De-Icing Program
Reduce liability by reducing slip & falls
Increase traffic/usage of your facility due to safer lot conditions
Reduce gravel use and clean-up costs in Spring
Less gravel means less dust, lower cleaning costs of HVAC systems
Program Overview
Anti-Icing (Pre-treatment)
Use of liquid salt brine in truck mounted spray unit to prevent snow bonding to pavement.
Various liquid products are used depending on weather conditions. We will always choose the right product at the time to get the best results.
Applying liquid salt brine, prior to a storm, will allow us to remove the most ice pack when we plow and leave a cleaner lot.
De-Icing (Post-treatment)
After plowing the lot, any residual snow and ice is treated with a granular ice melt.
Various granular products are used depending on weather conditions. We will always choose the right product at the time to get the best results.
The granular product continues to work on any remaining snow and ice to then be scraped up easily later leaving bare pavement.
Anti-Icing: Why Pre-treat with Liquids?
- Anti-icing returns road surfaces to pavement faster, resulting in fewer accidents and delays.
- Anti-icing can reduce airborne dust and salt particulates.
- Salt needs moisture to be effective. Applying brine jumpstarts the melting process.
- Brine sticks to the road surface. It will not be easily blown off of the lot due to wind or traffic, so the material is more efficiently used.
- If the storm is delayed, salt residue remains on the road ready to work when precipitation begins.
- Crews can begin treatment in advance of a storm because anti-icing prevents the bonding of snow and ice to pavement.
- Because compacted ice is prevented from forming a viable ice-to-pavement bond, plowing is more effective at removing the snow pack.
According to most experts, it takes 4x more salt and 50% more resources to break an ice-to-pavement bond than to prevent it.
De-Icing: Understanding Rock Salt
- Salt is applied to penetrate and undercut compacted snow and ice to break an established bond.
- Once snow has accumulated and bonded to the lot or an ice storm has glazed the surface, de-icing operations must begin to restore safe walking and driving conditions. The bond between snow and/or ice and the pavement surface must be destroyed by chemical or physical means, or a combination of the two.
- Generally, all de-icers work in the same way. They depress the freezing point of water and turn snow and ice into a liquid or semi-liquid slush. Solid chemical salts infiltrate down through ice and snow, dissolving to form a salt brine solution which spreads out under the ice or hard-packed snow, breaking the bond to the pavement surface. Once the bond is broken, the ice and snow can be easily scraped off.
Rock salt does not melt ice, it has to form a liquid first to activate and be effective.
What is the risk?
During the winter months, simple slip and fall injuries due to snow and ice pose a significant threat, and preventing these mishaps needs to become a major priority. Slip and fall statistics demonstrates that insufficient attention to these risks can have huge consequences.
FALLS ARE THE LEADING CAUSE OF NONFATAL INJURY
According to the most recent data available from the Center for Injury Prevention and Control, unintentional falling is the leading cause of nonfatal injury.
The average cost for a slip and fall injury can range between $2,500 – $45,000 in medical costs, $4,000 – $62,000 in loss work time costs and around $50,000 to defend your case in court proceedings. Injuries resulting in death cost much more and could potentially ruin a business and cause it to close its doors.
It is easy to see why just one slip and fall injury can be a huge financial burden for the person injured, as well as those responsible.
Don’t make a slip & fall claim a part of your winter season!
