salt / Grit

mumoffour77

We have one girt box for over 100 houses.....its horrible, we live 25 miles away from B&Q or homebase. I took grit out of it today to grit a footpath and my drive, I cut my hand whilst doing it because the lid on box is broken, I live quite rurally but right beside the sea and the sea front was frozen this am.......The grit box appeared last night.....it wasnt there before....I was using ordinary salt for my front door and drive...but the local shop has ran out now!!!

mumoffour77

Golden_Anemone wrote: »

Asda in Downpatrick has large bags of rock salt for sale in the main store, not the garage - I didn't look at the price.

I've been using their dishwasher salt to keep my path ice free. It's cheap, more effective than table salt due to its coarse texture and is cleaner than road grit which makes a terrible mess of the floors in the house.

Thanks for this.....Im heading into Asda in DPK tonight.....oh and the D/W salt is a good idea too.......will compare prices:money:

thriftyminx13

Not sure about grit but What about that sand place in Bleary? The one off sugar island road I think its called...... its the only sand place I can think off, or what about some of the smaller outdoor garden places? THe one down from Tesco in Lurgan at the crossroads? etc......

RTNI

Could someone clear this question up for me: are residents allowed to take salt from a yellow salt box if they do not live on the same street where the grit box is?

Has anyone phoned the road service to ask and hear what they have to say?

caz2703

Given not every street has a grit box it would be unfair for the box to be for the sole use of the street it is in. I say this as I know of only 2 places near us that have grit boxes. One is inside a school so not accessible and the other is a residential street that in my eyes has no special reason for it other than it being 'dibs'.

I can understand 'grumpy n old' being jacked off at people taking the grit but people don't know who their neighbours are in their own street let alone give 2 hoots about the next street across. During the bad spell it was a free for all but thankfully we had some grit left over from last year (kept fresh in our small green food waste bucket courtesy of North Down council :rotfl:) but the grit itself came from East Belfast and we're in Bangor!

Thankfully the street my folks live in has 2 grit boxes as my dad was using it to grit the street 24 hours in advance of an ambulance being needed to rush him to hospital. It was probably the strain of helping the other (mainly younger) neighbours out by gritting the footpaths while they sat on their backsides that caused the 999 call so if someone had nicked the grit from his street meaning the ambulance couldn't get to him I'd be up in court.

dmxdave

RTNI wrote: »

Could someone clear this question up for me: are residents allowed to take salt from a yellow salt box if they do not live on the same street where the grit box is?

Has anyone phoned the road service to ask and hear what they have to say?

Mate in Bangor phoned as there is a steep hill into their street and no grit box. He was given the location of 3 nearby to use.

caz2703

dmxdave wrote: »

Mate in Bangor phoned as there is a steep hill into their street and no grit box. He was given the location of 3 nearby to use.

Let me guess ...... each of the 3 was empty? We were told last winter (2009, not the one just gone) where the grit boxes were but a friend of facebook had already confirmed they were all empty. As per my previous post, we "borrowed" some from East Belfast Not sure about this winter is North Down council got their act together as we were prepared with cat litter if necessary.

P.S. once this winter is over we may have a full bag of cat litter free to a good home as our dog is house trained!!

x12yhp

One of my friends got moved along by the old bill about a month back. They told him it was only for people on that street. To be honest, I rather assumed that it was some jumped up youngsters who were too full of their supposed authority.

RTNI

The reason for asking is that I pulled up and was taking some salt from a box about 400 meters from where I live for my driveway, and a person who lived on the hilly street were the box was taold me that "that box is for use of the people on this street." Admittedly I was taking it to use on my driveway which has a slope to it (upwards towards the house) but I now realise after reading this thread that this is not what the salt / grit is for.

I can understand that the street had a slight incline and there were approx 10 houses on the street, but I was shocked and was told that they had "campaigned for years to get that one."

So much for goodwill to your neighbours (in the surrounding area). Have a right mind to call to go back and if he comes out again to tell him of my findings - but that would not be the nice thing to do; plus with the rain today and warmer daytime temperatures that should see the end of it (for the meantime!)