Best snow melting mats

A heated mat is bought on two numbers and this is the listing that publishes both of them. HeatTrak states 2 inches of snow melted per hour and a draw of 1.9 amps at 120 volts, which together tell you whether it keeps up with your weather and whether your outdoor circuit will carry it. Most of this category publishes one figure or neither.

The practical advantage is that nothing else has to be bought. The GFCI cord comes in the box, the mat plugs into an ordinary exterior outlet, and there is no separate power unit to find a dry spot for. HeatTrak sells the stair and walkway mats the other way round - those need a power unit, and on the walkway listing that unit is explicitly sold separately - so the sticker price on this one is closer to the real price than it looks.

The trade is that it stops there. HeatTrak is direct about it on its own listing: the entrance mats are stand-alone and cannot be connected to the stair or walkway mats. If today's problem is a landing and next winter's problem is a landing plus four steps, you are buying a second, unrelated system rather than adding to this one.

Two inches an hour is also the slow end of what this page publishes - competitors state three. For most of the country 2 inches an hour is comfortably ahead of an average snowfall; in a region that gets 4 inches in an evening it is not, and the mat will be clearing rather than staying clear. That is a climate question rather than a product fault, and it is the one worth answering before you buy. The passive alternative for a door that never gets that bad is on our snow and salt mat page.

Steps are the part of an entry that actually hurts, and they are the part a doormat cannot help with. A tread is about 10 or 11 inches deep, so a 24 by 36 inch mat does not go on one; it goes on the landing at the top, which is not where anybody falls. This kit is three mats cut to tread shape, which is the whole reason it exists.

It is also the best-documented listing on this page by some distance. HeatTrak publishes the melt rate at 2 inches an hour, a surface temperature of 40 degrees Fahrenheit above ambient, and - uniquely here - a stated working floor of minus 8 degrees Fahrenheit. That last figure is the one that separates products in a real cold snap, because a mat that keeps melting at minus 8 and a mat with no published limit are not the same purchase, and you find out which you bought on the worst night of the year.

Read the kit against HeatTrak's own walkway mats before deciding, because the economics are not obvious. The walkway listing states that the power unit is sold separately; this kit includes one. If the plan is to extend along a path later, buying the kit first means the unit is already paid for.

The honest problem is price against area. Three 10 by 30 inch mats is about six and a quarter square feet, which is roughly what a single entrance mat covers for a good deal less money. You are paying for the shape and for the power unit rather than for coverage. If your steps are the hazard, that is money well spent; if your problem is a flat landing, buy the entrance mat above instead and keep the difference.

Three inches an hour is the published figure that puts this set ahead of the premium kit on the one specification most buyers care about, and it costs a good deal less per mat. If the reason you are shopping is that you are tired of salting three concrete steps at six in the morning, this is the straightforward answer.

The detail worth noticing is the drainage. OEBLD publishes channels in the mat that move meltwater off it, and the reason that matters is not comfort - it is that melted snow which sits on the mat and then runs to the bottom step in the small hours is how you end up with a sheet of ice exactly where the heating stopped. A heated mat that does not move its own meltwater can make the step below it worse.

Both faces are published as non-slip fabric, which is a better answer than it sounds for a stair product. A mat that grips the tread but not the boot is only half the job, and on a painted wooden step a smooth-backed rubber mat can travel under load with somebody standing on it.

What is missing is the electrical half of the spec sheet. There is no published wattage and no amp figure, which means you cannot work out before buying whether three of these plus the porch light will trip your outdoor circuit. The published -49F figure is also a bare claim with no standard attached. Neither makes it a bad product - it makes it a product you verify at the outlet rather than on the listing, and the HeatTrak entrance mat publishes its 1.9 amps precisely so you do not have to.

This is the coverage answer. Six mats at 10 by 30 inches is twelve and a half square feet of published heated surface, which is roughly double what the premium stair kit gives you for half again the price. If the problem is a path rather than a doorstep - from the drive to the porch, or down the side of the house to the bins - this is the set that reaches.

The two cords are a better feature than the listing makes them sound. Six mats on one chain has to start at one outlet and run in one direction. Two cords lets you split the set into two short runs, which in most houses is what the geometry actually calls for: three across the front steps and three along the path, rather than one awkward line.

Timgle also publishes the number you need to do this safely, which is a stated 1800 watt ceiling for the linked system. Very few listings in this category state a system limit at all, and running heated mats in series without one is how people find out their outdoor circuit's breaker rating the hard way.

The honest weakness is temperature. Timgle publishes a surface that heats to 104 degrees Fahrenheit, and that is the lowest figure on this page - a premium mat states 40 degrees above ambient, which on a 20-degree night is a similar number but on a much colder one is not. There is no published low-temperature limit at all here. In a mild snowy climate that is fine and the coverage is exceptional value; in a place that goes properly cold, buy the HeatTrak stair kit, which publishes a floor of minus 8 degrees Fahrenheit. A heated path is also only one layer - what happens once boots are inside is the winter entryway setup.

On construction this is a good mat. HEATIT builds it in rubber, publishes an ETL certification - a real third-party safety mark, and something almost nobody else in this category mentions - and fits proper male and female connectors so that several mats run as one system off one outlet. That last part is a genuine advantage over the premium entrance mat, which its own maker states cannot be linked to anything.

The problem is what the listing does not say. There is no melt rate. On a product whose entire job is converting electricity into cleared snow, the inches-per-hour figure is the specification, and every other mat on this page publishes one. Without it you cannot answer the only question that matters on a snowy evening, which is whether the mat is keeping up or falling behind.

There is also no wattage and no amp draw, and that gap interacts badly with the feature the mat is sold on. The connectors exist so you can run mats in series. Running mats in series is precisely the situation where you need to add up the load and check it against the circuit and its breaker. The listing encourages the configuration and omits the number.

None of that means it will not work. It means you cannot evaluate it before it arrives, and on this site a listing that states nothing checkable ranks below one that states a melt rate and an amp draw regardless of how well the product is put together. If you need mats that link, the six-mat set on this page publishes a 1800W system ceiling and costs more like a hundred and ninety dollars. How we pick.