Salt is a tried and true agent in fighting winter slips and spills.
However, the core properties of salt that make it useful in battling snow and ice are the
same properties that can hurt the indoor surfaces of your business.
Salt acts as a breaking agent for ice. Sprinkling salt on the roadways or
walkways is often done to reduce the amount of ice on the path. As foot or road traffic
passes over the salt, it presses the salt pieces down causing them to split the ice below.
The friction allows the ice to warm and dissolve.
Salt also prevents ice and snow from forming. Water that contains salt
freezes at a lower temperature than regular water, therefore salt mixed with melting snow
and ice is less likely to refreeze or ice over again. The result is a slushy mixture of
salt and water that can often attach to shoes that accompany people into their office
spaces and onto their floors.
In order to serve its purpose with frozen water, salt must remain coarse
and adhesive. These properties make it easier to stick to surfaces and coarse enough to
cause unwelcomed wear and tear on your carpets. If not removed, salt and other outdoor
substances can spread deep into the fibers of your carpet and cut away valuable materials.
Finally, salt attracts moisture from the air causing tile and other hard
surfaces to produce a slippery finish. Be sure to use as little salt as possible to
achieve the outdoor results you desire. A quality cleaning specialist can help to
neutralize this finish before any valuable tenants slip. You should be sure to vacuum up
as much of the salt as possible. Beware that this can be a tricky feat, because the salt
will shoot out into multiple places as it is vacuumed.
If you have salt residue on your hard surface floors, use the following
steps to combat build up:
- Sweep or vacuum as much salt as possible.
- Rinse a mop thoroughly before you use it.
- Mix one cup (8 oz) of vinegar into 4 gallons of water. Two cups of vinegar can be used
if salt is bad. Use hot water- nothing else, including floor soap.
- Mop floors with the vinegar and water solution only.
- Change water often (rinsing mop thoroughly each time)
- When floor is dry, look for a haze.
- If a haze exists, rinse mop head and mop floors again with plain hot water.
While salt is the most trusted form of frozen water prevention, many other
products are available to deice and protect our outdoor surfaces. Click the links below to
read more about these products.
