More Brine

 The forecast today was for maybe an inch of snow and temps just below freezing. Right now it looks like we'll be lucky to get anything. That means its gonna be a good opportunity for us to squirt some salt brine and see what kind of results we get. If it doesn't snow we won't have rock salt laying everywhere.
 This week has been busy and I haven't been able to calibrate our application equipment but I was able to get a good pattern and lay down a test strip in our parking lot at work.

 Actually this pic is of four passes with our sidewalk machine. Each pass is six of those wet strips with a total width of 42" from outside strip to outside strip. This is done with only two triple jet nozzles. They're the tiny green spots in the two pictures below.

I had built a boom with three nozzles but couldn't get the pattern right. I really think this pattern will work good but thats really just me hoping all my efforts weren't a waste of time.

 This was about two hours after application. At this point I'm pretty sure my application rate is too high for pre treating but probably good for post treating. All those lines of brine bled together into one even coat and stayed looking wet like this for eighteen hours.
 Twenty four hours later this is the same area. The water has all evaporated and left the salt. So thats where all those dissolved bags of halite went.

 Today our sidewalk crew will treat about a mile of sidewalk and various high traffic areas at a local factory. I'm sending them out with enough product to do five miles so theres some fudge factor built into my guess work. It won't be cold enough to get into trouble with brine freezing and we're not adding calcium chloride yet. If we don't get dumped on I should be able to get some before and after pics using brine and using rock salt.
 If it does snow today we will also test another project I've been working on and thats a pre-wet system for one of our truck mounted salters. Basically its a system that wets rock salt before it hits the spinner and then the ground. I'll post more details in a separate blog.
 If this works the way everyone says it will then we should be able to provide the customer with not only a safer environment but a cleaner building interior as people won't be dragging rock salt in on their shoes. All this while using less product. We'll see.

Later.