 I
am a building maintenance contractor by trade. I had a client (5 story
condo complex) mention that they would like to have their driveways and
parking pretreated like the way they are now doing the Interstates and
State Highways. Of course I HAD to try to figure a way to getrdone. And
it works even better than I hoped!
First of all there was a bit of leg work involved in finding out just
how salt brine is made. Seems there is a optimum percentage salt by
weight to water that you are shooting for. Salt brine is made by mixing
rock salt or solar salt with water. The process is simple: the resulting
brine should be approximately 23% NaCl.
The proportion of salt to water is
critical to the effectiveness of the brine. Too much or too little salt
affects the freeze point depressing qualities of the brine. The proper
brine mixture is 23.3% salt content by weight. This is the concentration
at which salt brine has the lowest freezing point, -6°F. It is known as
the eutectic point. This percentage is measured with a salometer, a
specialized hydrometer. Salt is added to the water until a 88.3%
measurement on the salometer is obtained. This results in the proper
23.3% salt content.
* One gallon of saturated brine weighs 10.027
pounds.
* One gallon of saturated brine contains 2.647 pounds of salt.
* One gallon of water will produce 1.13 gallons saturated brine.
* One gallon of water will dissolve 2.991 pounds of salt.
* One ton of salt will produce 755.5 gallons of saturated brine.
 Application
rates have been set at 10-20 gallons per lane mile (12' x 5280' or 1.454
acres) in the anti-icing mode and 40-60 gallons per lane mile in the
de-icing mode.
So...a 50lb bag of salt mixed in about 19 gallons of water should bring
the solution to 23% salt by weight which is the called for mix. I figure
a 50 gallon tank, 2 50lb bags of salt mixed in about 40 gal of water
should treat 1 to 2 miles of single lane.
We also visited the Oldham Co. Road
Maintenance Dept which was absolutely the best bunch of guys to take
time to show us how they make and apply the brine.
They built a building to house their brine making
facility, and bought a commercial unit to mix the brine. It's actually a
very simple process. They have an open top tank that they can front load
the salt into from an outside garage door. The tank
 has
a 2" water main running to it with 2 pipes with holes in the bottom of
the tank. They keep the tank approximately 1/4 full of salt. Then they
turn on the water that shoots through the salt and the brine is filtered
from the top through a screen on the end. So basically the run-over at
the top of the tank is the finished brine. Too easy!
They then pump the brine into
holding tanks, then into tanks they mount on trucks. The trucks have
pumps which deliver the brine to spray bars, actually PVC pipe with 1/4"
brass fittings with rubber hoses to deliver the product at ground level.
This trip proved invaluable as I proceeded to set up a ATV salt brine
system.
K....now to actually fix up a
mixer/applicator. What we needed was a way to mix and apply the salt
brine in one tank small enough for an ATV so we didn't have to keep
going back to a storage tank. Since I had already built a portable ATV
radiator wash system, I already had
half the required setup going in.
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