Road Salt Still Doing Damage After 20 Years

[Tom Wesenberg]

Years ago my dad would drive his car into the attached unheated garage, and with it came a lot of road salt. I cleaned the floor as well as I could then layed down some free carpet. Any metal, including my tools, that touched the carpet quickly rusted. I removed that carpet and layed down a large sheet of 6 mil plastic, then layed some fresh free carpet over it. It's better, but you can see the salt has still found a way to migrate into the new carpet and is still at work rusting things.

This is a two foot length of perforated square tubing that comes in handy for several things. Here's a picture of it being used to straighten a bent wheel mounting on my mower deck. This tool was setting next to my Model A on the carpet, and you can see how the salt has attacked it, even though it's galvanized. I had sandblasted and painted a lug wrench for a Model AA truck and had it laying on the carpet, and it also rusted and had to be done again.

Next summer I hope I get time to clean out the garage, insulate it, then acid etch the floor and paint it with epoxy paint. I hope that will stop the salt damage.