Magnesium Chloride (environment, showing, houses)

[LBear]

How bad is Magnesium Chloride??

They claim it is LESS corrosive than typical road salt. Do the cars rust out bad in Colorado? How about rubber and electrical parts?

[2bindenver]

True, it also lowers the freezing temp. The one thing everyone does after a good snow, is wash the car.

In showing houses, I am noticing a lot of concrete peeling on the driveway...I have heard it is from the road chemicals.

[Nadine]

Originally Posted by Pettrix

How bad is Magnesium Chloride??

They claim it is LESS corrosive than typical road salt. Do the cars rust out bad in Colorado? How about rubber and electrical parts?

Don't know about the magnesium chloride particularly but when we see a vehicle rusted out body, we figure it came from the coast somewhere. I still drive an 1980 Toyota that has very little rust. Never seen a garage, original paint. But it has not been driven constantly in bigger cities that probably use more stuff on their streets than here. Not aware of deterioration you speak of.

[jazzlover]

Mag chloride is a salt, just like sodium chloride. I don't know whether it is as corrosive as regular sodium chloride road salt, but it is much more difficult to wash off. My long-time mechanic's advice was to wash it off of the vehicle as soon as practical, paying particular attention to the undercarriage of the car. Most people conentrate on washing what shows (the paint). It's popular among highway departments because it can be applied in liquid form and can be applied before a storm hits.

[Rumblebelly]

Those automatic car washes don't get the undercarage very well so I always try to spray it off by hand the best I can.

Since not all salts are created equal, I could see MgCl being less corrosive than NaCl. However, I think they use a corrosion inhibitor with some MgCl products which might explain why it's less corrosive.

[TinajaCo]

As far as rust goes, though, Nadine said exactly what I was thinking-- if I see a car with rust, I figure it must be from a coast. Although salt and mag chloride can be corrosive, it is not down on roads often enough to cause problems, and the climate is very dry-- not conducive to rust.

[Dedalus]

Originally Posted by Pettrix

How bad is Magnesium Chloride??

They claim it is LESS corrosive than typical road salt. Do the cars rust out bad in Colorado? How about rubber and electrical parts?

They're wrong.

What makes salt corrosive is the chloride. It's a catalyst for starting rust.

The advantage is environmental. Sodium has a deleterious effect on soil, making it clod. Magnesium does't.

[Rumblebelly]

Well some MgCl2 includes rust inhibitors that reduce corrosion. Apparently plain old NaCl has been found to be much more corrosive than MgCl2 that contains these inhibitors.

For those that wanna know more about deicers than they'll ever care about:

http://www.dot.state.co.us/Publicati...es/deicers.pdf

[BillRadio]

Mag Chloride was supposed to be the savior of the roads, but with each cure comes a new problem. Colorado has mostly used sand for roads, with just a little salt added to keep the sand from freezing. But sand, after being ground into a fine powder by car tires, becomes a contributing factor to particulate air pollution.

They were hoping Mag Chloride would be the answer. But if you saw the trees dying along I-70 in the mountains you'd know there was a problem. Fortunately, it's not much worse than dealing with sand/salt, which I prefer on the garage floor than the Mag Chloride goop that accumulates now.

[Phazed-Coug]

mag clor on paint and bodys not too bad,
if you have aluminum wheels, they will get trashed
if you don't clean them..