OP, I appreciate the effort but there’s no hyperlinks anywhere to verify - can anyone from MI care to report? Also: are the sidewalks heated too?
Trams need only heated switches, just saying.
I imagine snow also blocks tram tracks, no? Or are we talking gondola-type things that hang from a cable and don’t touch the ground?
Easy.
Korea has this, it’s great for buses in the mountains: https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/news/2023-12-24/national/socialAffairs/Underroad-heating-a-lifesaver-in-Seouls-hilly-communities/1942752
So many people get heated driveways, use it for a year, get the cost for running it and never use it again…
I installed this in residential doing construction back in the day. It’s incredibly cost effective.
Inside sure, but outside in -13f / -25c degree weather, not so much. Heating outside in the middle of winter is a constant losing battle and is very costly.
Then to make matters worse, let’s try repairing a pothole…I’m sure that would be a lot more difficult then a normal road because of all the hydronic piping so you can’t just cut a hole, fill it and be done with it all.
It seems like it would only be close to “reasonable” to run in a place where snow is so minimal that you don’t even need to bother dealing with it.
But if you live somewhere like where I live, where a bad storm is 10-14” of snow, that’s gotta take what, days of running the system?
Not really. You’re thinking of using it to clear 10-14" of snow that’s already built up. But with the street being kept just above freezing during the snowstorm, the snow hitting the street will melt immediately, never sticking to begin with.
And since you only need 5° or so above freezing, it takes less energy than you might think to keep it there.
I can’t imagine it costing less money overall to run it longer versus only once snow has piled up.
There is the added warming you get from the sun, when the snow doesn’t build up. You loose that if you wait for the storm to be over.
That albedo effect is a big part of the reason why it’s so important to try to save as much snow/glacier/icecap now as possible at the poles. It’s a cascading effect where a little bit of melting early on ends up making a huge difference in how much melting happens overall.
This effect is really huge. If I’ve got just 2-4 inches and don’t have time to shovel, I’ll shovel a strip down my driveway and the sun will melt a lot of that even if ambient temps are surprisingly far below freezing.
Watching this video of someone in buffalo ny who has one:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=W-x9o5IEtMo
It definitely seems to keep up fairly well with what looks like very heavy snowfall but struggles quite a bit, especially towards the end (around 9m).
Statistics posted at the end as well; $26.33 for this storm. In buffalo that could add up pretty quick.
Though granted looking at the snowfall on the minivan I would much rather be this person than the person next door with god knows how much snow to dig through. I have a snow blower and even with that the really bad storms are a nightmare to deal with. Tbf I only have a weenie blower because 80% of the time snow around here is 3-6” at worst, only the really bad storms bring 12+ and we haven’t had one of those in a while
Based on what the guy said in the video it sounds like his driveway snow melter is resistive electric. That means the coefficient of performance is 1.0: you get 1 watt of heat in the driveway for every watt of electricity you consume.
We already consider that to be unacceptable for household heating. With a modern heat pump you can achieve a COP above 4.0, even when ambient temperatures are below freezing. So why not have a heat pump driving refrigerant lines under the driveway surface? With COP 4.0 you’re 4 times the efficiency of electric resistive heating which means your costs are 1/4:
$26.33/4=$6.58
Now that is a lot more reasonable!
Think about how much you’d want to be paid per hour and how many hours it would take to clear 14" of snow. Compare that to the $26.33 it cost this guy. Seems cheep to me.
Buffalo gets on average 56 days of snow with 10 of those being heavy snow.
26.33 one day isn’t bad but 400-600 dollars annually? That’s a different story. I suppose you could just limit use for heavy storms but that’s still 250-300. Average operating costs appear to be 300-800/yr which probably varies wildly based on geography
And this of course glosses over the gigantic cost of installing the driveway, which apparently can cost from 3,000-25,000 and averages 4800 for a small one car driveway and 12,500 for a 2 car driveway. The systems typically last 15-20 years. The good news from what I’ve read is that in a boiler system the pex tubing should last 40-50 years so the 20 year service life wouldn’t be as costly since you’d just be replacing the boiler/pump and not the entire system. The electric systems seem to last slightly longer (~25 years) but the cabling can fail and then the driveway needs to be torn up.
So if you have a small one car driveway that cost goes up $240 a year and $625 a year for a 2 car driveway, most of that being a bulk up front payment. And this assumes you have the resources liquid to make such a payment, if you’re financing those numbers probably go up since you’re paying interest.
Also environmental perspective: use a decent amount of power (though not as much as you’d think, about as much as a clothes dryer unless your driveway is huge) and tbf this can be mitigated by having clean sourced energy (eg a house with solar). Another concern is a hydro system developing a leak which would leak antifreeze into the soil (though if this happens you’re screwed bc the driveway generally has to be tore up)
I absolutely hate shoveling snow, I literally dropped $600 on a snowblower, but I can’t fathom investing in something like this unless you’re obscenely wealthy. Huge up front costs, pretty noticeable annual operating costs, costly appliance replacement cycles added onto my home, etc
That said if you were my neighbor and had one I’d probably be a little envious as I trudged through the snow looking at your clean ass driveway. Not enough to drop 4-12k + yearly fees on a new driveway, but enough be like “that must be fuckin nice”
You did skip the who “paying yourself” part though. How much is your work worth?
I skipped it because that’s spurious reasoning. I’d like to be paid $100 an hour for backbreaking labor but no one will pay me that. No one will pay me anything for it.
The only thing this can possibly do is cost me. It is a question of whether it costs me money or time, sure, and I get that you’re making the argument that one is the most precious resource hustle culture pay yourself etc, but in the real world I have a (relatively) fixed amount of money and have to stick to a budget just as much as I have to budget my time.
Wouldn’t you just run it as the snow falls, so none of it sticks??
In reality, you turn it on before the snow falls and do not turn it off until the spring. This isn’t the type of thing you turn on when you think it’s needed, it stays on all season
I would think if you’re getting heavy enough snowfall it would outpace the heating effect. I don’t know, no one around here has one.
Or run it after you shovel in the morning to get it clear so the sun can keep it clear.
We have a narrow walkway of our pretty steep driveway heated. It came in clutch several times when we had black ice, but is also useful in snow.
Do you get heavy snowfall? How does it handle 6” or 12” or more? Does it ever get overwhelmed?
I have no interest in getting such a thing but am curious as to function
We used to have 10cm (1 hand or 4 ") throughout the winters. But lately it’s either slush or ice.
But back then it was practical, because I had somewhere to stand on and start shoveling instead of slipping about.
Like so
Is it for snow?
No, it’s against snow.
Why is this reply so damn funny to me?
Relevant username?
I just don’t understand how this would work. It’s going to melt the snow and ice sure. But the water has to flow somewhere, and it’s going to flow somewhere where it’s going to refreeze and create an ice dam. So task successfully failed?
The ground will insulate the storm sewear most likely, meaning it won’t freeze in there.
It would be the same problem with temperatures being warm in the day, and cold at night, but the pipes don’t bust as is in these conditions.
deleted by creator
Yeah, but it’s not that special. Heated surfaces like this are ungodly expensive, both to construct and run.
Source: I priced doing this for my driveway.
deleted by creator
Sure, but does your driveway have traffic on it day and night? Do you have to pay $50+ per hour to clear snow from your driveway? Will several vehicles and people and potential pedestrians be injured if a car slides in your driveway? What about maintenance costs associated with fixing potholes in your driveway?
I think the many added logistics associated with removing snow from a road in a downtown urban area makes the cost of a heated bed much more lucrative than if you’re just heating a driveway
These are all good points, but I’m still quite skeptical. I’d need to see an actual projected cost breakdown, and then a followup 10 years later to review actual costs and savings.
deleted by creator
I do wonder about maintenance, you’ll get potholes in any temperature and they’re sure to damage the wiring/pipes.
You want the real special snow? Come to Salt Lake City
On purpose? Ha!
deleted by creator
awful post. seems you just hate pedestrians and people who use bicycles
I mean, this saves salt from going and wrecking the environment
It takes incredible amounts of energy to melt snow. Michigan gets most of its electricity from natural gas and still has significant coal fired plants.
Ok, just plow it first like other areas do. Then maintain it/melt the ice with the roads.
It takes much less energy to prevent the accumulation in the first place. Which is the goal with this sort of setup.
It takes exactly the same amount of power. It’s just spread over a longer time period.
Ah, right. Obviously. Because the same amount of water needs to change phase.
Still, in that time this road will be walkable, while others may not. And you still avoid the piles of snow and salt runoff that come with a non-heated surface.
Seems like they are only installing the heat under the roadway, so walkable may not be the best word unless we expect pedestrains to share a lane with cars in the winter.
The warm melt water also messes up the environment. It can cause egg and insect hatches to happen early before an abundance of spring food is available. The snow melting immediately after falling could also impact natural melt cycles that more gradually add water to the streams, creeks, and rivers
Yeah but the snow here is getting melted regardless. Look at the location. All of thats invalid.
Many cities will carry their snow away and let it melt naturally in the spring, helping keep local waterways high during the spring run off.
just use coarse sand, prevents slipping on ice.
done
Sand is a temporary solution
As a fun fact, it’s also a non renewable resource that we consume way too much of
How long until those water lines are rendered useless by street cracks?
Probably longer than we’d expect, because the street will crack less if it’s kept at a consistent temp?
Its usually a result of shifting ground underneath the street that causes cracks. The street should be deisigned to prevent regular temperature changes from causing damages, expansion joints for example. If anything this could actually increase the rate of cracking if the melt water infiltrates underneath and contributes to freeze/thaw damages.
I went to an onsen (hot spring) town in Japan. They have hot spring water, so on a lot of the streets business owners just turn the hose on and point it downhill. Worked pretty well for keeping the streets clear of snow, but requires a lot of existing geographical conditions.
Doesn’t that make the roads slippery? And if there’s a real cold wave, it all might flash-freeze regardless.
less slippery than snow/ice. but to flash freeze hot spring water, that is maybe 50°C or hotter, it must be really really really cold.
That only makes sense in places, where you have free heat. Like in Iceland. Where they basically sit on volcanos. Other than that, this is just a waste of money and resources.
That was my initial reaction as well, but after thinking about it more, I think I disagree… Most road damage occurs due to freezing and thawing cycles. If you take that away altogether, I imagine the road lasts longer in general.
I imagine it’s also cheaper in energy costs than mobilizing a fleet of plows and salt trucks (which, again, destroy roads). Hell, put some solar panels up on the side of the road, and some batteries, and they might be able to power themselves.
The freeze thaw cycles that damage the road are mostly caused by the surface underneath the road freezing, thawing, and shfiting, not caused by the freezing and thawing on top of the road. The heated road could actually cause more damage if the melt water is able to infiltrate under the road and cause more damage.
I am pretty sure there is plenty of excess heat in the sewers of most cities. Compared to having to redo the street and sewers from salt damage, operate a fleet of plows and all the other currently used measures, it could even be worth it if the heat comes from a boiler.
Snow–free roads seem like a beneficial thing for most modes of transport though.
Judging by that picture, pedestrians can get fucked though.
Judging by that picture, pedestrians can get fucked though.
A picture can be deceiving.
That picture is of work being down on a part of Lyon street south of DeVos Performance Hall and Convention center, between Monroe Avenue and the Grand River.
(Don’t let the name fool you, DeVos Hall and DeVos Center are owned by the city. They’re just named after the billionaires who paid a chunk of change for its construction and subsequent renovations.)
The reconstruction there is to make the area much better for pedestrians. There used to be a some parking along that street, which I think when the work will be finished will be purely for valet service for the hotel on the south side of the street. That part of the street has been at least partially closed to cars for a while, even though most of the work is done. And I wouldn’t be shocked if those sidewalks are already heated.
As I said elsewhere, they’ve added a really nice seating area at the end of the street (you can’t really see it in this picture because it goes down toward the Grand River). This also better connects Monroe Avenue (where the picture is taken) to the walking bridge behind DeVos Hall that goes over the Grand River to the Gerald R Ford Presidential Library and Museum. Just across the street from that is the Grand Rapids Public Museum, with yet another pedestrian/cyclist only bridge back across the river.
Just behind the camera and about a block south is Rosa Parks Circle, another pedestrian focused area with safe access to several restaurants with outdoor seating and the Grand Rapids Art Museum.
In short, this is a very walkable part of town. It isn’t perfect, but it’s far from “pedestrians can get fucked.”
Also as I stated elsewhere, heating under the street like this can prevent the accumulation of snow which would be plowed onto sidewalks or bike lanes, and the accumulation of ice which would be treated with salt that would then run into the Grand River. It’s a very good solution for the specific problem faced by this city.
Hey it might not be a total retrofit… the sidewalks could already have it.
In the winter people walk in the plowed roads in Michigan. But mostly people ride snowmobiles everywhere when there’s a lot of snow on the ground. You don’t want to be walking on a snowmobile track.
This is the most inefficient way to remove snow. There are other options.
Is it though? I’d be curious to hear a more efficient method… Certainly, mobilizing a fleet of snow plows and salt trucks isn’t more efficient in any sense of the word.
Yeah, it actually is more efficient to plow. It’s grossly inefficient to melt ice into water.
See this xckd what if: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYf9-xfm6t8
It starts by using a flamethrower (because the series is supposed to be about silly questions taken seriously), but it eventually converts everything in terms of joules. That can be easily converted into the necessary electrical output. Which is a lot of electrical output. Just a sick amount of energy.
Plowing is easily better. But yes, salt is an issue all its own.
Who’s to say they don’t plow first and then maintain it with the heat?
Who’s to say they do?
You’re the one assuming they’re idiots, not me.
Assuming people are idiots has gotten me pretty far.
This is a pretty simplified and reductive take. How much electricity does it take to power a snowplow that can weigh as much as 30 tons with salt for all surface street miles? Is the freeze-thaw-freeze cycle plus weight damage to the road more efficient by cost/resource use? What about snowbanks as a hazard and visibility obstruction?
And that’s putting aside all the ecological damage salt causes or that these systems can often recycle waste heat. Your video about a car traveling highway speeds melting multiple inches of snow isn’t a gotcha for a completely different situation.
A Manhattan city block, on the short end of the rectangle, is 264 feet. A typical road lane is 12 ft across. Assume two road lanes and 4 inches of snow, getting 2100 cu ft of snow.
Using this snow weight calculator, fresh snow of that size will be 6,589.4 - 9,229.4 lbs. Let’s take the midpoint of 8100 lbs. That’s 3 million grams. And from here on, I can do the rest in metric.
Assuming it’s at 0C already, it takes 334 Joules to melt 1 gram of snow. It will take 1.2GJ to melt the amount above.
There are electric snowplows being tested in Norway with 1000 kwh battery packs. That’s 3.6 MJ. Quoting the article: "In light to moderate snowfall and temperatures as low as minus five degrees, the truck covered a total distance of 293 kilometers (km) at an average speed of 47 kilometers per hour (km/h). "
Yes, snow plows are more efficient. It’s not even close. You can chop off orders of magnitude and it’s still not even close.
I really, really need people in this thread to understand thermodynamics. Melting ice takes a fuckton of energy.
Maybe these can be useful to hybridize the system, where you plow normally and then melt the little remaining to avoid the use of salt. As a total replacement, no. That’s a laughably bad idea.
Melting ice takes a fuckton of energy.
The counter here is that oftentimes, snow melting systems like in the OP use waste heat that would otherwise get sent into the atmosphere or a lake. There is no power being generated specifically for melting snow. Using waste energy could be seen as a “free” way to melt the snow.
You’re really caught up on energy efficiency, civil engineering is not just thermodynamics. Energy is becoming incredibly cheap, before the current administration derailed our energy sector, we were on track to hit $0.03/kWh for utility scale renewable power by 2030. For reference, that’s about $10 to clear that city block.
And again, systems like this and the more famous one in Holland MI are generally run on waste heat (from a power plant, wastewater treatment plant or datacenter), so that math doesn’t even apply. Looking only at energy cost leaves you tripping over dollars to save pennies.
The real costs are and always have been infrastructure. Yes, it’s not possible to use this as a drop-in everywhere. It highly depends on the usage/wear of the road, space constraints, upfront cost of installation, maintenance, access to a heating solution, etc, etc… Even with this hydronic layout the main costs are the transmission lines, the cost to heat them is minor.
It’s very weird to see so much resistance to this in an anti-car community, as if pedestrian and micromobility infrastructure doesn’t need snow removal too.
Energy is becoming incredibly cheap
Not an excuse for wastefulness. The numbers here are so great that a good sized city would need a nuclear reactor brought online just for this.
systems like this and the more famous one in Holland MI are generally run on waste heat
That’s fine if it’s available. It’s usually heavy industry that’s providing that. If you don’t have a convenient heavy industry to provide that, then move on.
It’s very weird to see so much resistance to this in an anti-car community, as if pedestrian and micromobility infrastructure doesn’t need snow removal too.
What of it? There’s perfectly good plows for walking and biking paths, too.
I think the xkcd was Moreso a Proof that melting large existing quantities of snow is incredibly difficult. If They’re proactive with it and start running it before the snow pours then I’d assume its a lot easier to melt comparatively smaller quantities of snow over a large hot surface area.
I do agree that this requires people be smart and proactive and we haven’t seen a lot of that lately. But hey, this is something they’re being proactive about. Though it seems a little strange to assume they won’t at least test and use the new expensive infrastructure they put in, no?
The power use is exactly the same. You are melting the same quantity of snow, but over a longer period of time.
In fact, it might be worse to pre-warm, because a lot of power will be wasted into the air.
Dog, you can’t be lecturing people about their lack of understanding thermodynamics, and then mix up power and energy.
Muskegon has heated sidewalks and it works very well.
This is an excellent way to remove snow and ice in cramped areas without destroying to local water table with salt.
Does this actually work? It seems a massive waste of money, you just need a heavy truck to pass on the road to have a pipe leak and break the whole system
Not to mention the energy cost to keep it over 0° C for all the winter
I regularly walk through a pedestrian area that has such heating here in Helsinki. Most of the time it works, but when it gets cold enough and there’s a lot of new snow, the snow just turns into a wet slush that people walk through until it freezes into a horrible icy mess dotted with deep footprints. It’s quite a contrast to the nice and relatively even packed snow around the place at such times. Drainage is important, as is keeping the power level adequately high. Half measures will fail if the conditions get bad.
You wouldn’t believe the secondary costs caused by thawing salt. And then there’s the primary cost of operating vehicle park to spread a lot of salt each winter.
Although general streets would not be my first choice (you should start with bridges where corrosion is even more of an issue) every example of heated street I saw was just a matter of “yeah, simple math says this makes sense”.
PS: And that’s obviously not car-specific even. Every newly build bike lane should incorporate this idea. Modern bike and pedestrian bridges doubly so.
Although general streets would not be my first choice (you should start with bridges where corrosion is even more of an issue)
When I lived in Grand Rapids in '08 I was told the big bridge across the river was heated. So they probably did start there.
Yes, it works. They do it in Norway… For the sidewalks.
what’s the norwegian word for feeling bad for someone else’s shame?
it can save money over labor and increased road maintenance of snow plows, it also makes it significantly less of a trip hazard because ice patches get removed faster.
Well if it works.
I could see this being worth the cost on some especially busy streets that are critical for commerce or for using around emergency services. Maybe outside where the snow plow are too, lol, how else would they plow out?
where I am (Alaska) this is mostly used around buisness everyone hates and where there are a lot of walkers to prevent lawsuits; as for snowplows and critical roads, just use giant snowblowers and accept the need to repair the road annually.
This would be great right outside firehouses and the like!
Hospitals…
Grand Rapids isn’t the most bike-friendly city, but it’s also very far from the worst. I bike through it somewhat regularly, and have only come close to dying once (while biking over the speed limit on Lake Drive in East GR, but not fast enough for one asshole who decided to pass me illegally and almost got hit).
We could certainly use more bike lanes, but we have some good trails in Kent County.
This method of snow prevention is awesome when the weather is right. You keep ice and snow from accumulating in the first place, so it doesn’t need to be plowed and end up blocking the very sidewalks and bikelanes we want. And it also means you don’t need nearly as much salt.
It’s not a perfect solution, but it’s not a bad one either.
Edit: Also this is near an area that is being redone to be largely pedestrian-focused. Cars have been cut off from a good chunk of that road I think, the parking garage exit that goes onto that street has been closed for over a year now. Maybe it will reopen, but regardless, they’ve added a lovely little sitting area down that street. And just down that street where this is shot there’s a lovely walking bridge over the Grand River to the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library/Museum, which is just across the street from the Grand Rapids Public Museum, which has yet another walking bridge (the Blue Bridge) over the Grand River back to this side.
In other words, this is a very walkable part of the city. Again, not perfect, but better than lots of places.
