Guide
Ice melt before the first freeze
Buy it in October. Four minutes.
4 min read · First Ave Supply, 1587 First Avenue
Short answer. For most New York buildings, a blended ice melt is the right call. Straight rock salt is the cheapest and it is also what eats your steps, your pavers and the concrete apron in front of the building. A calcium chloride blend works colder, works faster, and does far less damage.
Buy it in October. The morning of the first storm, every supplier in the city is out.
What the different bags actually are
Rock salt, sodium chloride. Cheapest. Stops working around 20 degrees. Hardest on concrete, brick, brownstone and metal. Fine for an asphalt lot, wrong for a stoop.
Calcium chloride. Works down near minus 25. Melts fast because it gives off heat as it dissolves. Costs more per bag and you use less of it.
Magnesium chloride. Gentler on concrete and on plants. Good where salt runoff lands in a tree pit or a planter.
Blends. What most buildings should buy. A blend gets you most of the low temperature performance without the price of straight calcium.
New concrete is the one to be careful with
Concrete poured within the last twelve months should get nothing on it. Not blended, not pet safe, nothing. Use sand for traction for the first winter. Any chloride on green concrete causes scaling you will be looking at for twenty years.
The same caution goes for unsealed brownstone and limestone, which is most of this neighborhood.
Pet safe is a marketing phrase
There is no ice melt that is genuinely harmless to a dog that eats a mouthful. What the better products are is lower irritation to paws and less likely to cause a problem in small amounts. Magnesium chloride and urea based products are the gentler end. If your building is full of dogs, that is what to stock, and sweeping up the excess matters more than the label does.
How much does a building need
A reasonable planning number is one 50 pound bag per storm for a typical brownstone frontage, more for a corner building or a long sidewalk. A building that salts eight to twelve times a winter should be looking at a pallet, not a few bags.
Pallet pricing is a building account price. Sign in to see it. If you do not have an account yet, five minutes at 1587 First Avenue and you buy at that number for the rest of the season.
The part everyone skips
Sweep up what did not dissolve. Leftover ice melt sitting on the stoop keeps working on the stone long after the ice is gone, and it tracks into the lobby and onto the floor finish. Ten minutes with a broom after the thaw saves the steps.
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