ice melting

[6sunset6]

I have a NH TC34DA. I plow 700 ft of driveway and 3 parking spaces all flat blacktop except for a little pitch up in front of a two car garage. I approach the garage straight in and have to turn 90d to the left as I approach. I use R4 s all around. In the middle of a 600 foot straight run is a stand of Norway spruces on the south side of the road. The front of the garage where I turn 90d on the up pitch is on the north side. So ice in front of the garage , ice for 100 ft north of the Norways.
The sun does not shine on either spot. I run a blower on the rear and a plow on the front. Before I had the blower I used to plow at 5" and it was ok. More and than that the tractor was not big enough to push the plow. So now I wait till it stops snowing and make as many passes as I need with the blower and then clean up with the plow. Works ok except for the spots the sun does not reach. Particularly in front of the garage which turns into a real skidaroo.
I know I can use a hand spreader but where is the fun in that. I have been thinking about a spreader for years but not about to swap out the blower. I was just up in Canada in a blowing lake effect mess and noticed the plows puling tanks of liquid. Some kind of stick preventor or melter I would guess. So I thought how about a 10-15 gal battery powered spray tank mounted on top of the plow frame with a spreader nozzle over the top of the plow and find some magic liquid stuff.
The tank sprayer is pretty cost effective $100 . My tractor is already set up to spray with electrical plugs and switches. So tank is on the way, Home depot has for no shipping charge to the store 5 gal of some kind of no stick stuff. $55 Has mixed reviews I figure I will get 3 passes out of 5 gal Has to go on before it snows.
This is a test. I should be able to find liquid calcium chloride someplace which should be be able to go on after ice is present. I could also wait for a warm day, takes about 3-4 days of 40d F and some sun to getit melting. thats no fun either. It will snow tomorrow and all this stuff is due Friday. So it might be after the next storm till I post pictures and results. Might have to wait till next year.

 

[tcreeley]

Rust- calcium chloride. They salt the roads here in Maine with calcioum chloride and it rusts our vehicles to pieces.
If you don't mind rust on your tractor, go for it.

 

[MossRoad]

I have a NH TC34DA. I plow 700 ft of driveway and 3 parking spaces all flat blacktop except for a little pitch up in front of a two car garage. I approach the garage straight in and have to turn 90d to the left as I approach. I use R4 s all around. In the middle of a 600 foot straight run is a stand of Norway spruces on the south side of the road. The front of the garage where I turn 90d on the up pitch is on the north side. So ice in front of the garage , ice for 100 ft north of the Norways.
The sun does not shine on either spot. I run a blower on the rear and a plow on the front. Before I had the blower I used to plow at 5" and it was ok. More and than that the tractor was not big enough to push the plow. So now I wait till it stops snowing and make as many passes as I need with the blower and then clean up with the plow. Works ok except for the spots the sun does not reach. Particularly in front of the garage which turns into a real skidaroo.
I know I can use a hand spreader but where is the fun in that. I have been thinking about a spreader for years but not about to swap out the blower. I was just up in Canada in a blowing lake effect mess and noticed the plows puling tanks of liquid. Some kind of stick preventor or melter I would guess. So I thought how about a 10-15 gal battery powered spray tank mounted on top of the plow frame with a spreader nozzle over the top of the plow and find some magic liquid stuff.
The tank sprayer is pretty cost effective $100 . My tractor is already set up to spray with electrical plugs and switches. So tank is on the way, Home depot has for no shipping charge to the store 5 gal of some kind of no stick stuff. $55 Has mixed reviews I figure I will get 3 passes out of 5 gal Has to go on before it snows.
This is a test. I should be able to find liquid calcium chloride someplace which should be be able to go on after ice is present. I could also wait for a warm day, takes about 3-4 days of 40d F and some sun to getit melting. thats no fun either. It will snow tomorrow and all this stuff is due Friday. So it might be after the next storm till I post pictures and results. Might have to wait till next year.

That liquid is probably some form of beet juice brine. They put it on the roads around here before it snows to help keep the snow and ice from sticking to the pavement. It won't melt existing ice, from what they say. It has to be put down before the precipitation. I don't know if it works or not. The last snow we got seems like the roads were skating rinks even though they had been treated.

 

[Looking4new]

If you are going to use Calc Chloride, get yourself a hydrometer. You will want your percentage of Calc Chloride to be no more than 22%. You thin it down with water.
If you use the beet juice mixture, then I think it is Magnesium Chloride you will want. I don't know the percentage for the Mag Chloride.
Salt brine will also work, with or without the beat juice.
Keep in mind that rock salt will NOT work at temps below -12F.
Calc. Chloride I think quits working at -18F.
If you PM me I can supply the phone number and address and web addy of a company that does the Mag. Chloride thing.
I just checked their website and they do both Mag and Calc. Chloride.

 

[RalphVa]

I use fertilizer.

 

[MossRoad]

I use fertilizer.

Its hard to get the cow to walk down the center of the driveway...

 

[oosik]

Ha,ha,ha - you were in rare form yesterday, MossRoad. I HATE, HATE, HATE anything that will melt snow or ice. I've seen what it does to vehicles, where they use it in Spokane. Besides, you apply whatever, it melts the ice, the resulting melted ice washes away whatever you used and colder wx causes the ice to form again.

I've used just about anything I can get my hands on - other than ice melter stuff. Sand, pine needles, wood chips from my chipper, sawdust - I even used the last five bags of wood pellets. That liquid that is sprayed on the asphalt is death to vehicles. Thank goodness our local car wash has an "underbelly" washer that I take my Jeep thru two to three times during the winter. I DO have to go into Spokane infrequently.

 

[BKBoiss]

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE stay away from calcium chloride. We have one of the wells just a few KMs from town here and the bright idiots that count the beans figured it was cheaper to use that than the salt that is trucked up from down east. It never dries, the highways stay sloppy, and as soon as it gets below -8-10C it turns to snot and is almost worse than plain ice, it is worse than salt for getting into wiring and corroding other stuff as well. Thank goodness they finally went back to salt this year.

 

[BKBoiss]

Since I got carried away with my rant and never actually offered any real help here is my suggestion. What about getting a broad cast spreader like you see on the back of a quad or that fits in the hitch receiver of a pickup, mount a receiver on the top of your plow and when you need to put the spreader on fill it up and go. I would imagine if you went to your local highways department you could buy some salt off of them or get it through an industrial supply company. I know one of the mills i haul into buys it in 5gal buckets a pallet at a time for all their walk ways and the scale.

 

[tcreeley]

Ashes- sand, much better alternative to something that causes rust. At my old school they got a salt sander to stick on the back of a 4 x4 pick up. A couple of years use with calcium chloride- the spreader was covered with rust. The back of the pick up too.

Good luck.

 

[MossRoad]

Well, unless you drive fast and splash the heck out of your underside, salt products shouldn't cause a rust problem on your driveway or parking lots. And if you wash your vehicle once on a while in winter, it should be fine, too.

The only place I use any ice melter is our back walkway and a path to the garage so my wife doesn't slip and fall. I just use solar salt, the same thing I use in our swimming pool. I get it for about $4.50 a 50 pound bag and 1 bag lasts all winter and anything left I dump in our pool in spring.

For my in-laws, who are elderly and cannot afford a fall, I use Prestone driveway heat. I find it on sale in bigger bags. One or two bags last all year. Works really, really well! They have north facing house, so their front porch, walkways, driveway, etc... are always in the shade and never get sun, so its a must.

Prestone Driveway Heat 9.5 lb. Concentrated Ice Melt-95J-HEAT - The Home Depot

 

[tcreeley]

Well, unless you drive fast and splash the heck out of your underside, salt products shouldn't cause a rust problem on your driveway or parking lots. And if you wash your vehicle once on a while in winter, it should be fine, too.

The only place I use any ice melter is our back walkway and a path to the garage so my wife doesn't slip and fall. I just use solar salt, the same thing I use in our swimming pool. I get it for about $4.50 a 50 pound bag and 1 bag lasts all winter and anything left I dump in our pool in spring.

For my in-laws, who are elderly and cannot afford a fall, I use Prestone driveway heat. I find it on sale in bigger bags. One or two bags last all year. Works really, really well! They have north facing house, so their front porch, walkways, driveway, etc... are always in the shade and never get sun, so its a must.

Prestone Driveway Heat 9.5 lb. Concentrated Ice Melt-95J-HEAT - The Home Depot

I use the bucket to plow my 2 driveways. The plow truck throws up salt mixed snow the first 3 feet of my drive. I clear that every storm along with the snow/salt mix in front of my mailbox. The rims on my tractor get the rust. My walk behind snowblower that I use away from the road has no rust on it - with years of use. I am always putting oil on my rims to try and protect them. The tires pick up the snow in the treads lift it and the snow slides down before they have gone all of the way round. My tires come in wet from plowing. Impossible not to distribute some of that salt/snow mix on the tractor. Helps if I keep clearing the snow on the clean stuff I suppose - but I hate the calcium chloride. Impossible to protect a vehicle against it that is made with steel. Rust comes and stays and grows.

 

[6sunset6]

All right Here are pictures and an update on my research into melting ice
It turns out anything that gets sprayed has to go down before it snows or ice deposits. The solution gets sprayed down and the water evaporates leaving a thin film of what ever salt or sugar you have chosen. Temp is sort of fussy 20-35 dF Degraded results above and below. Good news is spraying can be done two days ahead. Now comes the fun part. What is the recipe.
I have chosen 10 gal of water with 20# of sodium chloride. Thats is just under the saturated solution mark. Over saturation solids come out and would clog the pick up filter. Then 2 gal more water with 4# calcium chloride . Saturation is just over 6# per gal so this is good. Then 1 gal of beet juice. There is some discussion about whether or not beet juice lowers the melting point . Some info says it does and some says it is just sticky. Anyway For this mix my cost is $1.36 per gal. The application is 1 oz per sq yard. My application for the areas I talked about previously is about 3 gal. Not bad if it works.
The remaining issue is spray nozzles. The pump is 1gpm at 40psi. Rather than 8 nozzles 12 " apart , the way the highway trucks do it, I think I am going to use a single broad cast nozzle and run a hose to the rear of the tractor and mount the nozzle on the snowblower. That way I can spray while driving away and reduce what lands on the equipment. Heck of a time to play with nozzles and spray patterns. Rock salt with chunks and junk in it takes a while to dissolve. CC goes in quick. Maybe hot water to dissolve the SC faster.

 

[Industrial Toys]

Beet juice must lower the freezing temperature as they use it in tires.

I have seen too much destroyed equipment due to salt to even consider it. It's terribly creepy!

 

[6sunset6]

oh yeah beet juice is really heavy 5 gal water 42 # 5 gal beet juice 53# Although 5 gal water with 10 # of salt would be 53# as well.

 

[Looking4new]

Hot water will dissolve the CC faster, too.

 

[6sunset6]

The first test of the Brine spray system. It is just starting to snow 2-4 predicted. Not enough for a real test but we will see. The first picture is the tank and sprayer nozzle on the front of the plow. It is a broadcast nozzle so where it is covers the width of the plow.
The next picture is the area I sprayed last night. The dark area is sprayed. This is on the north side of the Norway spruces. The driveway takes a long time to melt in the shade.
A side comment. The tractor headlites are completly blocked by any front end implement. I mounted a LED light bar on top of the cab , disconnected the cable under the hood, bought a mating connector and wired the high beam pins to the LED bar. The high beam circuit already ran thru a relay. The two high beams were 65w each and the LED bar is 120w so all is good.

 

[SandburRanch]

To prevent a slippery surface I'd use cat litter as opposed to any corrosive material and let the weather do the melting in the spring.

 

[clarky711]

Cut the spruces? I'm doing the same on my drive where they block the sun and it gets icy, although they are large white pines. Although I really want to wait for a large snow storm to help protect the asphalt.

 

[dnw64]

I HATE, HATE, HATE anything that will melt snow or ice.

You are very strange.

The best thing for melting snow or ice is the Sun. Been doing it for millennia and likely to continue doing so for at least our lifetime, even if you're a young'un, If you hate the Sun you will die (on principle, not necessarily practically, although everyone dies eventually, regardless of their perception of our need of the Sun).

To melt ice on your driveway use radiant tubing buried under the surface and solar collectors to transfer the heat from the Sun to the drive. It may be "somewhat" expensive* to set up, but very cheap to maintain. And no corrosion initiation.

*but what does it cost to replace that [fill in the blank] that slid off the cliff, or the rusted out [again, you name it]? Lose a Bentley and a Lambo (tractor) and you can quickly recoup your cost.