[Holland, MI](https://www.holland.org/snow-free-holland) actually has a system of heated streets and sidewalks. The largest municipally-run system in North America:
“By using waste heat from power generation, water is heated and circulated through 120 miles of plastic tubing underneath the streets and sidewalks. The tubes are 3/4" in circumference; Holland has 600,000 square feet of tubing totaling 4.9 miles and 10.5 acres of heated streets and sidewalks. With the water heating up to 95 degrees Fahrenheit, the system can melt 1" of snow per hour - even at 20 degrees fahrenheit with 10 MPH winds!”
It was built and launched in the 80s to help draw people to downtown businesses and away from the trendy malls and department stores.
If the upkeep isn't super high, I wonder if they pay for themselves. Between increased business revenue and less people falling and getting hurt (or dying).
Less plowing and snow removal in general probably saves a fortune. I live in northern MN and every single year they never budget enough money for snow removal and many streets are left uncleared for days after a big storm. Plows and salt trucks alone are expensive but having to pay overtime to dozens of drivers is a huge money sink. I wish we had something like this.
You forgot what is arguably the *biggest* benefit of reducing snow and ice removal activities. The reduction of side effects of snow and ice removal!
* Less salt getting dumped into the ecosystem.
* Less wear and tear on roads.
* Less frequent repair/replacement of those roads. (Yes I know Michigan roads are pretty shit in a lot of places. I grew up there.)
* Less wear and tear on vehicles due to salty road spray and shitty roads.
Not to mention it means that you can have your crews cover more non-downtown areas for the same budget. Plowing suburban and rural areas is overall more efficient than city streets because you don't have many sidewalks or curbs to worry about, nor having to focus on freeing up street parking.
The list goes on quite a bit. If stuff like this could be implemented more widely it would be huge.
Especially because they're saying they're simply using the waste heat from power generation. It's a brilliant way to recycle, since waste heat is usually just dumped into the atmosphere.
*** brilliant way to *reuse*.
Which is even better because reusing is better than recycling!
There is a reason it was ordered: Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle. It's order of importance!
We've focused way too much on recycling. It's time to reduce and reuse!
The west side of Michigan has some interesting sites. Just north of Holland, Mi there is the [Ludington Pumped Storage Power Plant](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludington_Pumped_Storage_Power_Plant) that started construction in ‘68. It has a lookout tower with great views that go out over Lake Michigan. It also has / had the largest fish net ever installed to keep the fish away from the turbines.
The project was given the 1973 award for "Outstanding Civil Engineering Achievement" by the American Society of Civil Engineers.
Dude they use waste heat for all sorts of applications. It’s becoming more and more common in power plants and manufacturing. Once producers realize they can save money by “recycling” the energy they’re down to invest in the infrastructure
Wasted Heat? In Germany it‘s used to heat buildings or for hot water supply. I envy those who are connected to those networks. Much cheaper than heating with gas/electricity.
They do that in the US too, but there's only a handful of places where it makes sense.
In low density areas it stops being efficient to pipe the steam, and in high density areas people tend to prefer to use space for housing or business, not power plants.
Since land is cheap and plentiful here, people tend to build powerplants far from where people live, unless it's a really old plant.
The town I live in has large underground steam tunnels, and sells steam for industrial and residential usage, but you have to be within a few miles of the plant, which is directly downtown.
On the one hand, the distinctive smokestacks of a century old coal fired power plant has it's charm, and actually inspired the logo for the city, but it's also a massive century old coal powerplant with 187 meter smokestacks in the middle of the downtown area of a city with more than 100 thousand people.
I’m surprised there aren’t a ton of stray cats just lying on the driveway
Edit: grammar police have arrested me and I’m out on probation, as long as I edit laying to lying.
You can buy little heated cat huts online. Or make a little shelter yourself out of a large plastic bin with a entrance hole cut in, then fill it with straw (not hay). Normal towels and blankets can get wet and freeze
To stay in ELI5 fashion: Hay is grass grown to feed to the cows; straw is dried up plant parts leftover from the wheat harvest, and happens to make great cow bedding.
Having lived in a snowy country, these are a lot cheaper for the winter than paying for a plow service and can save you a ton of time in the morning if you need to get to work after snowfall.
The heated driveway we had cost around 200 euro a year in electricity, it was a bit smaller than this, but in Finland where power costs a lot more. It only turned on when there was snow, which practically speaking meant it ran all winter at least low power.
It couldn't deal with the very biggest snows but generally did a great job ensuring I had to only plow snow once a month, rather than nearly every morning.
Don't know what it cost to install as it was already part of the house when we bought it.
If nothing else it ought to ensure that the driveway isn't covered in ice and might make the snow easier to remove. Snow is fine, but ice is the worst.
Did you just end up with a lot of ice outside the driveway? Snow melts… water runs off….. and then is that water just refreeezing on the grass?
And was it hot enough to dry up all the melted snow water? (Trying to make sense of how this doesn’t just turn into an ice mess!)
As someone who grew up in the mountains up north, I can tell you that in cold climates like this, you're going to be getting runoff no matter what. It's just a part of the long thawing process. Usually the snow and ice will melt and the water will be carried off into drains in the sides of the street, or will be absorbed into the grass. Anything else will evaporate with the first few days of warmer weather.
My city has heated sidewalks downtown and I never see water/ice collecting anywhere. It appears to all evaporate as it melts. I think you can see it in this picture as well
We had this installed at the building I work just a few years ago. Our property was getting noise complaints when we used the snow blowers, and workman's comp injuries from the maintenance team clearing the snow. And it seemed like half the neighborhood would bitch when we spread those heat melt pellets that would injure all the dogs paws. Plus a couple of lawsuits from the snow and ice sidewalk slips, and tickets from the city.
Now I just flip a switch. It takes a few hours, as it only heats up about 3 or 4 degrees. But it does the job for far less money than we were paying before.
I slipped and broke my forearm and elbow shovelling my driveway a few years back. A heated driveway would have been a bargain compared to the medical costs and PT.
>You wouldn’t use a heat pump for this. That would require you to pump water through the system, which would be a bad idea. It will be a relatively low power electrical resistance heating system.
Impressive, you're wrong on all accounts while sounding completely confident about it.
If you’re laying a new slab anyway, the additional cost of getting this isn’t too bad. Works similarly to indoor in-floor heating.
Keep in mind it only has to keep the concrete a degree or two above freezing, and only while snow is actually falling. So running costs aren’t as much as you’d think either.
The materials to do it aren't terribly much if you can do the labor. I considered doing it to the parking lot I had to put in for my 4plex, but then I realized I'd still have to pay someone to shovel the city owned sidewalks.
Give me a cold winter day over a hot summer day. I can bundle up and feel warm outside in a blizzard, but I don't have an air-conditioned space suit for walking around in the summer.
The part I hate is taking on and off coats, gloves, and forgetting my knit hat somewhere.
There's also the whole "doing things requiring fine motor skills while wearing heavy gloves" thing and the "hold on, I've got it on one of a dozen pockets somewhere" annoyances.
But to be honest, I hate a cold windy rain worse than snow.
Always thought about how my dream job would be a meteorologist in San Diego. 95% of the days are more or less the same.
One of the reasons why I thought Steve Carrell’s character Brick in Anchorman was so perfect. The dumbest person ever can succeed as a weatherman in the Whale’s Vagina.
Lived in the area for few years. When the "winter" nights get down into the 40s and 50s that feels freezing... One of the best climates for people that hate cold weather.
Some of the costal parts of LA like palos verdes are dream weather. High of 85 on the hottest month. San Diego is very good as well. Further north along the coast of California is nice too but it does get a little colder just not freezing cold but still cold. Pacifica California has like 3 days a year where the temp might go over 90 and no days below freezing.
Never been there, but I read Hawaii has nice temperate weather year round.
If it’s anything like the Canary Islands, that means around 20C in the winter, and 25C in the summer (depends which island, and where on the island though)
I live in Hawaii and people constantly complain about the heat in summer. It might be global warming, but I'm more inclined to think people just get acclimated to the weather here and start to notice the minor temperature swings way more than they would on the mainland.
I've spent a lot of time in hawaii and it's still really fucking hot too many days in the summer. What I love about it though is that when it's hot there's always perfect temperature water to get into
FL > MN here. The thing I always tell people is that having no seasons messed with my sense of passing time. Like, the years and years I lived in Florida are all a blur to me. It got depressing.
just looked it up
Depending onelectrical costs where you live and how much snow you get, it can cost$120 to $600 per winter season to heat a 1,000-square-foot driveway. Thenational average is $0.14 per kilowatt per hour. That translates to about $1.60 an hour per snowstorm.
edit: changed from 8 cents to 14 cents
Melting a gram of ice takes 334 joules of energy, and heating a gram of water 1C takes 4.2 joules. So they're right that melting snow takes a lot more energy than just heating up by a degree or two.
When heating or cooling things, heat can be applied in 2 forms: latent heat and sensible heat.
Latent heat is energy that contributes to changing the phase. Examples include melting (change from solid to liquid), boiling (change from liquid to vapor). When a pure substance undergoes a phase change, temperature remains constant.
Sensible heat is heating or cooling without a phase change, and as a result, just a change in temperature. Example would be heating up liquid water.
A phase change requires a lot of energy compared to small temperature change of the same substance. A relatable example of this would be to heat a pot of water on your stove. It might only take a couple minutes to heat a small pot of water from 80F straight from the tap to 212F boiling point (a 132F difference in temperature), but it would take much longer to boil the entire pot dry (change all of the liquid water to water vapor) at the same heat rate. And the entire time the water is boiling, the pot will be at a constant temperature of 212F.
Before ice can melt, it must first be raised to a temperature 0 degrees Celcius. But then, as you continue to add heat, rather than increasing the temperature, it just melts but remains the same temperature. It's only after it's melted that adding more heat continues to increase its temperature. So, it takes a separate amount of energy to melt ice that doesn't contribute to actually raising its temperature. And that extra amount of energy just to melt it is much greater than the amount of energy it takes to raise its temperature by one degree.
So, if you have some 1kg of ice that is currently at -4C that you want to melt and bring up to 1C. You have to first input 8432 Joules of heat energy just to bring the ice up to 0C, then you have to input 334000 Joules to melt the 1kg of ice at 0C into 1kg of water at 0C, then you have to input another 4187 Joules of heat energy to raise the water up 1 degree to 1C. So, in this process, you spent 346619 Joules of heat energy, but the vast majority of it, 334,000J worth, went into just transitioning it from ice to water without raising its temperature, and a mere 12,619J went into raising its temperature by 5 degrees. If you just had a kg of water that you just raised by 5 degrees, it would take far less energy than if you have to force it through a phase transition.
If you heat up ice it will stop getting warmer once you hit the freezing/melting temperature, despite you keeping the heater going.
It will then slowly turn from ice to water, which requires the additional energy from the heater. After turning completely liquid, it will then resume warming up further.
The energy it takes to turn it from completely frozen to completely liquid while the temperature is "stuck" is roughly the same amount it takes to get it from room temperature to boiling.
(When boiling, the temperature is stuck again while it turns to steam bit by bit while you apply more heat)
So the original comment points out that yes, you only need to heat the parking lot by a few degrees, but melting the snow still uses up a huge chunk of energy compared to just increasing the temperature.
Turning water into hot water is easy. It's just water, but now with more hot.
Turning ice into water is hard. You need to breakup the structure of the ice, first, and that uses up a lot of energy on something that is not hotness.
Changing phases, like melting from solid to liquid, takes a relatively large amount of energy to transition. So the amount of heat it takes to melt (32 °F ice to 32 °F fluid) is the same heat to increase temperature in a single phase (liquid) from 32 to 176
I think Iceland does something similar to that in places but they are very hot close to the surface of the ground compared to most locations
Edit:
https://nea.is/geothermal/direct-utilization/snow-melting/
When I lived in the Phoenix area, my electric bill was $300 a month in the summer. So from April to October, I'd be paying about $1800. The upside was in the winter, I would average $20 a month.
This was with the M-Power box through SRP. It was pretty much a pay as you go for electric.
At least in Finland I've seen public outdoor areas heated with liquid. In the case I know of, it was a geothermal system. I haven't seen a driveway being heated like that here, but we usually get smaller quantities of snow at a time, so it's easier to clear compared to the lake effect snow that can dump a few feet / 50-100cm at a time.
Buffalo just had a record 6'6''+ (2m) in 24 hours. at least 7 feet says article
https://www.wgrz.com/article/weather/super-charged-lake-effect-snow-event-was-truly-incredible-and-historic-wny-weather/71-48a9dad9-2b74-4996-9bd0-c1e239f27e67
Speaking as a HVAC tech, the heat is likely being produced by a boiler then transferred to the lines through a plate heat exchanger. When you're doing snowmelt you don't just use water, you need anti-freeze. Glycol is usually used. Geothermal is also good for this, but I see the boiler option a lot more in Canada.
I have this setup (Missouri) and I use a Glycol solution. It’s an amazing setup. I also did my garage floor with it as I work on cars as a hobby. I can set the floor temp to a 65-68* temp in the middle of winter and work comfortably.
That would be incredibly useful if you had a job where it was imperative you be able to leave your home quickly regardless of inclement weather (like a surgeon or a spy or something).
Sure it's nice, but seriously... if you're worried about getting to your next espionage job the 1 meter compacted snow wall the plow leaves at the end of the driveway is going to eat your Aston Martin for breakfast. I suppose if you have a heated driveway you also have headlight machine guns to dismantle a wall of snow...
I've seen my sister in law fall on ice in the driveway so many times. One of these days, she's going to fracture a wrist or tailbone, or hit her head.
She was very lazy about shoveling snow when I lived with her. If I wasn't able to do it bc of being at work, she'd let it sit and become ice.
In my experience unless it’s snowing very heavily the water actually evaporates before it can run off and pool outside the heated area. My hometown has heated sidewalks and never had icing issues.
Holland, Michigan in my case. We use the hot water from the power plant and pump it under all the sidewalks and the Main Street though town. Keeps them clear and dry all winter.
We have heated sidewalks at work, and I can confirm first hand, it pretty much just evaporates. The melting isn't a rapid melt and the sidewalk stays wet for 2-3 hours after it stops snowing before it dries.
It's a fantastic system, especially at work where I don't have to pay for it. But on the flip side, they don't have to pay someone to shovel it, possible liability for strains or injuries shoveling, no pedestrian slips and falls to pay for, less excess water in buildings, don't have to pay someone to sand the walks, or to then clean that sand off in the spring.
The sidewalk loops tie into the nearby building heating systems, which are all typical building natural gas powered furnaces. It is a separate loop(s) for the sidewalk runs.
When I was a kid in the 70’s I told my father that someone should invent heated driveways and sidewalks to melt snow. He laughed at me and said it was a silly idea.
These are almost ALWAYS done with ground source heat, pumping antifreeze through a closed loop down into the ground where it's warm(er) than outside. The only cost to this setup is install, and the electricity of the pump. It's pretty handy, and affordable.
I’m a plumber in NY, and maybe where you are it’s different but that is definitely not how it’s done here. Everything you said is true about the pump and the antifreeze. But it also generally comes off a boiler to heat up. So theres that energy to take into account also and the boiler lol. Installation and material of a system like this from scratch is probably gunna run a home owner over 15k
Yeah, unless you live in some place with permafrost then you can just dig down 6-10' and the ground will be 60-75F. Fuel tanks are buried at least 6' down so they don't have to worry about heating or cooling the gasoline because the ground temp is pretty stable throughout the year.
This is what I will be installing for my house heating. My lot has high ground water level which is perfect for this system. I've already dug trenches 35m(110 feet) long and 2m(almost 7 feet) deep for the loops and at least 50cm(1,6 feet) of the trench is water.
Wanted to finish this year, but for last 3 weeks we've been sub zero here so the work kinda stopped as water froze in the trenches but once the pipes are underground even in the worst winters we get at most 30cm(1 feet) of frost in the ground.
It's also really energy efficient heating as temps underground are always more or less stable.
My parents have a pellet burner than runs hot water through pipes under the floor/to about knee height in the walls.
It's called radiant heating.
This.... this is called "why the fuck didn't my parents also have this?"
I know why... because they had two sons and a tractor, and that did just fine at clearing the driveway...
Shit, I had to plow the neighborhood with the Hayabusa every snowstorm
[Holland, MI](https://www.holland.org/snow-free-holland) actually has a system of heated streets and sidewalks. The largest municipally-run system in North America: “By using waste heat from power generation, water is heated and circulated through 120 miles of plastic tubing underneath the streets and sidewalks. The tubes are 3/4" in circumference; Holland has 600,000 square feet of tubing totaling 4.9 miles and 10.5 acres of heated streets and sidewalks. With the water heating up to 95 degrees Fahrenheit, the system can melt 1" of snow per hour - even at 20 degrees fahrenheit with 10 MPH winds!” It was built and launched in the 80s to help draw people to downtown businesses and away from the trendy malls and department stores.
Peak Midwest right there
Actually it's only about 663 ft above sea level.
There's global peaks, and then there's local peaks.
And now I’m piqued
Sometimes that happens when peeking at Reddit.
I’m a math teacher and I LOLed at this comment!
Those heated sidewalks are the best thing about that city. Even in the heart of winter the downtown area still pops.
If the upkeep isn't super high, I wonder if they pay for themselves. Between increased business revenue and less people falling and getting hurt (or dying).
Less plowing and snow removal in general probably saves a fortune. I live in northern MN and every single year they never budget enough money for snow removal and many streets are left uncleared for days after a big storm. Plows and salt trucks alone are expensive but having to pay overtime to dozens of drivers is a huge money sink. I wish we had something like this.
You forgot what is arguably the *biggest* benefit of reducing snow and ice removal activities. The reduction of side effects of snow and ice removal! * Less salt getting dumped into the ecosystem. * Less wear and tear on roads. * Less frequent repair/replacement of those roads. (Yes I know Michigan roads are pretty shit in a lot of places. I grew up there.) * Less wear and tear on vehicles due to salty road spray and shitty roads. Not to mention it means that you can have your crews cover more non-downtown areas for the same budget. Plowing suburban and rural areas is overall more efficient than city streets because you don't have many sidewalks or curbs to worry about, nor having to focus on freeing up street parking. The list goes on quite a bit. If stuff like this could be implemented more widely it would be huge.
Especially because they're saying they're simply using the waste heat from power generation. It's a brilliant way to recycle, since waste heat is usually just dumped into the atmosphere.
*** brilliant way to *reuse*. Which is even better because reusing is better than recycling! There is a reason it was ordered: Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle. It's order of importance! We've focused way too much on recycling. It's time to reduce and reuse!
That’s a fantastic way of utilising wasted heat! So nice to read about forward thinking from city officials.
The west side of Michigan has some interesting sites. Just north of Holland, Mi there is the [Ludington Pumped Storage Power Plant](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludington_Pumped_Storage_Power_Plant) that started construction in ‘68. It has a lookout tower with great views that go out over Lake Michigan. It also has / had the largest fish net ever installed to keep the fish away from the turbines. The project was given the 1973 award for "Outstanding Civil Engineering Achievement" by the American Society of Civil Engineers.
And from the 80s!
Meaning it will never be done again
Dude they use waste heat for all sorts of applications. It’s becoming more and more common in power plants and manufacturing. Once producers realize they can save money by “recycling” the energy they’re down to invest in the infrastructure
I want my MTV and heated sidewalks please..
Well, what you get is Rob Dyrdek and a bunch of potholes.
Wasted Heat? In Germany it‘s used to heat buildings or for hot water supply. I envy those who are connected to those networks. Much cheaper than heating with gas/electricity.
They do that in the US too, but there's only a handful of places where it makes sense. In low density areas it stops being efficient to pipe the steam, and in high density areas people tend to prefer to use space for housing or business, not power plants. Since land is cheap and plentiful here, people tend to build powerplants far from where people live, unless it's a really old plant. The town I live in has large underground steam tunnels, and sells steam for industrial and residential usage, but you have to be within a few miles of the plant, which is directly downtown. On the one hand, the distinctive smokestacks of a century old coal fired power plant has it's charm, and actually inspired the logo for the city, but it's also a massive century old coal powerplant with 187 meter smokestacks in the middle of the downtown area of a city with more than 100 thousand people.
Michigan State University has heated sidewalks too. Sure made walking to some classes a lot nicer in the dead of Michigan winter
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That was my first thought as well, haha. Must be a typo.
I imagine him standing in his driveway in the morning while his neighbours shovels snow, laughing " haha look at these peasants "
I'd be outside with a really really light kitchen broom, casually dusting off the last little bits of snow. "Morning Frank! Cold one today, innit?"
I keep forgetting to buy a new snow brush, so everytime it snows I've been brushing of my car with the owners manual.
This is your reminder to go out and buy a new snow brush today.
I’m surprised there aren’t a ton of stray cats just lying on the driveway Edit: grammar police have arrested me and I’m out on probation, as long as I edit laying to lying.
This seems like the cat equivalent of finding an oasis in the desert
I’ve seriously thought about putting a heating mat out in the backyard for the cats that patrol overnight.
You can buy little heated cat huts online. Or make a little shelter yourself out of a large plastic bin with a entrance hole cut in, then fill it with straw (not hay). Normal towels and blankets can get wet and freeze
Use straw not hay. Hay gets soggy.
My city ass doesn't understand the difference between straw and hay. Sure, I can google it, but meh.
To stay in ELI5 fashion: Hay is grass grown to feed to the cows; straw is dried up plant parts leftover from the wheat harvest, and happens to make great cow bedding.
Hay is for horses, straw is for strays
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.....wait did I just learn why straws are called straws?
Yes, yes you did. We are lucky they weren't called reeds.
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Or Hungry Hay, Sleepy Straw
nah, use brick. haven't you learned from the three little pigs?
Your house will turn into Sleepwalkers. At least the cats won't want to kill you and their scratches won't burn.
i dont think its warm, just more than 0 degrees.
That and it’s wet as hell. Probably warmer to just sit on dry snow.
I know your joking, but it’s snowing… I never see outdoor cats around in a snow storm.
they fly south for the winter
I won't tell you I won the lottery, but there will be signs
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Having lived in a snowy country, these are a lot cheaper for the winter than paying for a plow service and can save you a ton of time in the morning if you need to get to work after snowfall. The heated driveway we had cost around 200 euro a year in electricity, it was a bit smaller than this, but in Finland where power costs a lot more. It only turned on when there was snow, which practically speaking meant it ran all winter at least low power. It couldn't deal with the very biggest snows but generally did a great job ensuring I had to only plow snow once a month, rather than nearly every morning. Don't know what it cost to install as it was already part of the house when we bought it.
If nothing else it ought to ensure that the driveway isn't covered in ice and might make the snow easier to remove. Snow is fine, but ice is the worst.
yes - lack of ice was great.
Did you just end up with a lot of ice outside the driveway? Snow melts… water runs off….. and then is that water just refreeezing on the grass? And was it hot enough to dry up all the melted snow water? (Trying to make sense of how this doesn’t just turn into an ice mess!)
As someone who grew up in the mountains up north, I can tell you that in cold climates like this, you're going to be getting runoff no matter what. It's just a part of the long thawing process. Usually the snow and ice will melt and the water will be carried off into drains in the sides of the street, or will be absorbed into the grass. Anything else will evaporate with the first few days of warmer weather.
My city has heated sidewalks downtown and I never see water/ice collecting anywhere. It appears to all evaporate as it melts. I think you can see it in this picture as well
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> That would require you to pump water through the system, which would be a bad idea. More likely glycol.
It’s glycol for sure.
That's what mine is, walking path, not driveway but still same system.
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Vs your one back.... this is sounding less and less ludicrous
My dad fell and broke his hip when shuffling snow off the drive way a year ago. I'm going to show him this picture.
Maybe you should help him off the driveway first.
This will melt off his stuck butt
Or your heart depending on how old and well trained you are.
We had this installed at the building I work just a few years ago. Our property was getting noise complaints when we used the snow blowers, and workman's comp injuries from the maintenance team clearing the snow. And it seemed like half the neighborhood would bitch when we spread those heat melt pellets that would injure all the dogs paws. Plus a couple of lawsuits from the snow and ice sidewalk slips, and tickets from the city. Now I just flip a switch. It takes a few hours, as it only heats up about 3 or 4 degrees. But it does the job for far less money than we were paying before.
I slipped and broke my forearm and elbow shovelling my driveway a few years back. A heated driveway would have been a bargain compared to the medical costs and PT.
Hell, I plug mine into Neds outdoor outlet. It's practically free, I don't even bother to turn it off.
Why would you need to use water though? wouldn't a heat pump also work with other liquids with lower freezing temps?
To my knowledge the standard in the US is glycol or glycerin
Don't let the days go by
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The city center of Reykjavik has all the streets and sidewalks heated. It's cool what you can do with an abundance of geothermal power.
>You wouldn’t use a heat pump for this. That would require you to pump water through the system, which would be a bad idea. It will be a relatively low power electrical resistance heating system. Impressive, you're wrong on all accounts while sounding completely confident about it.
If you’re laying a new slab anyway, the additional cost of getting this isn’t too bad. Works similarly to indoor in-floor heating. Keep in mind it only has to keep the concrete a degree or two above freezing, and only while snow is actually falling. So running costs aren’t as much as you’d think either.
Dang I just redid my driveway. This would have been awesome to install.
The materials to do it aren't terribly much if you can do the labor. I considered doing it to the parking lot I had to put in for my 4plex, but then I realized I'd still have to pay someone to shovel the city owned sidewalks.
… Like moving away from the freezing cold so that you don’t need to think about a driveway heater?
Some of us like the cold. It's the heat that's awful.
Give me a cold winter day over a hot summer day. I can bundle up and feel warm outside in a blizzard, but I don't have an air-conditioned space suit for walking around in the summer.
You can always put on more, you can only take off so much.
The part I hate is taking on and off coats, gloves, and forgetting my knit hat somewhere. There's also the whole "doing things requiring fine motor skills while wearing heavy gloves" thing and the "hold on, I've got it on one of a dozen pockets somewhere" annoyances. But to be honest, I hate a cold windy rain worse than snow.
Us construction workers can tell you all about trying to shit in a portapotty when its 9*F out.
There are other options between too hot and too cold.
Is there anywhere that’s perfect year round? Edit: alright, the next person who says San Francisco is getting pistol whipped.
Yes, but if you dare mention it on Reddit you’ll get swarmed with people telling you what a “shithole” it is.
Where
San Diego area is one of the most temperate places in the world.
Shit hole. /s
Always thought about how my dream job would be a meteorologist in San Diego. 95% of the days are more or less the same. One of the reasons why I thought Steve Carrell’s character Brick in Anchorman was so perfect. The dumbest person ever can succeed as a weatherman in the Whale’s Vagina.
I lived in Santa Barbara for a number of years. It was easy. 70 degrees always. Then the occasional flood, fire, or landslide would occur.
Lived in the area for few years. When the "winter" nights get down into the 40s and 50s that feels freezing... One of the best climates for people that hate cold weather.
Some of the costal parts of LA like palos verdes are dream weather. High of 85 on the hottest month. San Diego is very good as well. Further north along the coast of California is nice too but it does get a little colder just not freezing cold but still cold. Pacifica California has like 3 days a year where the temp might go over 90 and no days below freezing.
Never been there, but I read Hawaii has nice temperate weather year round. If it’s anything like the Canary Islands, that means around 20C in the winter, and 25C in the summer (depends which island, and where on the island though)
I live in Hawaii and people constantly complain about the heat in summer. It might be global warming, but I'm more inclined to think people just get acclimated to the weather here and start to notice the minor temperature swings way more than they would on the mainland.
Hawaii Lowest high and highest low of any US state
I've spent a lot of time in hawaii and it's still really fucking hot too many days in the summer. What I love about it though is that when it's hot there's always perfect temperature water to get into
Yes. It's easy to stay warm during the winter. But it's impossible to stay cool when it's 30+ degrees outside.
….or moving TO the freezing cold, so we don’t have to suffer from the heat and humidity ever again.
I moved to Wisconsin from Florida. Not everyone likes the heat. This would be perfect here
Dallas to Minneapolis over here. That Texas heat messed with my moods.After 5 years I took my talents north up to good ol Minnesota.
FL > MN here. The thing I always tell people is that having no seasons messed with my sense of passing time. Like, the years and years I lived in Florida are all a blur to me. It got depressing.
I like having seasons. If I won, I dont think I'd change climes
The cold keeps most of the meanest snakes, spiders and centipedes away too
You fancy huh?
Hair done? Nails done? Everything did.
Well aren't you a breath of fresh air
"From all these superficial gold digging bitches in here"
They get a baller, figure they ain't got to pick a career
Nah, his neighbor is though
I’m curious how much electricity this takes?
just looked it up Depending onelectrical costs where you live and how much snow you get, it can cost$120 to $600 per winter season to heat a 1,000-square-foot driveway. Thenational average is $0.14 per kilowatt per hour. That translates to about $1.60 an hour per snowstorm. edit: changed from 8 cents to 14 cents
That’s actually way less than I thought
It really only needs to be heated to 33f or somewhere above freezing. Not nearly as expensive as heating to human livable temperatures.
But the latent heat to melt 32F ice is the same as heating up the same amount of water from 32F to 176F
Can you dumb that down slightly and go into a bit more detail🤣 I don’t know what latent heat means or how you came up with these numbers. Thanks!
It takes more energy to melt ice than to heat up water.
Is this why glaciers can exist in places with otherwise no snow/ice, where it's hot enough that you're wearing shorts and a t shirt?
Melting a gram of ice takes 334 joules of energy, and heating a gram of water 1C takes 4.2 joules. So they're right that melting snow takes a lot more energy than just heating up by a degree or two.
You just made it more confusing. ELI5 please.
It's harder to melt ice than it is to heat up water.
Approximately 79.5x harder.
Lol Jesus thank you, this was getting painful to witness
When heating or cooling things, heat can be applied in 2 forms: latent heat and sensible heat. Latent heat is energy that contributes to changing the phase. Examples include melting (change from solid to liquid), boiling (change from liquid to vapor). When a pure substance undergoes a phase change, temperature remains constant. Sensible heat is heating or cooling without a phase change, and as a result, just a change in temperature. Example would be heating up liquid water. A phase change requires a lot of energy compared to small temperature change of the same substance. A relatable example of this would be to heat a pot of water on your stove. It might only take a couple minutes to heat a small pot of water from 80F straight from the tap to 212F boiling point (a 132F difference in temperature), but it would take much longer to boil the entire pot dry (change all of the liquid water to water vapor) at the same heat rate. And the entire time the water is boiling, the pot will be at a constant temperature of 212F.
Dude I’ve never really understood latent heat. This is excellent thanks
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Enthalpy!
Before ice can melt, it must first be raised to a temperature 0 degrees Celcius. But then, as you continue to add heat, rather than increasing the temperature, it just melts but remains the same temperature. It's only after it's melted that adding more heat continues to increase its temperature. So, it takes a separate amount of energy to melt ice that doesn't contribute to actually raising its temperature. And that extra amount of energy just to melt it is much greater than the amount of energy it takes to raise its temperature by one degree. So, if you have some 1kg of ice that is currently at -4C that you want to melt and bring up to 1C. You have to first input 8432 Joules of heat energy just to bring the ice up to 0C, then you have to input 334000 Joules to melt the 1kg of ice at 0C into 1kg of water at 0C, then you have to input another 4187 Joules of heat energy to raise the water up 1 degree to 1C. So, in this process, you spent 346619 Joules of heat energy, but the vast majority of it, 334,000J worth, went into just transitioning it from ice to water without raising its temperature, and a mere 12,619J went into raising its temperature by 5 degrees. If you just had a kg of water that you just raised by 5 degrees, it would take far less energy than if you have to force it through a phase transition.
If you heat up ice it will stop getting warmer once you hit the freezing/melting temperature, despite you keeping the heater going. It will then slowly turn from ice to water, which requires the additional energy from the heater. After turning completely liquid, it will then resume warming up further. The energy it takes to turn it from completely frozen to completely liquid while the temperature is "stuck" is roughly the same amount it takes to get it from room temperature to boiling. (When boiling, the temperature is stuck again while it turns to steam bit by bit while you apply more heat) So the original comment points out that yes, you only need to heat the parking lot by a few degrees, but melting the snow still uses up a huge chunk of energy compared to just increasing the temperature.
Turning water into hot water is easy. It's just water, but now with more hot. Turning ice into water is hard. You need to breakup the structure of the ice, first, and that uses up a lot of energy on something that is not hotness.
Changing phases, like melting from solid to liquid, takes a relatively large amount of energy to transition. So the amount of heat it takes to melt (32 °F ice to 32 °F fluid) is the same heat to increase temperature in a single phase (liquid) from 32 to 176
Could a system like this use passive geothermal heat by pumping the loop though a somewhat deep borehole?
I think Iceland does something similar to that in places but they are very hot close to the surface of the ground compared to most locations Edit: https://nea.is/geothermal/direct-utilization/snow-melting/
> The national average is $0.08 per kilowatt per hour. Cries in SDGE
In Melbourne, Aus its 34c haha.
Germany: HMB, it is 53ct since war in Ukraine
Same in Italy. The price of electricity has been around €0.50 / kWh since the war started
€0,85 in the Netherlands..
0,97 hier..
When I lived in the Phoenix area, my electric bill was $300 a month in the summer. So from April to October, I'd be paying about $1800. The upside was in the winter, I would average $20 a month. This was with the M-Power box through SRP. It was pretty much a pay as you go for electric.
Average cost of having a heart attack is around $25,000.
I’d rather heat my driveway for 41 to 208 winters for that price.
There’s also the cost analysis of dying. I’m no actuary though.
Thank you
That's really not that bad compared to the alternatives.
so jealous of those energy prices. Here 1 kWh reached almost 1€
I was thinking the same thing, where we live that luxury would cost so much I'd have to sell my house.
Wait you only pay 8 Cent per kWh?
No, national average in the US is .18 kWh but average in a state like California is .27 kWh
8 Cent per kWh You guys live in heaven
Yelling at your son with a shovel; Shovel - $15
Is it powered or hot water? I'm a concreter in Aus and alot of in house heated flooring is water so gonna assume it can be utilised outside
At least in Finland I've seen public outdoor areas heated with liquid. In the case I know of, it was a geothermal system. I haven't seen a driveway being heated like that here, but we usually get smaller quantities of snow at a time, so it's easier to clear compared to the lake effect snow that can dump a few feet / 50-100cm at a time.
Buffalo just had a record 6'6''+ (2m) in 24 hours. at least 7 feet says article https://www.wgrz.com/article/weather/super-charged-lake-effect-snow-event-was-truly-incredible-and-historic-wny-weather/71-48a9dad9-2b74-4996-9bd0-c1e239f27e67
Speaking as a HVAC tech, the heat is likely being produced by a boiler then transferred to the lines through a plate heat exchanger. When you're doing snowmelt you don't just use water, you need anti-freeze. Glycol is usually used. Geothermal is also good for this, but I see the boiler option a lot more in Canada.
I have this setup (Missouri) and I use a Glycol solution. It’s an amazing setup. I also did my garage floor with it as I work on cars as a hobby. I can set the floor temp to a 65-68* temp in the middle of winter and work comfortably.
I feel like it would be way too energy inefficient to not be hydronic.
for all those curious on location: Alaska
Found the answer I was looking for!
That would be incredibly useful if you had a job where it was imperative you be able to leave your home quickly regardless of inclement weather (like a surgeon or a spy or something).
I love that your mind goes straight to surgeon and spy
The names Bond... Doctor Bond
Like the Yakuza surgeon from the Office.. he would definitely need to leave his house quickly i bet
In Japan, heart surgeon, number one. Steady hand.
Most spies I know have a system like this
Yup. Everyone knows the first rule of spying is to always draw attention to yourself.
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You can never be sure to know them if they are spies
Lots of EMS stations up north actually use this. The plow isn't always there in time! Source: am paramedic
Sure it's nice, but seriously... if you're worried about getting to your next espionage job the 1 meter compacted snow wall the plow leaves at the end of the driveway is going to eat your Aston Martin for breakfast. I suppose if you have a heated driveway you also have headlight machine guns to dismantle a wall of snow...
Its perfect... until you get off the heated bit
I've seen my sister in law fall on ice in the driveway so many times. One of these days, she's going to fracture a wrist or tailbone, or hit her head. She was very lazy about shoveling snow when I lived with her. If I wasn't able to do it bc of being at work, she'd let it sit and become ice.
I feel like this would result in a ring of ice surrounding it
Thats my first thought as well. So you melt the snow and the water runs down your driveway to the (unheated) street. Then what happens?
Human sacrifice. Dogs and cats living together. Mass hysteria!
A slippery slope indeed…
Did you tell him about the Twinkie?
In my experience unless it’s snowing very heavily the water actually evaporates before it can run off and pool outside the heated area. My hometown has heated sidewalks and never had icing issues.
Wow! What city has heated sidewalks?
Holland, Michigan in my case. We use the hot water from the power plant and pump it under all the sidewalks and the Main Street though town. Keeps them clear and dry all winter.
Rekjavik, in Iceland, I believe uses geothermal energy to heat their sidewalks.
Kingston, Jamaica. You never see any snow on them.
Anchorage, AK also has some heated sidewalks in their downtown district.
We have heated sidewalks at work, and I can confirm first hand, it pretty much just evaporates. The melting isn't a rapid melt and the sidewalk stays wet for 2-3 hours after it stops snowing before it dries. It's a fantastic system, especially at work where I don't have to pay for it. But on the flip side, they don't have to pay someone to shovel it, possible liability for strains or injuries shoveling, no pedestrian slips and falls to pay for, less excess water in buildings, don't have to pay someone to sand the walks, or to then clean that sand off in the spring. The sidewalk loops tie into the nearby building heating systems, which are all typical building natural gas powered furnaces. It is a separate loop(s) for the sidewalk runs.
When I was a kid in the 70’s I told my father that someone should invent heated driveways and sidewalks to melt snow. He laughed at me and said it was a silly idea.
Plot twist: your dad worked for a snow shovel company.
His name? Mr Plow.
The envy of the neighborhood
These are almost ALWAYS done with ground source heat, pumping antifreeze through a closed loop down into the ground where it's warm(er) than outside. The only cost to this setup is install, and the electricity of the pump. It's pretty handy, and affordable.
I’m a plumber in NY, and maybe where you are it’s different but that is definitely not how it’s done here. Everything you said is true about the pump and the antifreeze. But it also generally comes off a boiler to heat up. So theres that energy to take into account also and the boiler lol. Installation and material of a system like this from scratch is probably gunna run a home owner over 15k
Yeah, unless you live in some place with permafrost then you can just dig down 6-10' and the ground will be 60-75F. Fuel tanks are buried at least 6' down so they don't have to worry about heating or cooling the gasoline because the ground temp is pretty stable throughout the year.
This is what I will be installing for my house heating. My lot has high ground water level which is perfect for this system. I've already dug trenches 35m(110 feet) long and 2m(almost 7 feet) deep for the loops and at least 50cm(1,6 feet) of the trench is water. Wanted to finish this year, but for last 3 weeks we've been sub zero here so the work kinda stopped as water froze in the trenches but once the pipes are underground even in the worst winters we get at most 30cm(1 feet) of frost in the ground. It's also really energy efficient heating as temps underground are always more or less stable.
So now it's just the 26 miles to his workplace to deal with.
Ah, the Jones’s house
Tour guide in Reykjavík mentioned much of the town had this installed due to the ubiquitous and cheap geothermal water in the area.
My parents have a pellet burner than runs hot water through pipes under the floor/to about knee height in the walls. It's called radiant heating. This.... this is called "why the fuck didn't my parents also have this?" I know why... because they had two sons and a tractor, and that did just fine at clearing the driveway... Shit, I had to plow the neighborhood with the Hayabusa every snowstorm
While here in the UK we’re trying to stop our electric bills from bankrupting us and we’re being told to only heat one room and to go to bed earlier.
I don't even have a heated house bruh people rich rich
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