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With more than a month left in winter --we're bound to get hit with another snow storm. So tonight, we're testing heated floor mats that claim to end slipping, salting and shoveling. Consumer reporter Jeff Chirico puts it to the Tuesday Tryout.
Sick of shoveling? Imagine if your walkway could look like this after a storm? This is video provided by HeatTrak. It’s a company that makes heated mats. It claims they make safer entranceways by melting snow on contact.
So with a forecast of accumulating snow Tuesday, I set them up outside our Wilkes-Barre newsroom door. I plug in the detachable power cord. I do the same for the walkway mat. HeatTrak also makes mats for stairs. Then I wait for the snow. And as it falls, it melts instantly.
Eyewitness News reporter Andy Mehalshick wasn't sure what to make of it at first. He says “I'll be honest. When I saw the mat outside the door, my first idea is will I slip? It looks slippery but it wasn't." The treads on the mat help keep traction.
Its maker claims they melt up to two inches of snow an hour. But Mother Nature didn't deliver what meteorologists predicted. So where is the snow, Skutnik? Meteorologist Dave Skutnik says “apparently your HeatTrak mats worked so well that it melted all the snow in most of Pennsylvania. Thank you for that."
So we give it a tough test --dumping a pile of snow on the mats. We speed up video so you can see how it melted. Bob Bradley, WBRE assistant operations manager, says "for a business [it’s] something that's really nice because it appears safe. Easy way to make entrance way safe for employees."
No salt or shoveling needed, so the HeatTrak heated mats pass the Tuesday Tryout. HeatTrak makes mats for homes and businesses. A residential door mat costs about a hundred dollars."
