# Bulk solar salt vs rock salt



## chitownsnowedin (Feb 5, 2008)

I have used bagged solar salt in a pinch before but never bought and applied bulk. Bulk is available at a reasonable price in Chicagoland. Has anyone used it before, how does it compare to rock?


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## SuperBlade (Aug 27, 2008)

ive used it at the end of last season. the grandulars are more uniform in size; so you dont get real chunky or powdery mixes. I thought solar salt worked good. difference between the two is solar salt is evaporated salt.


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## snowguys (Jul 26, 2006)

what was the price of the bagged solar salt ?


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## leon (Nov 18, 2008)

*solar salt etc.*



chitownsnowedin;641570 said:


> I have used bagged solar salt in a pinch before but never bought and applied bulk. Bulk is available at a reasonable price in Chicagoland. Has anyone used it before, how does it compare to rock?


Solar salt as it names implies is high saline content crystallised sea salt that is naturally evaporated by our sun for three years in concentrating ponds and the fourth year is when it is pumped into crystalising ponds and allowed to fully evaporate using the suns heat and the surounding air to concentrate it where it finally dries out via sunligt and is 4-6 inches of solar salt crystals are harvested with tracked harvesting machines and loaded into truck or narrow gauge rail cars to be washed, screened, dried and packaged in to the variouis types of desired packaging including salt blocks and iodized salt.

The solar salt is purer than rock salt as it has no impurities from the sedimentation of shale or limestone laid down during the numerous times the worlds was covered by seas during the sillurian epoch between 400 million to 700 million years ago.

The rock salt mined in the State of Louisiana and Texas is purer as it is much older where it was pushed up from an old bed of salt that was formed 900,000 to 1,000,000 years ago or more when there was huge deep ocean at that depth before it was covered with sediment and the domes as they are commonly and mistakenly referred to are the fingers or mountains of salt that were liquified by ground pressure of the surrounding mud and pressed down to where they were only able to rise where there was little or no sediment and grew in height from the pressure of sediment weighing down on the salt seam below, that is why there are 330 salt domes located in The States of Lousiana, Texas and other southeastern states.

The salt seam where these domes rise from is located 30,000 feet deep or more in places.

The salt in the northeast united states around the great lakes and along the canadian meritimes is the result of salt seas covering the continent numerous times up to 7 times in places in the Finger Lakes during the "Sillurian Epoch" and later being covered over by the sedimentation of shale rock/mud and limestone which are the decayed remains the bones and shell remnents of marine animals.

The reason you see dark an light colored salt in the rock salt from the east is due to the salt being deposited in layers from sea water covering the salt beds numerous times and evaporating and concentrating while dust and dirt were in the earths atmosphere from volcanoes.

The rule of thumb is that it took one hundred feet of sea water to create one inch of rock salt to create the existing salt beds as we know them today.

A good example of this is the area referred tro as the "five island chain" in Louisiana where the salt domes rose out of the earth over a forty to fifty mile area near Franklin and New Iberia being Cote Blanche, Jefferson Island, Weeks island, Avery Island and Belle isle island. Their are currently three rock salt mines operating in Louisiana being the Avery Island mine at New Iberia owned by Cargill, The Morton salt mine at Fanklin, Louisiana and the Cote Blanche mine There are three mine sites no longer used or operating being the former Diamond Crystal Salt mine on Jefferson Island, The Belle Isle salt mine on Belle Isle Island and the old upper level salt mine on the Weeks Island mine owned by Morton Salt, the upper level was abandoned and the morton salt company drove two new shaftes to develope the 2000 foot level of the salt dome after selling the old mine workings to the government for one of the original oil depositories for the strategic oil reserve which is now abandoned due to mine roof failure and leakage out of the salt dome.

I hope my information did not bore anyone to sleep.

Signed,

A former salt miner
ussmiley:


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