Drying Sand for spreading

hwp · Dec 17, 2004

Does anyone have a way of drying sand in relatively small quantities for use in a spreader? I use a pre-mixed sand/salt mixture on my driveway when it is icy. Whenever I do so I need about a quarter of a cubic yard. I refilled my sand bin at the end of last winter expecting it would be nice and dry when I needed the sand this winter. Not so - it is still too moist to flow out of the hopper of my spreader. I am using a Buyers SUV spreader (see attached). So I am looking for a way to dry the sand/salt mixture in lots of about a quarter of a yard so that when I put it in the hopper of my spreader it will flow nicely out of the hopper onto the spin plate. I thought about putting it in the oven of my wife's stove for a couple of hours but I don't think that would go over very well.

755inNY · Dec 17, 2004

I don't think the oven would work very well. How about tossing a few shovel fulls in the clothes dryer. The heat plus tumbling action should dry that sand out in a hurry /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

I'm thinking you need to get dry air flowing over the surface of the sand to remove the moisture. It would help to have the air heated. Maybe put the sand in a portable cement mixer with warm air blowing toward the opening as the mixer tumbles the sand. Or, spread the sand out on a tarp and circulate warm air around it.

Good luck.

GregMVT · Dec 17, 2004

Wouldn't it be cheaper to buy a bag of sand from Home Depot?

LBrown59 · Dec 17, 2004

( Wouldn't it be cheaper to buy a bag of sand from Home Depot? )

I keep 2 30 Gallon plastic garabage cans of sand in my shop.
When I need sand i just pop the lid off the can and shovel some out into a bucket. It seems to stay fairly dry this way.

For throwing it on slick winter walks and the driveway I mix sand and rock salt.
I use 3 or 4 parts of sand to one part salt.

bher · Dec 17, 2004

How do you like the Buyers spreader? I am thinking of getting one for use on my pickup truck and tractor. Do you have the single speed or variable speed model? As for the drying, I am thinking of something like a small concrete mixer and a propane burner. This would probably only be economical in the long long run vs. buying bagged sand.

Deerlope · Dec 17, 2004

The salt will always want to attract and retain moisture. So drying it is out of the question, instead try this, stock pile unsalted sand and salt separate, then mix up a batch when you want to use it. That is the way it was done where I worked. Sometimes just the sand was used because with the salt mixed in it tracks inside real badly.

frank_f15 · Dec 17, 2004

sand is almost impossibe to keep dry, especially if u have rock salt mixed in.. most important that you keep hopper empty between uses, otherwise it will freeze and/or clump.

BigAl · Dec 17, 2004

Wow ! I like your rig !I did not know Kubota made anything like that .
Your problem is salt draws moisture so you are going to have a continous problem if you premix it with sand and try to store it .Can you attach a small air,hydraulic or 12 Volt vibrator to the side of the hopper so it can shake down the material to the spinner ? I have seen these on portable concrete batch plants at rental yards and they work real well .
Big Al

hwp · Dec 18, 2004

LB Thanks for the sugestion. I have been thinking about keeping a couple of tote boxes of sand/salt in my workroom in the basement of the house. It has a heated floor which would help keep the moisture content down. So I'm going to try it. /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif

hwp · Dec 18, 2004

Brant - the Byers unit is OK. I got one of the first ones so it is single speed but that doesn't seem to be a problem. The biggest problem I have with the unit is that there is no agitator in the hopper. This isn't a problem with salt as it will flow quite readily, but with the sand/salt mixture retains moisture and doesn't flow as well unless it is quite dry. Another annoying thing is that the field coils in thye motor are held in place with glue and come loose with vibration, etc. It's not a big deal, you just have to take the motor to a repair shop and get the fields reglued - but it is a nuisance. /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif

hwp · Dec 18, 2004

Deerlpope - my sand/ salt box has two compartments, each holds a little over a yard of material. I keep salt in one side and the sand/salt mixture in the other. Both sides are enclosed except for the discharge chutes. I have thought about buying straight sand rather than the salt/sand mixture and maybe that is the way to go as I could easily make a mixture of my choice as I fill the hopper. I use about a yard of salt and a yard of salt/sand most years. When I get low on either I go to my local supplier and pick up a yard and shovel it into the box. /forums/images/graemlins/smirk.gif

hwp · Dec 18, 2004

BigAl - thanks for the suggestion. The tractor is an older style F2400 front mount with a Jodale-Perry cab. I take the cab off in the summer but it sure is nice to be in a heated cab when blowing snow in the middle of winter . I don't know how much of a difference a vibrator would make as there is a fair bit of vibration allready from the tractor. What I do to overcome the coning is a series of quick starts and stops. This dislodges the mixture and it flows down to the spinner but it is hard on the machine. So maybe a vibrator would help. /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif

hwp · Dec 18, 2004

Frank - you're right about emptying the hopper after every use. I always do as otherwise it could be quite difficult getting it unclogged. /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif

Deerlope · Dec 18, 2004

My company kept about 20 yards of plain sand in a heated garage. For their sidewalks they used a drop or pokey type sander about 6' wide cause we were only interested in doing side walks.

GerardC · Dec 18, 2004

I thought about putting it in the oven of my wife's stove for a couple of hours but I don't think that would go over very well. 

Why does she have to know /forums/images/graemlins/shocked.gif /forums/images/graemlins/tongue.gif ? G

LBrown59 · Dec 22, 2004

( LB Thanks for the sugestion.
*I have been thinking about keeping a couple of tote boxes of sand/salt in my workroom in the basement of the house. It has a heated floor which would help keep the moisture content down. So I'm going to try it. /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif )
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I used to keep them outside but rain and snow would get in and it would freeze solid.
Have never had that problem since i moved them into my metal pole barn.

*Let me know if it works for you
I would not mix the sand and salt till I needed it.

LBrown59 · Dec 22, 2004

( Deerlpope - my sand/ salt box has two compartments, each holds a little over a yard of material. I keep salt in one side and the sand/salt mixture in the other. Both sides are enclosed except for the discharge chutes. I have thought about buying straight sand rather than the salt/sand mixture and maybe that is the way to go as I could easily make a mixture of my choice as I fill the hopper. I use about a yard of salt and a yard of salt/sand most years. When I get low on either I go to my local supplier and pick up a yard and shovel it into the box. /forums/images/graemlins/smirk.gif )

1*I have thought about buying straight sand rather than the salt/sand mixture.
2*maybe that is the way to go as I could easily make a mixture of my choice as I fill the hopper
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
1*Didn't even know you could buy it mixed.Ya learn something new every day.
Just about the time I think I know everything something new pops up.Don't think I'll ever get caught up.LOL
2*To me it's the only to go & like you said by mixing it your self you can control the ratio of the mix.
It's probably cheaper than the salt/sand mixture also.

I mix mine one part salt to 2 3 or 4 parts sand depending on the mood I'm in when I mix it.
My goal here is 3 fold Primary provide traction Secondary the ice melting factor third reducing salt cost.

Around here I can go to the concrete block supplier and get a five gallon bucket of sand for 50 cents.
A 20 pound bag of salt is about 3 bucks and won't fill a 5 gallon bucket. By mixing the salt and sand as stated It greatly stretches out how far the salt will go.

This has worked very well for me for several years.

One time I was out of sand and mixed the salt with cat litter to put on the sidewalk.
Big mistake
Worked as good as the sand except when it warmed up the wet cat litter turned to the consistency of mud and left gray foot prints where you walked.
The Wife didn't particularly like it tracked into the house.lol

LBrown59 · Dec 22, 2004

( I thought about putting it in the oven of my wife's stove for a couple of hours but I don't think that would go over very well. 

Why does she have to know /forums/images/graemlins/shocked.gif /forums/images/graemlins/tongue.gif ? G )

She would probably find it when she went to bake a cake.

LBrown59 · Dec 22, 2004

What about cinders instead ?
Anyone here use them?

hwp · Dec 24, 2004

We got thumped the last coupe of days. On Wednesday we got some very wet snow and then on Thursday we got a fair bit of rain. Then the temperature plummeted. I plowed my driveway yesterday (Thursday) but the snow was very wet. Much of the time I seemed to be moving as much water as snow. It was raining so hard the water was running across the driveway. The temperature really started to drop yesterday afternoon. By this morning it was down to about -8C. The driveway had become a sheet of ice - so now I needed to sand it. As I indicated earlier, I decided to try putting some sand/salt mixture in a couple of tote boxes and put them in the basement beside my gas furnace to see if they would dry out a bit. I stuck my wife's soil moisture meter in the sand/salt mixture to try to monitor what happened to the moisture level in the sand/slt mixture - not much change in the reading on the gauge over a week. So I decided to try the "dried" sand/salt mixture this morning. Somewhat to my surprise, I worked well. The were two problems: 1) lifting the tote box full of sand to the top of the hopper is a lot harder than shoevelling and 2) two tote boxes were not enough. So I had to go back to my sand/salt box for some additional supplies. As it turned out, it was cold enough (about -8C) that the sand/salt mixture out of the bin flowed through the spreader not too badly. What I intend to do now is buy another couple of tote boxes so that the next time I want to use the sand/salt mixture, I will have enough "dried" to do my entire driveway. The bottom line is that having the sand/salt mixture in the basement for about a week allowed it to dry out enough to flow through the spreader. /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif