Congratudolences!
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Why not just coarse Kosher salt? Pet safe and cheap.
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I believe table salt works to 15F if I remember chemistry correctly. But yeah, apparently not pet friendly.
“Think about what happens to it when you drive behind a salt truck in the winter. That rock salt will corrode the metal and paint of your car. So those of us who live in cold climates take our cars in every fall to spray on some goo that keeps the salt away from our precious cars.”
Da fuq?
Alas, I have no recommendations. We grabbed a bag at Ocean State for winter doggo visits, but we usually just use calcium chloride. I guess I’ll have to take a look at the bag and see what is actually in it, to be safe.
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I thought must of us just took our cars to the car wash a day or two after the snow in order to wash the salt off.
You could also try getting doggie booties for your dogs. I got some for my dog at Bass Pro. They’re made from recycled tires, so they should hold up to salt or whatever.
I never washed my cars except once in the spring, and I never had rustout problems from the salt
We gave up as a kid on finding pet-safe salt. The dogs would generally self-service in the back yard, which we never salted. If we took them for a walk beyond the back yard, we’d wash their feet when we got home.
Exchanged contracts today and everything is fine and secure, the house is ours.
Since this we discovered emails between the solicitors revealing that the deal was on the brink of disaster for weeks before it all resolved today. On the one hand I’m glad we didn’t have to deal with the stress of all that but on the other we could have fucked this up without knowing why so easily just for being kept in the dark!
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I’ve seen musher’s secret wax recommended to help with protecting dogs’ paws during winter. This might be an easier alternative to dog-safe salt for their feet, unless the puppers are going to try and eat the salt too?
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Trust me here, you were better off not knowing. I had to double my blood pressure meds while I was buying a house.
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I am thankful for that. I’m relieved that it’s all gone so well.
We are picking up the keys on Friday and my brothers are coming to help us move our stuff. My boss said he’d lend me a van from work for the weekend. 
First big job is to build a run in the back yard for our two chickens.
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Winter is bullshit you guys.
How’s everyone else doing?
So far, we’ve had two major melts, and the French drain is doing a bang-up job of preventing seepage! Yay for worthwhile purchases!
Apparently, the town of Glenville will fix the culvert at the end of our driveway, so that should improve driveway drainage. I probably still need to get the entire thing redone, though, maybe re-graded as well as re-surfaced. I dunno, we’ll have to see.
We had a flickering problem on one of our circuits that we couldn’t diagnose. Unplugged an extension cord from one of the outlets on that circuit…and the problem went away entirely. I consider that to be sufficiently solved.
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Did you murder the extension cord?
Good idea. Extension cords are the number one cause of house fires and such.
Dumb people using extension cords incorrectly are the number cause of house fires.
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Nah, I just moved it to a different outlet on the same circuit.
I should probably troubleshoot the other outlet at some point. Fuck around with my shiny new multimeter!
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Weirdly, I almost never use my multimeter for…well, anything electrical. Sometimes just the occasional test for live pins and the like, and checking various larger batteries. But I’ve used it for, as a short list: Checking radiators for corrosion(car radiators, but it should work on household ones), checking temperature, checking for other corrosion, checking the surfaces on painted and anodized parts, measuring the distances between two points on machined parts, Light and sound level measurements, checking for moisture, checking acidity, and finally, I used one of the probes to scratch my back once because the itchy spot was JUST out of reach.
It’s not as versatile as a Lathe, but damn, I don’t know how I went without replacing my old broken one for so long.
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So it’s a tricorder.
Basically, except that last part, Tricorders were all rounded edges and smooth surfaces, no good for back scratching. Well that, and I still have to do a lot of the math myself - or, more realistically considering my skills, using another device.
We’ve been watching a lot of This Old House and now I’m thinking about converting to radiant floor heating. I don’t think it would be a huge infrastructure change since we currently have hot water base board heat. Lots of PEX tubing and crawling around my crawl space though. It would also add the ability to zonify the house.
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My only thing to say is be careful with the PEX tubing. In my experience it has a tendency to leak at seams no matter how carefully you install it.