When the challenges of winter set in, keeping your business’s parking lot safe and ice-free takes more than just plowing away snow. Effective winter maintenance also requires a strategy for smart chemical management. To help with this, Ehlinger’s strategy includes a brine pretreatment in our winter maintenance plans. This anti-icing treatment is a key part of our snow removal process.
What Is Brine Pretreatment (Anti-icing)?
“Brine” refers to a salt (usually sodium chloride, NaCl) dissolved in water, making a liquid solution that can be applied to pavement surfaces. Ehlinger applies this pretreatment solution before the ice and snow are bonded to the surface. We put in the work before it becomes a problem.
- When liquid brine is on the pavement before snow or freezing rain, it prevents the ice from bonding strongly to the surface.
- Because it’s already dissolved, brine acts faster than spreading dry salt after snow has accumulated.
- It often requires less total chemical material (salt) than traditional deicing to achieve the same level of safety, which is better for the environment.
How Ehlinger Implements Brine Pretreatment
- Forecast Monitoring & Timing: If we see snow or extreme cold in the forecast, we deploy our trucks as a proactive fight against snow and ice.
- Surface Preparation & Application: We apply this brine on all high-traffic areas like entrances, aisles, and main drive lanes. Based on the path that we mapped out, we evening cover each high-traffic area so nothing is missed.
- Coordination with Plowing: After the pretreatment is applied, it weakens the bond ice has on the parking lot’s surface. This makes sure that the plow trucks can quickly clean the pavement with less residual ice.
- Follow-up Adjustments: Once the snow is removed, we evaluate the parking lot and sidewalks. If we find any areas where refreezing might occur we apply supplemental liquid brine as needed.
The Performance & Statistical Advantages of Brine Pretreatment
- Reduced Salt Use: Parking lot studies show that applying NaCl brine as an anti-icer can cut solid salt use by 39–46%. Using less material means lower costs and less environmental impact.
- Improved Efficiency & Speed: Because brine prevents snow and ice from bonding tightly to pavement, plows can remove buildup more quickly, saving time during storms.
- Better Traction & Safety: Using brine increases friction on treated surfaces compared to untreated surfaces, reducing the risk of slipping.
- Less Material Waste: Dry salt bounces or scatters off pavement, so you have to use more for it to be effective. Liquid salt or brine covers the surface, allowing you to be more conservative with the application.
- Environmental Benefits: When you can be conservative with your application, you use less salt, so there’s less chloride runoff into soils and waterways. This is beneficial for landscaping and local ecosystems.
- Cost Savings: By reducing salt usage, labor hours, and equipment wear, brine pretreatment lowers the overall cost of winter maintenance without sacrificing safety.
When comparing NaCl brine pretreatment plus granular salt vs granular salt alone, using brine prior to storms reduces chloride by 46 %. Other studies suggest anti-icing with liquids can reduce salt use by 25 – 75 % when compared to deicing methods.
The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency notes that with pre-wetting or pretreating, one can often use one-third less material than with dry salt applications.
Get Started with Ehlinger’s Snow Removal Services
The Ehlinger brine pretreatment process is a proven tool to reduce chemical use, improve efficiency, and keep surfaces safer for your staff and customers. This process, paired with years of snow removal experience, allows our crew to get you reliable results that are cleaner and more cost-effective.
Ready to prepare your property for the upcoming season? Contact Ehlinger today to learn more about our commercial snow removal services and reserve your spot before the snow flies.
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