Brown Rock Salt/Grit for ice, snow, melting - 23kg Bag

Product Information

The salted network in Northern Ireland is fairly extensive. You can find details of all salting routes at this link: Consider covering walkways eg by an arbour high enough for people to walk through, or use an insulating material on smaller areas overnight; There are also smart signs on the market, available to buy at low cost, which display warning messages at 50 and below. Highways authorities (county, unitary, metropolitan and London borough councils) are responsible for nine out of every 10 miles of road – about 225,000 miles throughout the UK. England and Wales has 174 highways authorities and they grit on average 41 per cent of their roads.

Section 150 puts a responsibility on the highway authority to clear snow from the highway, but only if it is causing an obstruction. When grit is walked or driven over, the salt grinds down and becomes a saline solution. This ice and salty mixture provides underfoot friction, before disappearing down any nearby drains.

Put a procedure in place to prevent an icy surface forming and/or keep pedestrians off the slippery surface; Technically, most pavements are considered highways and so fall under he remit of councils. Decision on which surfaces to treat are based on factors such as how frequently and by how many people they are used, if there are alternative routes that could be used by pedestrians and whether there is a more practical way of clearing them such as community schemes. The grit we use on the roads and pedestrian areas contains Safecote. Safecote is more than 90% pure Sodium Chloride (salt) with the remaining insolubles consisting mainly of Keuper Marl which helps to protect the salt quality. Marl also helps improve friction when salt is used as a highway de-icer. Snow and ice means wet shoes and boots, which can cause wet patches around the entrances to your business premises. Be sure to place dry Entrance Mats inside the doorways to soak up water and enable people to wipe their feet, and read our blog post on How to Reduce the Risk of Slips, Trips and Falls with Effective Floor Cleaning for more helpful advice.

However in prolonged periods of snowfall the snow can fall at a rate faster than the grit can mix with the snow, which, means the snow may accumulate. Accumulated snow will have to be ploughed away from the roads or cleared in the pedestrian areas, but this is made much easier by grit spread in advance of the snowfall as the grit already applied reduces the likelihood of the snow freezing on the surface. Dependent solely on the weather, winter service expenditure can vary vastly, making control of budgets very difficult. This normally happens during prolonged snowfall when the sludge, caused by previous gritting and traffic flow, starts to wash older grit away and so risks the road surface freezing. Rain will also wash away salt. Ahead of a sub-zero night, gritting ideally needs to take place after rain but before freezing as grit spread on ice needs to then be worked into it by moving traffic to make it thaw. The often very small window of opportunity may be missed, or a surprise downpour may take place after a road's been treated so councils will re-run an area if needed. Councils sometimes have to contend with ‘freezing rain' – supercooled rain which falls when the surface temperature is below zero, freezing on impact – which means they may need to re-grit areas. If warning cones are used, remember to remove them once the hazard has passed or they will eventually be ignored.

Before you start

Gritting should be carried out when frost, ice or snow is forecast or when walkways are likely to be damp or wet and the floor temperatures are at, or below freezing. The best times are early in evening before the frost settles and/or early in the morning before employees arrive. Salt doesn't work instantly; it needs sufficient time to dissolve into the moisture on the floor. Over 2 million tonnes of grit is spread onto the UK roads each year. The majority is spread onto motorways, trunk roads and main roads. Less than a third of other roads are treated. It is most effective to distribute grit early in the morning. This is because it’s not only much easier to remove fresh, loose snow but gritting in the morning will ensure the ground is ready ahead of early morning traffic or pedestrians. The 2010 Quarmby Review on Winter Resilience recommend English highways authorities set a ‘winter resilience benchmark' for councils of 12 days/48 runs-worth of salt ahead of each gritting season (October 1 to late March 1). The Department for Transport says these recommendations should be adopted. Many slip accidents happen at building entrances as people entering the building walk in rainwater. Fitting canopies of a good size over building entrances and in the right position can help to prevent this.