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this post was submitted on 02 Jun 2025
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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.
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
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 whole "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.
It's a real question. As an XRay tech I get paid $29.90/hr. That's the real value of my work right now. Assuming I have the money available, if the cost is less than that, it makes sense for me to pay to not have to do it.
You’re making a false equivalence between billable hours and personal hours. You’re paid 29.90 because you’re doing a specific task at a specific time, outside of those hours your time has a much different market value depending on what you are you able and willing to contract (which I assume is often nothing given you already have employment).
The value of your work is contextual, basically. Mine too, everyone’s is.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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
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
Or run it after you shovel in the morning to get it clear so the sun can keep it clear.
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.
I live in a minimal snow area. We got a foot of snow overnight a few thanksgivings ago and it all melted by the afternoon.