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

[Steve W.]

Mike Sloane wrote:
> 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
> 


Mike,
Aluminum doesn't handle salt very well either. Local DPW tried it.
 They now get a steel body BUT coat the entire thing with spray on bed
liner material before it is put in service (you can get it in various
colors). The spreaders now get a liner made of UMHW plastic. Seems to be
working much better than the constant rebuilding they were doing.

One of the things I see a lot now are vehicles with plastic exterior
panels that have the steel supporting structure rot out of them.

It was the one big fault of the DeLorean.

-- 
Steve W.