Anybody use this Bare Ground Anti-Icing/De-Ice Solution???

[Bcalhoun2000]

I am in charge of a bunch of Commercial sidewalks and wondered if anyone has used this? It says it helps by pre treating the area...Never heard of it. Any info wuld be great...Good or bad..Thx.
Brett

[ahlgrenlandscaping]

The Towns and States usually pretreat the roads before a big storm it helps to plow it off easier later by melting the bottom layer and preventing it from bonding with the road or sidewalk

[Woody]

It depends on what the hell it is.

Some years back, in Amarillo, Texas, someone got a brilliant idea. They would pre-treat the highway surfaces with a product designed to keep the snow from actually sticking to the surface, and then the wind would blow most of it off.

Unfortunately, sales gimmicks took a front seat to common sense, and when they finally applied it, they had a MASSIVE accident problem. It made the roads so slick, the frigging cars slid right off of them. No kidding. It made the national news.

Pretreating with a melting agent (like salt), on the other hand, does help to some degree. Personally, since I get paid by the push, I'm only salting if total storm accumulation is under 2 inches. As for sidewalks... I find pretreating them with a melting agent usually makes them slippery, thus raising liability issues. If you do choose to pretreat them, use coarse rock salt. At least the larger chunks will hang around long enough to do some good. Fine pellets of things like calcium chloride will dissolve and run off way before the snow stops, and are usually just a waste of time and money.

Woody