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

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It’s always wise to keep a close eye on the weather forecasts. Rain will soon wash away all the grit before it can make any kind of impact, so be on the lookout for grey clouds before you get to work! Safety doesn’t end at the front door Section 41(1A) – "a highway authority is under a duty to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, that safe passage along a highway is not endangered by snow or ice." The applicable amount of grit is spread on the roads to ensure, as far as possible, that the salinity of any moisture on the roads is sufficient enough to prevent the formation of frost and ice. Will the grit melt snow? 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.

You can also find information on the DfI Roads winter service information leaflet. Advice when driving in icy or snowy conditions Discourage people from taking shortcuts over grass or dirt which are likely to become slippery when wet. Consider converting existing shortcuts into proper paths. Use grit (see separate article below for more detail) or similar, on areas prone to be slippery in frosty, icy conditions; 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.To reduce the risk of slips on ice, frost or snow, you need to assess the risk and put in a system to manage it. Dependent solely on the weather, winter service expenditure can vary vastly, making control of budgets very difficult. It all depends on how much snow and ice we have, and how long it lasts. This year, temperatures up to December have been relatively mild and gritting has mainly been limited to upland areas. The severe and early cold during November 2010 saw councils use as much salt as they would do in an average winter – roughly 300,000 tonnes. And throughout all of last winter, 1.2 million tonnes was used. Grit works by lowering the temperature at which water freezes. It relies on the action of vehicle tyres to be spread over the road, so requires traffic to be effective. Road surface temperature and whether the road is wet or dry determines what grit treatment is needed - not the air temperature. Even on cold days the roads may have retained enough heat for treatments not to be necessary.

The Met Office provides DfI with special weather forecasts to help it make decisions about when salting is needed. 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. 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. It is also recommended to re-grit the surface in the evening, not only in advance of peak traffic flows as staff and visitors leave for the day, but also to prevent the ice from re-freezing as evening temperatures fall.

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salting time - it takes up to three-and-a-half hours to salt a route, so your journey may start or end on an untreated section of the route 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. In this blog post, we’ll be getting down to the ‘nitty gritty’ of keeping your business premises safe this year, and explain the correct way to grit your paths or road using the right equipment from our Winter Products range. What is grit, and how does it work?

Special allowance is made for school and other buses - an example of this is that a 40-seater bus is counted as 40 vehicles. 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. 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. Councils in the UK are responsible for about 225,000 miles of road. It would cost hundreds of millions of extra pounds to grit all roads. Also, many roads are simply too narrow or too steep for gritting lorry to navigate. Instead, councils try to find other solutions like supplying local grit bins for residents, liaising with parish councils and community groups to grit more residential or remote areas and working with farmers to clear rural areas.Each year, approximately 1,000 people in the UK are killed or seriously injured on icy or snow covered roads.

No. The grit doesn't directly melt snow as it firstly has to mix with the snow to form a saline solution and lower the melting point. If snow is predicted, grit is spread in advance so when the first snow falls it can start to mix with grit to create a saline solution, which can reduce the build up (accumulation) of snow and prevent the formation of ice. Fallen leaves that become wet or have started to decay can create slip risks in two ways, they hide any hazard that may be on the path or they themselves create a slip risk. Put in place a procedure for removing leaves at regular intervals; you might even consider removing the offending bushes or trees altogether. Rain water The Highways Agency covers motorways and major A roads, while Transport for London covers arterial trunk roads in London.The Traffic Management Act 2004 (England) requires authorities to do all that is reasonably practicable to manage the network effectively to keep traffic moving. In meeting the duty, authorities should establish contingency plans for dealing promptly and effectively with unplanned events, such as unforeseen weather conditions, as far as is reasonably practicable. A House of Lords ruling (Goodes v East Sussex County Council – 2000) concluded that a highway authority had an absolute duty to keep the fabric of the highway in a good state of repair so as to render it safe for ordinary traffic at all seasons of the year, but that did not include a duty to remove the formation or accumulation of ice and snow on the road. It’s crucial to be prepared in the event of snow and icy conditions, particularly if you have private business premises.