RDMcG

One of the problems living downtown in an old area is that there is nowhere to put the snow. I have ended up each year with great mound of the stuff and an unusable driveway eventually. This year I finally lost patience, so had the driveway and pathway ripped up, and the new one installed

RDMcG

RDMcG

And finally the brickwork and the sensors which turn the system on. A gas and pump unit then circulates and heats the glycol

RDMcG

Works brilliantly......

lowbee

Rough cost per sq.ft ?

RDMcG

Not yet sure, though contractor ( who I know well) told me is is roughly double the cost of a conventional good quality driveway replacement. Somewhere around $100K at a guess. Lots of work to do this.

Crazy Canuck

My buddy builds these. Pretty cool.
I had him heat a loading dock ramp for us and it works great.
I wish I had done my walkway when I built my house.

OttawaSteve

How do the neighbourhood cats like it?

RDMcG

There are far more dogs than cats, so we do not see them often.

JimV8

Great plan.

#1SomeGuy

Seems really wasteful, I can't imagine the running costs. Also, $100k for that little driveway? are you kidding me? I had my 55x18' driveway + walkway done for all of $15k by the top end contractor in my area with commercial pavers (they're thicker than the usual residential ones, was $2k more just for materials).

Matt Lane

Probably not too much to run - you only run it when its snowing, get the stone to a degree or so and it melts on contact.

Running time, over a winter, is measured in hours.

I didn't do mine because of the the square footage - and at least for now, I don't mind to shovel

But if I lived in the city, maybe would have on a small area.

Cheers

Matt

Matt Lane

Funny, my good friend did a heated one in the city, smaller driveway - it's very cool.

He sends me pics of his, I send him pics of mine. This was me this morning.

We're both happy!

Christien

I've considered doing this for years, but put off by the cost, and actually that's even more expensive than I figured it'd be (by a lot!)

Is there a concern with water runoff when there's a big snow?

reacp911

Much of the snow sublimates. Just get the driveway warmer than the ambient air