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Any rapid heating, hot water, defroster on high, or flamethrower can crack the windows.
50 percent water and 50 percent ethyl alcohol works well for deicing. If I came out to see my car like that, I would say "see you in a few days."
With the intensely cold air gripping the eastern two-thirds of the country, a lot of water-mains have been breaking, particularly the older, worn-out ones that can't take the stress. We see this kind of stuff, here and there, every time a cold Arctic high-pressure system moves south out of Canada this time of year. In fact, just this morning, a 56-inch water main broke here in the D.C. area, with a huge flood, and shut down the Beltway (I-495) for awhile.
I was hoping the owner wouldnt turn on the heat/rear defogger to melt the ice on the windows. Get to end of story, he did. Shattered window.
The windows shouldn't crack if he doesn't use the defroster too intensely and overheat them in comparison to their surroundings. My Outback, for example, not only has a regular hot-air defroster in front, but an electric-grid heater for the lower front windshield, similiar to the rear defroster, that thaws out frozen wiper-blades as well (they have separate switches on the older Outbacks; a single common-control switch on the new ones). You just have to remember to turn it off after a few minutes, that's all. Of course, the car in the picture is an extreme case....but still, if you use the defrosters slowly and carefully, the windows shouldn't crack.
In fact, factory engineers usually test new-vehicle designs for cold-weather defrosting capability by either taking the vehicles to northern Canada or placing them in special deep-freeze rooms and coating them with moisture to simulate different types of winter conditions.
Any rapid heating, hot water, defroster on high, or flamethrower can crack the windows.
50 percent water and 50 percent ethyl alcohol works well for deicing. If I came out to see my car like that, I would say "see you in a few days."
That's true. NEVER use hot water on cold windows. But defroster use is fine if not overdone...see my comments above. You can use hot water on the door locks, if desired, to thaw them out or loosen them up, but only lukewarm water around the edges of the door seals (where the water may contact the window glass).