would any of these mess up your MD readings (pic added)

[57sauce]

Sodium Chloride (rock salt)
Calcium Chloride
Potassium Chloride
Urea
Magnesium Chloride
Sodium Acetate
Calcium Magnesium Acetate
Ammonium Nitrate
Ammonium sulfate
Various blends of the above

The reason I ask is these are all chemicals used in ice melt often mixed with sand. All year snow plows for malls, stripmalls, and stores plow all the snow in a huge pile all year. When the snow melts you are left with a large pile of sand, along with anything anyone dropped. Anyone ever detected one of these sand piles? Or would the above chemicals mess up your readings to much to bother?

Thanks
Matt

 

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[Charlie P. (NY)]

Any of the chlorides would. Potassium, calcium, magnesium and sodium are all metals and will register in sufficient coincentrations.

Urea, ammonium, acetate, sulfates and nitrates won't bother a detector.

If it's evenly distributed you should be able to ground balance it out.

 

[Cannonman17]

These are some of my favorite places to MD- If you can find places that used to be gas stations in the 40's and 50's and figure out where they plowed their snow to it can be VERY good! Be prepared to dig a signal just about every inch to start out with though. If you keep at it and get the top junk and newer coins out of the way they can be a virtual gold mine.

 

[boogeyman]

You shouldn't have too much trouble trying to balance out the chemicals. Used to search piles in Colorado. The only problem was sand that came from areas where they used the liquid snow melt too, just a real pain to get off your coil. Also, you might think about building a screen if there's enough sand "squeegee" that came from a good area. Never had a problem getting permission from CDOT as long as I piled it up again. Used to use a 7' by 4' screen to sift piles of sand from the "beach sweepers" in California, until the City crews got wise to how much was being picked up. Might work for you.