[AT] Salting roads (was Re: Trans. fluid

[Larry Goss]

The pretreatment down here (Evansville) is a sugar molasses and CaCl mix.

Larry


----- Original Message -----
From: Mike Sloane <mikesloane at verizon.net>
Date: Wednesday, November 25, 2009 8:40
Subject: [AT] Salting roads (was Re:  Trans. fluid
To: Antique tractor email discussion group <at at lists.antique-tractor.com>

> The problem with "salt" (sodium chloride - NaCl) is that it 
> doesn't work 
> much below about 15°F (-9°C). But it turns out that our old 
> friend 
> calcium chloride (CaCl) is effective down to much lower 
> temperatures 
> than common salt. So if the road department sprays some liquid 
> CaCl on 
> the road *before* the precipitation, it will prevent the "black 
> ice" and 
> hard pack snow from forming. Another alternative is to spray the 
> regular 
> road salt with the CaCl right before spreading it, that will 
> increase 
> the effectiveness of the whole process.
> 
> Needles to say, if you see the trucks spraying liquid down 
> before a 
> storm, you DO NOT want to be following them with your vehicle. :-(
> 
> The only reason I know about this stuff is because I am part of 
> my 
> town's government and have responsibility for the DPW. We are 
> investigating the various alternatives to just dumping large 
> amounts of 
> (increasingly expensive) salt on the town roads. I recently took 
> a 
> "field trip" to a nearby town to see how they were dealing with 
> the 
> issues <http://public.fotki.com/mikesloane/allamuchy-calcium-
> c/>. For a 
> number of reasons, we will more likely be going with an 
> arrangement to 
> spray the regular salt with liquid CaCl as we load it onto the trucks.
> 
> If you think salt is bad for the underside of the vehicles, you 
> should 
> see what it does to the spreaders and truck bodies, even when we 
> hot 
> pressure wash them after applying the salt. (I suggested that 
> they not 
> bring the trucks inside the building after spreading, but that 
> just 
> creates a different set of problems.) The next truck we order 
> will 
> likely have an aluminum body.
> 
> Mike
> 
> charliehill wrote:
> > Ralph that is kind of what I meant.  I figured you lived 
> far enough out of 
> > town and moved around little enough in the winter that you 
> didn't get in a 
> > lot of it.  I'm sure there is plenty of the main roads 
> and in town up there. 
> > It is used here when necessary but that's maybe 3 or 4 days a 
> year and most 
> > of what we get is a liquid compound sprayed on the roads the 
> night before 
> > they think there will be some snow or ice.
> > 
> > Charlie
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