Heated driveway

[Charlie]

thank you brad that looks very neat work .
what boiler are you using to heat the driveway
i will ask at work to see if there is something you can use to do what you want to check the temps .

this type of system has bin used in Europe for a long time to melt snow in intersection's and walkways .

we have some walkways in front of some buildings here that have it and if i have to redo my driveway i will put it in

i put in 4200 ft of 1" pipe in the ground for a freezer warehouse under the concrete to keep the cold from freezing the ground and lifting the building

[Brad]

Charlie,

I do not know the make of the boiler being used for the driveway system. I recall it was in the 140K BTU or 180K BTU range. It is a standard hot water boiler for a baseboard hot water system.

The readings I need access to are at the Tekmar 664 control unit. It knows boiler supply, temp going out to each zone, temp coming back from each zone, temp of each slab, outside temp, humidity, whether the system is in idle or melt mode, does it "see" water, as well as boiler water temp, and which pumps are running. All the data is at the controller. It can handle a remote reading unit - but, you have to be standing at it and reading the display.

One solution would be a web camera looking at the display, turn the room lights on with an X-10 switch, and have a robot push the reading button to cycle through the settings. It would be easier to have an IP network based unit I could get at with a browser.

[Charlie]

Charlie,



One solution would be a web camera looking at the display, turn the room lights on with an X-10 switch, and have a robot push the reading button to cycle through the settings. It would be easier to have an IP network based unit I could get at with a browser.

although this is some thing you would love to do and can do i will see what i can come up with

[Patrad Fischroy]

ps a previous poster mentioned working with plc's by David Bradley - did you mean Allen Bradley?

Did I mention that my memory was dim? Err.. yes, of course, David-Bradley made those small tractors

[spyboy]

Of course, that just lets you get down to the end of your driveway. Where my parents are in Maine, the plows sometimes don't come by until almost 8am

Get up at 6Am after an all night storm and drive out for coffee. The driveway would be wet, but clear.

[spyboy]

To take it a step further, in Iceand they use geothermal steam to heat their houses and the excess is used to heat the sidewalks and streets.

And you say you really do have one? That's funny - I've never heard of such a system, despite living in New Hampshire. How well does it work?

[Brad]

Of course, that just lets you get down to the end of your driveway. Where my parents are in Maine, the plows sometimes don't come by until almost 8am

In my case, it is drive up the the end of the driveway - at the road. We are on a shared gravel road. It is normally plowed and usable by 5:30am. My neighbor goes to work at 3:30am - no problem.

[Brad]

We ran our first test of the new control unit this morning. Conclusion was - the heat did not turn on soon enough. We need to "see" snow way before it starts to snow. Right now it is still snowing and the system is working to catch up, which it will.

One setting on the controller is a sensitivity setting. The manual (probably translated from Swedish) says that if the snow is dirty, turn the setting to a lower number. Based on this morning's results, we need to go the other direction with this one. The change request is in and they will do it tomorrow. Then we will watch for the next storm to do better.

[Brad]

Driveway looks like this as the snow is stopping.

[Charlie]

you can see where the loops are

how long did it take to clear the snow after it stopped