydrogen peroxide is able to perform.
So order your set of hydrogen peroxide today!
