The St. Louis County Public Works Department maintains and removes snow from over 3,000 miles of County State Aid Highways, county roads, and unorganized township roads. To ensure safe travel conditions across this extensive transportation network, the public works team must apply a large volume of deicing chemicals to the roads.
To protect the deicers from contamination and water, they must be stored under cover. St. Louis County uses numerous structures made from fabric and steel for proper storage — but the fabric can stretch and sag under excessive snow loads, ultimately contaminating the deicing chemicals. To solve this problem, Matthew Beyer, St. Louis County Public Works Department maintenance principal, obtained a $20,000 OPERA grant to develop the Mechanical Snow Reduction system: a set of mechanical vibration devices designed to dislodge snow buildup from the roofs of the storage structures.
Refining for maximum impact
As the concept for the project took shape, a few questions remained: What was the best location to affix the device to the structure, and how would it be attached? Which manufacturer made the best product for the county’s application? The team also needed to identify a procedure for determining when to activate the vibration devices to maximize snow removal.
St. Louis County contracted with a local fabrication and design company to build the devices. Working together, staff designed a bracket that fit between the steel trusses of the fabric storage structures; ideally, this would provide a centered mounting location for the mechanical vibration device. Once installed, however, it became clear that having one device spanning two trusses would not produce enough vibration to dislodge built-up snow accumulations.
After going back to the drawing board, the department decided to mount a vibration device to each individual steel truss. With this change, each side of the storage structure would receive a device located on every other truss, staggering installation from side to side. The additional vibration provided enough force to remove snow buildup effectively.
A solution built to last
Throughout the implementation process, the team found that the best time to activate the devices is within 24 hours of a snowfall event. Because little snow fell during the winter of 2023–2024, two full winter seasons were needed to evaluate how this tool would perform.
Ultimately, the agency found the project to be successful. The mechanical vibration devices remain installed on one building at St. Louis County’s Pike Lake campus, where they are expected to perform for many winter seasons to come, serving as a blueprint for implementation on other fabric storage buildings across the county.
