Question About Magic O

[SLC1]

This is a question for John Parker and Dino or anybody else that has experience with MagicO. The other day we recieved about 1 1/2" of ice, freezing rain. I went out to all of my accounts about an hour before the storm hit and spread a generous application of MagicO. It started to freezing rain very hard and for about an hour the MagicO worked. When I started to check all of my accounts an hour after that all of my places were frozen over and it looked like I didn't do a thing. It seems to me that I would have been better off not putting anything down. So about 3 hours after my first application I started puttting down more MagicO it seemed to only work half way good. The first application was at 2 Am and the second application was at 6Am. After I saw the results of putting it down the second time thats when I decided to start putting down my sand/salt mixture. This is the first year using this stuff and I don't know if I am doing anything wrong but I don't think that I am not putting it down heavy enough because I put down almost 6 tons in a 6 hour time frame and according to everyone I am supposed to cut my material usage in half.(John if you are reading this I am one of the guilty contractors that used sand this storm but conditionsof the lot one hour before opening was so bad I felt I had no choice, the past two storms we used the Magic, but we did not use any sand on any of the walks.) I am willing to hear any suggestions about what I am doing wrong or what I could do different, but the way it stands right now I am not very impressed with it. I still have 10 tons left so I am hoping to make it work because everyone that I talk to about it has great things to say about it. Hope to hear from some of you soon!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!Thanks guys, sorry it was so long of a post

 

[plowking35]

Here is what we did. We had the very same conditions you had.
Pre application of magic at 2 am melted first 1/2" of sleet, then we noticed some ice accumulation, when the heavy freezing rain started at 4 am, we reapplied at about the same rate, that handled the freezing rain till about 6 am when we reapplied magic salt one more time. That handled the rest of the ice that morning. Was it perfect, no, but he is what resulted. We had no bond between the pavement and ice, it was slushy, to the tune of about 1/2". We were able to scrape that off, and one more light app of magic and we were now black and wet for the rest of the day. That night many experienced a refreeze of water that was left, whereas we did not from the residual magic in the pavement.
Also people that did lay down sand salt or straight sand, just had ice form over the top of it, and had to continually lay more and more sand down. Now they all have parking lots full of sand, whereas our lots are clean.
The key to this material IMO is it needs to be down before freeze ups, or snow starts to accumulate. I know you did that on your first application, and like you said it worked good, but it will only handle about 2/10" of moisture, after that it becomes diluted to the point where it is much less affective. That is when it becomes tricky, as you now need to be on site at that point to reapply, or you will see accumulation. I agree that as a deicer it is not as good as other materials on the market, but no where near as expensive either. The other thing, is that with straight salt, you would not have seen any better working conditions. Just look at the condition of DOT and Municipality road ways.
It is a new product for you to work with, and a learning curve is naturally to be expected before you are familar with the product. In fact we have one site that calls for service before we can do work, and we will have to get some mix for them, as they wait till there is a problem before we can react, causing the magic not to work as well. We dont handle the sand clean up there anyway, so doesnt matter to me.
If you have any other ?? feel free, and hopefully JP will ring in on this.
Dino

 

[n y snow pros]

Call me if you like BRL i am not trying to avoid writing i am just going nuts trying to keep up with the Magic.There are a few reasons as to why you did not see favorable results.845-485-4200
John Parker