I live in a condo and we had a little snow last night , it wasn’t enough to plow so the guy doing the plowing sanded our driveway. There are rocks all over our driveway now and some of the rocks are big enough to damage our cars or hit someone if they happen to be outside . It’s normal to have rocks in a sanding truck and couldn’t a fly rock damage a car ? There use to be seashells all over our driveway after it was sanded and I guess people complained about this looking messy . I spoke to a neighbor about this and she think our cars won’t get damages when the driveway get sanded . We have a narrow driveway so the sanding truck get very close to our parked cars.
Some of the ‘sand’ they use is actually gravel.
It would help to know where you are … different places have difference temperature profiles, precipitation amounts, and other environmental factors that impact what kind of abrasives are used in conjunction (or not) with de-icers. How windy and steep it is as well as driving conditions are also important. Who is doing the sanding (small local guy or big govt fleet trucks) could also impact what kind of material they use and how closely it’s regulated.
British Columbia, at least the main highways passing through the mountains, use gravel with diamters up to 12.5mm, or 1/2 inch. They tend to get a fair amount of complaints by drivers about rock damage (see the comments section at the bottom), but that cost seems outweighed by some of the massive accidents and traffic problems caused by slick mountain roads… hell they made a reality TV series about the heavy rescue trucks that pull turned over trucks off the road/ditch every winter.
Other places in Canada use different materials; it looks like about 7mm diameter is the max in at least some of the prairies.
So, yes using rocks rather than sand might be normal in your area, depending on a bunch of factors and regulations.
There may also be the expense of sifting out the rock prior to spreading …
- If there’s not enough snow to plow, it’s likely not worth sanding, either. Depends on your driveway and the amount of snow and the weather.
- Shouldn’t be anything larger than gravel in the ‘sand’. If so, I’d at least ask questions to the plow guy.
- None of the sand/gravel should be coming off of the sanding truck fast enough to damage a car. (If the guy is just spreading it by hand, he shouldn’t be doing it hard enough to damage a car either, though I guess he could if he was really careless and strong.) If a car or truck drives over the gravel at highway speed (after the snow melts, I hope), the tires could kick up the gravel fast enough to possibly damage a car behind it (that’s why drivers are complaining about it on the highways), but I hope nobody is driving that fast in your driveway. It’s also possible that if a car was stuck in a snowbank and spinning its wheels trying to get out, a piece of gravel could get thrown out fast enough to do damage. I’d concentrate on having that not happen before worrying about the gravel, though.
Plowed snow as a part time gig some years back. The spreaders we used for salt/sand were variable speed. So If I was doing a parking lot, I would turn the speed up and could spread a wider area, which meant fewer passes. If I was doing someones driveway, the spreader was set to a much lower speed, which didn’t throw it far or fast at all.
As far as rocks getting into a sand truck…it happens. Our sand pile was on a gravel lot, so when the loader was loading us up and he scraped up the sand from the bottom of the pile, he would invariably pick up some of the gravel too. Our trucks had screens on top of the hopper to keep out big rocks or hunks of salt, but that usually only stopped anything about one inch or larger.
You are lucky to have such attentive public employees. Our plow drivers fly by on our street and scatter something resembling “grit” at the speed of light. Driveways/parking lots? We would be living in a *special *dream world.
Otherwise, I assume you have a private contractor taking care of your (private) lot.
Yeah, rocks, slag, seashells, sand, gravel, salt, etc., all have different characteristics when spread at different speeds. Their potential for damage and subsequent hazards are innumerable.
What exactly do you expect? If you are unhappy with the snow removal methods on your lot, express your disapproval to the grounds manager concerning the safety of the application method/material.
Otherwise, don’t be so fussy.
Most of us don’t have that option:smack:
Give them a BREAK!
Shouldn’t, couldn’t, wouldn’t… In the first place, try stopping a plow. Good luck with that.:eek: Secondly, complaints are more appropriately directed towards City Council (or whomever), about methodology.
Granted, drivers may vary in their “finesse”, but ultimately, they are guided by their boss.
It’s quite romantic, the notion of one halting a plow and chastising the driver for his load, or his application/clearing methodology.
Y’all live in a different world than I do.
I’m just happy they show up when they do.
I wouldn’t call snowfall rare here … but we can go a number of years without … so after 14" overnight our City Street Dept realized they had forgotten where the snowplows were sitting out in the yard … took them until the middle of the next day to find them … what a mess … all we could do was laugh …
Sounds like you are a little “south”.
We all do what we can do.
In Alaska, on public roads, at any rate, we see gravel (3/8"-1/2" chips) in place of sand. When covering a very wide area, the rocks cover more effeciently than sand, and they last longer on the road as well.