Liquid Deicer Route Planner
Lane-miles in, a plan out: gallons per treatment, loads per route, time on the road, brine to make, and the bar, tips, tank and pump to do it.
What are you treating?
Your truck and bar
Pick the bar setup, your tank, the brine and the speed you'll actually drive while spraying.
Refill and truck details
Your plan
What you need on the truck
Built and stocked in Spokane; we size the tips to your numbers before it ships.
Before the first storm
- Calibrate with water before the brine goes in: drive a measured 528 ft (1/10 mile) at spraying speed and time it, then catch each tip for 30 seconds. The calibration page does the math; for brine, multiply water output by 0.92 (brine flows slower through the same tip).
- Check every tip and cap — SJ3 streams should be three clean, equal jets; side-boom discs one solid stream each, tilted so the lane is covered edge to edge. A fuzzy or short stream is a cracked tip or crystals in the strainer.
- Strainers: 50 mesh in the line, and tip strainers on SJ3-02 through -06. Brine crystals are the usual plug. Strainers →
- Pressure gauge at the bar, not just the pump. SJ3 tips pattern best between 20 and 60 psi.
- Side booms on valves: cycle each Raven valve from the switch box with the pump running and confirm the lane shuts off cleanly — a weeping valve dribbles brine on the shoulder all night.
- After the season: flush everything with fresh water, pull and rinse the tips, and leave the pump drained. Salt eats what it sits in.
- Questions, or a route that doesn't fit this planner? Ask Dusty or call (509) 838-2209.
Planning a liquid anti-icing route
Anti-icing with salt brine, magnesium chloride or calcium chloride is planned in gallons per lane-mile. Multiply the lane-miles you cover by the rate and you have the gallons per treatment; divide by the tank and you have the loads. What catches people out is everything downstream of that: the truck has to carry the weight, the pump has to deliver the gallons per minute at road speed, the tips have to be sized for that flow, and somebody has to make the brine. The planner above runs the whole chain from one set of inputs.
Boom GPM = gal/lane-mile × mph ÷ 60 × lanes sprayed at once
GPM per tip = boom GPM ÷ tips
Rates
| Situation | Typical rate |
|---|---|
| Anti-icing before frost or light snow, salt brine | 20–30 gal/lane-mile |
| Anti-icing before a storm, salt brine | 30–50 gal/lane-mile |
| Anti-icing, magnesium or calcium chloride | 20–30 gal/lane-mile |
| Deicing after accumulation (liquid only) | 50–80 gal/lane-mile, often with solids |
| Parking lots and walks, salt brine | 0.5–1 gal per 1,000 sq ft |
These are starting points; agency guidance and pavement temperature decide the number on the night. One gal/lane-mile on a 12-ft lane is 0.69 gal/acre, or 0.016 gal per 1,000 sq ft — the planner converts whichever unit your spec uses.
Speed and tips
Flow at the bar scales with speed: 40 gal/lane-mile at 25 mph is 16.7 GPM per lane; at 35 mph it's 23.3. The ten SJ3 StreamJet tips on our Single Lane De-Ice Bar split that evenly, so each tip needs 1.7 GPM of brine at 25 mph — an SJ3-20 at about 33 psi, or an SJ3-15 run near 60 psi. The six-tip side booms run TeeJet D-series orifice discs (D4–D10) as solid streams, tilted to spread across the lane, and are sized to deliver the same rate at the bar's pressure; we match them when we build the order. The deicer nozzle selector picks the exact SJ3 size for your numbers and shows what's on the shelf.
Making salt brine
Standard road brine is 23.3% sodium chloride by weight — the eutectic point, where it stays liquid the longest. That's about 2.3 pounds of salt for every finished gallon, or roughly 2 pounds per gallon of water you start with. Check it with a salometer or hydrometer: 9.8 lb/gal, specific gravity 1.176. Too weak freezes sooner; too strong leaves salt in the tank and plugs tips.
Common questions
How many gallons of brine per lane-mile?
Most agencies anti-ice at 30–50 gallons per lane-mile with 23% salt brine, lighter (20–30) for frost and mag chloride. One lane-mile is one lane, 12 ft wide, one mile long — a two-lane road is two lane-miles per mile.
How much brine does a 300-gallon tank cover?
At 40 gal/lane-mile, 7.5 lane-miles — 3.75 miles of two-lane road. At 25 mph that's about 9 minutes of spraying per load, which is why refill time dominates a long route.
How many pounds of salt to make 100 gallons of brine?
About 230 lb of salt into roughly 90 gallons of water gives 100 gallons of 23.3% brine. Dissolve, circulate, and check with a salometer before it goes in the truck.
What tip size for a de-ice bar?
It depends on rate, speed and how many tips share the lane. The planner works out GPM per tip and hands it to the deicer nozzle selector, which returns the SJ3 size and pressure from stock. For a 10-tip lane at 40 gal/lane-mile and 25 mph it's an SJ3-20 at about 33 psi; at 30 gal/lane-mile and 20 mph, an SJ3-10 near 55 psi or an SJ3-15 at 30. Side booms get a D-series disc matched at the same pressure.
Can one pickup treat two lanes at once?
Yes — the Single Lane De-Ice Bar takes a Side De-Ice Boom on either side, each adding a lane. With the Raven-valve version and our switch box, each lane turns on and off from the cab.
Related tools
Liquid deicer nozzle selector · Pump sizing calculator · Sprayer calibration · SCE Single Lane De-Ice Bar · Poly tanks
Call (509) 838-2209