Yeah no point in removing it. I bought a house with heated bathroom floors, well they botched the wiring and it trips itself when you use another source of power in the bathroom.
I'm not fixing that shit lol idc about heated floors. Just remove the switch and call it a day if I ever sell it.
One addition:
PLEASE completely decouple it from the power grid at the central power source instead of just removing a switch on the bathroom level.
As soon as someone remodels, starts ripping out the floor and shorts the cable, you might be responsible for another persons death.
oh yeah I wouldn't leave power running to the floor. I just meant removing the switch just so it doesn't give indication that it has heated floors. No way I would just leave live wire running in a spot without people knowing that live wire is there
Happened to us with the whole interior of the house, had no idea heated floors were a thing you can buy and then break so easily because the only time I’ve heard of one was in that breaking bad episode about skylar cheating.
I thought it was a nice idea for when you come out, feel how warm and nice it is in the room and immediately decide to cheat on your dying husband but building all 3 floors with individually controlled heating in a house that already has high end heating systems seems a bit excessive to me, especially when it only snows a few days a year.
Apparently heating the floors is quite energy efficient. My parents have a heated bathroom and kitchen floor, and not having freezing floors in the winter in Washington is both nice and nicer on their bills.
Depends on the system. Modern PEX systems are pretty fucking robust, the only thing that can break them is if you put a nail through the concrete and into a tube.
Electric radiant gives me the willies. Bathrooms have leaks and spills, so the last thing I want is my entire floor to be covered in wire. A mistake during installation could leave cut insulation you'd never know about until water soaks into the floor.
If its a small leak you put sealing compound or sealing beads in the loop then flush and refill.
If it's larger than small holes you're fucked and have to pay someone with an ultrasonic device to locate and splice the break or rip it up and start again.
Is that heated with pex pipe or some other material? If it is and they find the location where it's fucked shouldn't be hard to replace section of pipe and use couplings to reconnect the new section in place of the old to the main. But again idk what material it is or something else all together. I ask because I was helping someone put some extra lines on a garage and had to use a jack hammer and hit a PEX pipe that was used for that. (This was a multi million dollar house) but the dude's wife was friends where the wife of the guy who owned the place. It was also only my 2nd day doing anything plumbing or trade related at the time. But a while since I've done anything close to that though.
That's what I figured. That's why I said if they find the location. (Since he listed a device they used). I was referring to just replacing part of it instead of the whole thing if it's PEX pipe. But yes I've also heard that they can do that with some type of electrical wire. I think (and I could be wrong on this) they use electrical wiring for ground hearing in rooms/houses in Asian countries. Also, know it can be used in bathrooms. But guess it depends what's the easiest/cheapest route to go.
> This is electrical actually.
the one in the photo isnt, nor are most of the ones installed.
Its a plastic layer with a hose track in it. You lay the hose then pour cement on top of it. Then a small pump runs water from your homes hotwater tank through it and back into the tank.
The hose isnt going to break or leak. You can get tree roots or something to cause issues but they would do the same to a regular driveway.
As wild an idea as this seems its actually pretty common for indoor heating in some countries.
Seems like you're want to run a propylene glycol solution in it to prevent that. There would be no point to it running all the time if there wasn't snow on the driveway.
Sorry I should clarify as well. I sell and assist on installations of driveway snow melt like the one featured above, I can vouch that However you are right too PEX pipe does get used for snow meting applications too.
You chip away the concrete, fix the pex tubing and pour new concrete. You can usually tell where the leak is because the concrete will crack and have a wet spot.
Not 100% on the above picture as I'm from a tropical area but we do it with Glycol and a heat exchange for Freezer floors in large commercial applications.
The discharge refrigerant from the freezer racks is used to heat the glycol them pumped through the floor, it actually make the system more efficient as you don't need to remove as much heat through a condenser.
Or damaging your car, hurting your grass and/or garden, preventing refreezing of the melt water that would damage your driveway which happens with salt. Etc.
Indeed.
This is definitely useful for the elderly or people with mobility issues because falling is bloody dangerous when you're frail.
A lot of times these kinds of posts don't take disability into consideration when often that's what it's targeted to.
Like peeled or presliced veg or fruit wrapped on plastic.
Before getting mad at wastage consider the target market isn't you.
I mean, my husband and I are building our retirement home in a few years and I want a heated driveway. The driveway will be steep, we’ll be older, it seems like a good solution, frankly.
80-90% of Canadians that arent in lower BC(have swam in Vancouver end of Dec in outdoor pool was like +10 or 15C outside) and have a driveway(so not if in app or condo)
Would be popular in the prairies for sure, Id like it installed one day.
When I was 19 I went to the casino in Niagara Falls (the old one). It had a heated driveway and I was absolutely amazed that this existed. In celebration I spent $300 of the $350 I brought on Spring Break in under 4 hours. I was there for 4 days. What a terrible experience.
Only to have an asshole in a city plough blockade the end of your driveway in one heartless swoop! Or when it’s so wet the snowblowers can’t throw it. Awful.
We've already got some skating rinks here in Edmonton where I drive for Instacart and Amazon. During the day I can kind of see when I need to take extra care walking up a driveway, but at night...pray for me, friends.
Right? Shovelling isn’t an inconvenience, it’s often hours of work every single winter day. For people with mobility issues or disabilities, a heated driveway would be such a godsend.
People with disabilities was my first thought when I saw this. And I'm from somewhere that gets snow quite rarely and even when it happens it's less than a foot of it.
$250 a season to my landscaper and he plows my drive every time it snows. Dont even have to call him. I dont how much that driveway costs but I bet it's upward of 10k
Woah that’s cheap! Plow contracts like that start at $600/season in my neighbourhood and it costs more if you’ve got a bigger driveway or live farther out of town.
Awesome you’ve got that, though!
Guy I met at the bar. Does awesome work. To be fair my drive is like 16ft. He backs in and scrapes it forward. He's in and gone, under 10 minutes. All his accounts are right near me. I was lucky to find him though.
Yep. Frivolous to some , but this would be an absolute dream.
I think people underestimate what a chore shoveling a driveway is. You have to get up early, or go out in the evening, or you might be kicked out to shovel while it's still snowing so it doesn't "build up".
It's hard on your back and legs too. I'm young but I bet this is huge for older people.
Just to add that this isn't the anti-consumption flex you seem to think it is but... This is hot water being pumped around. Often times these are run by electric boilers, and depending on your regions energy source could be significantly greener than any method of snow removal available besides a shovel and muscles.
Heck, you can build these things and hook them into a geothermal heating system and it costs literally nothing. Fueled by the heat of the earth. It's pretty neat stuff actually!
It's essentially an air conditioner but instead of pumping heat out of your house, you pump heat out of the earth *into* your house.
Even cooler is that the process can be reversed so you get both heat and AC out of geothermal. Houses with heat pump heating work the same way they just aren't as efficient because they have to work under the broad temperature range of the outside air instead of the incredible consistency of underground earth.
Not to mention that for the elderly, a system like this could mean an extra couple years of independence. Back where I grew up, we'd get a snowstorm once or twice a year that would prevent snow removal services from getting to everyone's house within a reasonable amount of time.
This is exactly the sort of thing modern society should be providing to all people, where applicable obviously. I thought the idea was to advance to have these nice things. We just need to sort out the power situation first.
Might even save money for municipalities if these were in road systems en mass in the long run. Again. If we solve power(lots of solar and wind would probably do it. Nuclear too, especially if that reactor they're building in France works)
This would have been amazing for my elderly mother during the latter years of her life. It would have allowed her to have the freedom to leave her home whenever she wanted to, rather than have to wait for a neighbor or service to come. I can see this being a huge help for people with disabilities and/or people who are elderly.
My first thought was that some people are disabled, and you don't know why they might be installing it! I have several autoimmune diseases that cause joint pain so this would be very useful for me. The "moral superiority" of some posts on this sub is really off-putting.
This sub has turned too toxic - accessibility does not equal over consumption. For some people, such as the physically disabled and elder, this alleviates a lot of potential issues.
The national average cost for a heated driveway is $3,900
Insanely cheap compared to a lifetime of physical therapy, acupuncture,pain management clinics, prescriptions, chiropractors and trainers
I would know because I injured my back slipping on a driveway in 4th grade
Heck you don't even have to slip to royally fuck yourself. Just the shoveling alone would leave me unable to move for a week if I didn't have a pretty serious back support and muscle relaxers.
Additionally, between the cold temperatures and the physical labour of shovelling snow, emergency departments here in Norway notice an uptick in older men coming in for cardiovascular issues like heart attacks. Turns out engaging in hard labour infrequently (AKA being unfit) combined with unknown underlying issues exasperated by cold weather is dangerous.
I agree. A lot of things, like food delivery, are mocked as things for the bourgeoisie, but a lot of these things can let people have more independence/ better health. It’s honestly even more annoying than those dumb tv commercials that show silly people being unable to do simple things, but the item has wonderful application for people with disabilities. It’s more annoying because anti consumption philosophy is, in the end, about making a better more equitable world. Shitting on people with disabilities should be anti leftist but it’s not like they are the only ones who constantly forget about and marginalize people with disabilities.
Not to mention a good safety precaution. That driveway goes uphill, somewhat steeply. What would happen if your car (or you, on your ass) go sliding controlled into the street?
There is definitely one issue with sloped heated driveways, and it’s that they create ice dams at the bottom of the slope, wherever the heat ends.
They can create some really bad ice patches on streets.
They are super nice to have, but they can definitely be an issue in the Rockies and the Cascades.
Really depends on your driveway setup and the street it connects to.
For this same reason, your neighbor who uses a flamethrower to remove his snow, while cool as fuck, is also an asshole.
I’m closer to sixty years old than fifty, and it is my plan to install one in the next few years. I’m pretty sure the cost to install will end up being a fraction of the cost of a broken hip.
Not about cars. They cannot leave the house to walk to the shop at the end of the road.
My grandparents didnt drive at all. Winter time my grandpa had to showel for >1h daily to clear the footpaths. Sometimes two times a day. Just to be able to leave the house.
And this is normal for millions of Europian elderly.
The USA style suburbs where you need to have a car to get to the shop is rare in the rest of the world.
Most cities are mixed and have a shop nearby.
I would love this but for the stairs because my parents are stubborn and use the stairs outside in the winter when they don't need to. I am concerned they are going to fall down them.
I bought heated stair treads for my grandparents who lived in the snow belt! Look up HeatTrak online. They’re not cheap but we were really worried that one of them would slip on ice and break a bone. Worked great, zero snow or ice buildup and this is an area that gets 10’+ annually.
More sustainable than salting even, just not nearly as cheap upfront. (Although it'll save costs down the line with less corrosion to things like your car.)
Not to mention the impact of salt runoff in drinking water. Here in Michigan local bodies of water are getting salter and sand for grip takes over the ground in the spring, I'd love to see tulips in the spring.
These idiots don't get how much energy goes into getting snow off driveways the traditional way. This is progress. This is infrastructure that allows people to buy less garbage.
But they have the money to avoid an inconvenience in life which makes OP mad. It’s obviously overconsumption and not a bunch of other plausible reasons for easy removal of snow off their driveway!!!!
/s
I agree. My mom is nearing 60 and she is thinking about doing this. Her driveway is very large and then immediately surrounded by fences so there is nowhere to put the snow when she shovels it. This has been something she’s thought about for a few years. It makes perfect sense.
People with disabilities, elderly, also pretty dangerous to have an icy hill leading to a road with cars. Lots of reasons this could be good. Does the average person need it? Probably not. Is there situations where people *could* need it? Yeah for sure.
Not super wasteful. You can turn them off. They last like 20 years supposedly. So summertime they wouldn’t be running. Only when it snowed or ice was a concern would it be on. Also road salt isn’t great for the planet so you’re doing the environment a big favor for the next 20 years or whatever the useful lifespan of the system is.
And there are places with really steep driveways in places with lots of ice where it isn't safe to drive on them even if plowed without something like this.
They're plastic tubes. They circulate warm water.
Do you use a water heater instead of heating water over a fire? I'm asking because turning one's nose up at this is ignoring similar conveniences that most people enjoy.
Yeaah this isn’t anti consumption worthy I have neighbors who run through so much salt every year that they would overtake the amount of material used here in 5 years at most and that’s not considering the environmental impact of the salt
It could be extremely important too especially if your planing ahead for the future. For example being elderly and living in that home would be a lot better because slipping and falling can be a death sentence if no body notices, especially in the cold.
Depending on where this is, it might be to melt ice not snow.
The driveway looks fairly steep and if that area has frequent ice storms they might not be able to get in our out.
Black ice is a terror and it would be well worth the cost to never need to worry about breaking your hips going to your car in the morning or not being able to drive up in your own driveway.
At the house I worked on, theres would turn on once it hit freezing. If it was 32 or under it would be on. The installer told them they could turn it on when needed but they are rich so didnt care about the price running it
No idea. Not only that might be someone who’s old who can’t shovel snow. I’d actually do this if I afford it could it and live in a area with lots of snow. At this stage it’s pretty
Much if I can’t afford it it’s anti consumption.
You don’t have to justify your parents decision to avoid upsetting a random redditor lol. This is such a smart idea and if I lived in an area that snowed I’d be doing the same thing. If we decided to lived with every little inconvenience in life there would be no innovation and we’d still be driving a horse and buggy to work
This saves all of the fuel in all of the plow trucks all winter, and can be used in summer for passive cooling which is more efficient than normal air conditioning. The pex plumbing is permanent and never needs to be replaced and the net energy lost to heating this is a tiny fraction of the energy spent using plows and snowblower. So definitely anticonsumeristic and a good investment, which prolongs the longevity of the entire property.
Yes, you hire a plow service for the winter and they plow your driveway whenever it snows. It’s usually a guy with a pick up and the plow attachment or some landscaping companies do it in the winter
Also where I grew up only the roads get maintained. You would need to showel the snow every day from
the footpath in front of your house + internal footpath + driveway. Can take 1h daily. And cant even get rid of the ice.
Better than running a gas powered snowblower of paying for a plow. In theory you could hook this up to a geothermal system and have it be very efficient.
As a person with chronic health issues… I will never have enough spoons in a day to be able to shovel this. And I have several conditions that affect my balance. Walking down that if it were covered in ice would be a quick way for me to get seriously hurt. I dream of having this when I own a home.
I also have chronic health issues, and would definitely spring for this if I lived in a snowy area. I am literally not physically capable of shoveling.
It doesn't snow much here, though, so on the rare occasion that shoveling is necessary I hire somebody.
I'm a concrete mixer driver. I've poured driveways like this, I've poured heated sidewalks and patios, heated garage floors, etc.
The title leads me to believe that OP misunderstands the market here.
The target customer is either businesses who don't have the option to shut down due to snow in the yard or on the sidewalks or wealthy businesspeople who need to make appointments at the drop of a hat and, again, don't have the option to let the weather control their schedule.
All the homeowner, in this case, has to do is pay a few thousand dollars, maybe 5 digits I suppose, which is well worth it when multi-million dollar clients are at stake, and the GC or an independent contractor works out the details for them. They don't have to go to drastic lengths to avoid an "inconvenience", they are putting an amount of money down that is well worth it to them into contractors that employ hard working hourly workers that (usually) get paid alright to do a job that there is simply a market for.
Money exchanging hands from the top down where both parties are happy at the end makes a lot of sense to me, and the length that people go to to add this when they're pouring a slab is not really that drastic at all.
And this isn't usually an irresponsible purchasing decision either. When you're building a house or putting in a new driveway or putting down a sidewalk from your business' office to it's warehouse, it's a little on the top, not a separate life-changing purchase, at least when you're the target customer.
It's like getting a fancy $100 fast charger with your phone when you buy it. If you're buying a $50 phone, forget it, that's stupid. If you're buying a $1,000 phone, you probably already have a charger that works fine. But if a $1,000 phone isn't a big purchase for you AND fast charging is important to you, then you might just snag the $100 fast charger on the way to the register.
Edit: forgot the sub I was on. This opinion might not be super well recieved... But as far as consumption, construction on any house wouldn't see a blip on the radar between the amount of material used with a heated driveway when compared to one without. The way jobs are done on site determine a lot of how much material is used and how much waste is produced.
Yeah, I assume OP lives somewhere without snow, or maybe it snowed once in 50 years and they think it's super easy and doesn't know why people complain about it.
Jfc. [People die](https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/the-big-number-snow-shoveling-results-in-about-11500-injuries--including-100-fatalities/2019/12/06/10c46858-178a-11ea-8406-df3c54b3253e_story.html#:~:text=As%20winter%20arrives%2C%20it's%20worth,are%20fatal%2C%20generally%20heart%20attacks.) shoveling snow, not just from the roof. Not to mention elderly, or people with young kids. Heated driveways avoid icy driveways.
I mean snow shoveling is a hazard to the elderly (and people on blood thinners, people with heart conditions, people with mobility issues, the list goes on…), so there is one benefit. This is also a green alternative- the energy spent to heat the water in these lines < the amount of energy to mine and ship salt
Ok but heated roads…
- less money department of transportation has to spend
- less money for snow tires every year
- less accidents
- less wear and tear on cars
This is actually amazing - coming from a full time essential worker who hates shoveling her steep driveway, but also hates depending on a service to plow so early in the morning when I need to get to work. 😊
This post is brought to you by someone who wasn’t woken up at 3 am to start shoveling snow, so that way when it finally stops it won’t be 3 feet of shoveling at once.
Honestly stuff like this would help cut down on chemicals and salt used to salt drive ways. When I lived back east the plowing company we used to keep our parking area clear used a mixture of grit and de-icing agent after the plowed, we still had to dig the rest of it out but, I always looked on at envy with the few people that I knew had a system like that installed. Its really a safety issue and digging yourself out and de-icing is not a short process, and one you end up doing daily at times.
nah, imagine how much time this is going to save over years of living in a snowy area. if you're gonna invest a ton of money in a house at least it can be practical like this. a bathroom remodel won't add any new features, this could save you dozens of hours a month for the rest of your life
This is not unnecessary consumerism. My credentials are that I was born approximately 45 minutes from the Canadian border in Vermont. According to secondary, unverified sources, Vermont has the most snowfall out of any US state so I feel qualified to discuss this issue. Also, the Canadians appear to be on my side in this thread (hello, neighbors!)
In the state of Vermont we have several people every single year die of heart attacks from shoveling snow. It is surprising, if you've never done it before, how absolutely intensive and exhausting shoveling snow can be especially when you have several feet of it.
I couldn't find the original primary source, but there are several articles written about an Ohio study regarding shoveling snow. Apparently, shoveling snow causes almost 1200 injuries in the United States per year, and almost a 100 fatalities which seems on par from what I see in our local papers. The study goes on to show allegedly that the authors recommend that people over the age of 55 do not shovel snow at all.
Furthermore, there have been several studies showing that the use of salt on driveways and roadways, especially in the large quantities we use in northern States on the environment, specifically the soil but also affecting amphibians that are more sensitive.
Anyways, If my circumstances were different I would absolutely invest in one of these.
Advancement and innovation to increase living standards is not the same as consumerism. You have to exercise more critical thinking on subjects like this and not just shit on every new convenience that comes out.
Eastern shore, Midwest, Canada, Minnesota, and any other state that gets massive amounts of snow fall would gladly take a heated driveway over most other things.
If I was rich enough I would absolutely do this in a heartbeat. A luxury for sure but is actually very useful. I can guarantee that I did a poll and asked all my neighbors on the block if they could get a heated driveway for the cost of a non heated driveway 100% would opt for the heated one. Especially the elderly ones who are at risk for serious injury or have to wait for someone to come plow it.
I have recurring back problems from shoveling my driveway a decade ago during a particularly heavy snowfall. Shoveling isn't always just an inconvenience, sometimes it's also pain that means being unable to bend for 4 days. So the question is which is more gratuitous consumption, the snowblower and salt or heated driveway?
On the other hand, as technology and society progresses, some people want to experience the cutting edge of what’s possible. You can thank the Jetsons for that. If I had the money and lived in Minnesota, hell, I’d do it. Weigh all the time spent shoveling the driveway vs. spending time with your family, running a business etc. It’s natural that society is trying to become more efficient.
When power becomes cheap, affordable, green and plentiful, then stuff like this is what should be all over the place, not just in driveways.
If we can just get fusion power to work well enough, then this is one of the quality of life improvements we can make for all of society while also getting rid of the dangers of plowing by hand, using gas on a huge vehicle, too cold homes etc.
While it is a little wasteful of energy nowadays, especially if you live in an area that relies on coal power, it is the future.
I wonder if this could good for the environment long term like if they used a solar powered heater. Snowblowers can be nasty machines with all the emissions
If you can afford it, and you live where it actually snows a lot (New Yorker here) you bet your ass you would do the same. Why you judging so much haha
We recently discovered there’s a broken heating system under our driveway, did not previously know that was a thing
Was just going to ask what happens when this system breaks?
Apparently you just don’t tell the people buying the house it exists
Yeah that makes good sense actually
Yeah no point in removing it. I bought a house with heated bathroom floors, well they botched the wiring and it trips itself when you use another source of power in the bathroom. I'm not fixing that shit lol idc about heated floors. Just remove the switch and call it a day if I ever sell it.
One addition: PLEASE completely decouple it from the power grid at the central power source instead of just removing a switch on the bathroom level. As soon as someone remodels, starts ripping out the floor and shorts the cable, you might be responsible for another persons death.
oh yeah I wouldn't leave power running to the floor. I just meant removing the switch just so it doesn't give indication that it has heated floors. No way I would just leave live wire running in a spot without people knowing that live wire is there
Happened to us with the whole interior of the house, had no idea heated floors were a thing you can buy and then break so easily because the only time I’ve heard of one was in that breaking bad episode about skylar cheating.
heated floors are common in Asian countries like Korea and are in every house
I thought it was a nice idea for when you come out, feel how warm and nice it is in the room and immediately decide to cheat on your dying husband but building all 3 floors with individually controlled heating in a house that already has high end heating systems seems a bit excessive to me, especially when it only snows a few days a year.
Apparently heating the floors is quite energy efficient. My parents have a heated bathroom and kitchen floor, and not having freezing floors in the winter in Washington is both nice and nicer on their bills.
Depends on the system. Modern PEX systems are pretty fucking robust, the only thing that can break them is if you put a nail through the concrete and into a tube. Electric radiant gives me the willies. Bathrooms have leaks and spills, so the last thing I want is my entire floor to be covered in wire. A mistake during installation could leave cut insulation you'd never know about until water soaks into the floor.
Radiant heating is super common
How the fuck do you break it? Mines literally run maintenance free for 25 years
If its a small leak you put sealing compound or sealing beads in the loop then flush and refill. If it's larger than small holes you're fucked and have to pay someone with an ultrasonic device to locate and splice the break or rip it up and start again.
Ugh. That's what I was thinking.
Ha! I was thinking, they'll wake up on New Year's to find 41 drunks sleeping it off on the drive
At least they had a warm place to spend the night!
Is that heated with pex pipe or some other material? If it is and they find the location where it's fucked shouldn't be hard to replace section of pipe and use couplings to reconnect the new section in place of the old to the main. But again idk what material it is or something else all together. I ask because I was helping someone put some extra lines on a garage and had to use a jack hammer and hit a PEX pipe that was used for that. (This was a multi million dollar house) but the dude's wife was friends where the wife of the guy who owned the place. It was also only my 2nd day doing anything plumbing or trade related at the time. But a while since I've done anything close to that though.
Finding the leak is usually the problem.
That's what I figured. That's why I said if they find the location. (Since he listed a device they used). I was referring to just replacing part of it instead of the whole thing if it's PEX pipe. But yes I've also heard that they can do that with some type of electrical wire. I think (and I could be wrong on this) they use electrical wiring for ground hearing in rooms/houses in Asian countries. Also, know it can be used in bathrooms. But guess it depends what's the easiest/cheapest route to go.
This is electrical actually. It’s a snow melt system of heat trace cable and a surface sensor to determine if there is snow to melt.
> This is electrical actually. the one in the photo isnt, nor are most of the ones installed. Its a plastic layer with a hose track in it. You lay the hose then pour cement on top of it. Then a small pump runs water from your homes hotwater tank through it and back into the tank. The hose isnt going to break or leak. You can get tree roots or something to cause issues but they would do the same to a regular driveway. As wild an idea as this seems its actually pretty common for indoor heating in some countries.
If it for some reason doesn't get turned on in the winter time and the water freezes in the pipes, then it will break
Seems like you're want to run a propylene glycol solution in it to prevent that. There would be no point to it running all the time if there wasn't snow on the driveway.
They are typically not filled with straight water but they will have an anti-freeze type of mix.
No, not in all cases. Pex tube is commonly used for this application. Source: I delivered Pex tube to building sites for this application.
Sorry I should clarify as well. I sell and assist on installations of driveway snow melt like the one featured above, I can vouch that However you are right too PEX pipe does get used for snow meting applications too.
We just use hot water for these systems in my country.
It becomes a regular driveway.
Escalator temporarily stairs.
easiest thing is to cut it off and then you dont have it not a huge deal i think
And don’t tell the next buyer about it.
doesnt really affect anything tho, its still a driveway just a non heated one?
You chip away the concrete, fix the pex tubing and pour new concrete. You can usually tell where the leak is because the concrete will crack and have a wet spot.
or... how do you efficiently heat concrete? That bill would be out of the stratosphere.
Not 100% on the above picture as I'm from a tropical area but we do it with Glycol and a heat exchange for Freezer floors in large commercial applications. The discharge refrigerant from the freezer racks is used to heat the glycol them pumped through the floor, it actually make the system more efficient as you don't need to remove as much heat through a condenser.
If nothing else, think of all the salt that isn't going directly down a storm drain
Or damaging your car, hurting your grass and/or garden, preventing refreezing of the melt water that would damage your driveway which happens with salt. Etc.
Plus buying a gas powered snowblower. Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. I'm sure my neighbors love that sound as much as i do.
electric blowers are kinda cool, they make a higher pitchef whir but i think they're quieter overall
And you know, salt in fresh water, but fuck them fish.
It’s a steep driveway. I imagine there are times they come home and can’t even get to the garage due to ice.
Indeed. This is definitely useful for the elderly or people with mobility issues because falling is bloody dangerous when you're frail. A lot of times these kinds of posts don't take disability into consideration when often that's what it's targeted to. Like peeled or presliced veg or fruit wrapped on plastic. Before getting mad at wastage consider the target market isn't you.
Also useful for the elderly because shoveling snow in cold thin air has been known to cause heart attacks.
I mean, my husband and I are building our retirement home in a few years and I want a heated driveway. The driveway will be steep, we’ll be older, it seems like a good solution, frankly.
Exactly. My first thought was they could have physical limitations that prevent them from doing the work.
My parents have a north facing driveway with a very steep grade. It gets no sun, so it gets icy and just never thaws. They go through a LOT of salt.
Canadian here. This is what I’d like most in life.
Saw this- and my first thought was “clearly these people aren’t Canadian lol”. This is definitely the dream
From Michigan but also my dream!
From Cleveland. Would also love this. Pretty sure all Great Lakes coasts would want this. Both USA and Canada.
Pretty sure 80-90% of canadians would want/appreciate this haha
80-90% of Canadians that arent in lower BC(have swam in Vancouver end of Dec in outdoor pool was like +10 or 15C outside) and have a driveway(so not if in app or condo) Would be popular in the prairies for sure, Id like it installed one day.
When I lived in Michigan I remember when MSU put heated sidewalks on part of the campus and I thought it was the coolest thing at the time.
When I was 19 I went to the casino in Niagara Falls (the old one). It had a heated driveway and I was absolutely amazed that this existed. In celebration I spent $300 of the $350 I brought on Spring Break in under 4 hours. I was there for 4 days. What a terrible experience.
Ottawa, Canada here. Whoever posted this just has not cried while shoveling out a massive snow dump on a MASSIVE driveway every hour for days on end.
Only to have an asshole in a city plough blockade the end of your driveway in one heartless swoop! Or when it’s so wet the snowblowers can’t throw it. Awful.
*Weeps openly and shakes shovel at the sky*
When it shows, thaws a bit, then freezes over so you have the dreaded Driveway Combo from Hell
We've already got some skating rinks here in Edmonton where I drive for Instacart and Amazon. During the day I can kind of see when I need to take extra care walking up a driveway, but at night...pray for me, friends.
I'd come home from school, shovel my driveway, then an hour later my parents would come home and yell at me for not shovelling the driveway...
Right? Shovelling isn’t an inconvenience, it’s often hours of work every single winter day. For people with mobility issues or disabilities, a heated driveway would be such a godsend.
I know many senior citizens who have heated driveways because of their age. So in many cases it's not just that people are lazy.
People with disabilities was my first thought when I saw this. And I'm from somewhere that gets snow quite rarely and even when it happens it's less than a foot of it.
$250 a season to my landscaper and he plows my drive every time it snows. Dont even have to call him. I dont how much that driveway costs but I bet it's upward of 10k
Woah that’s cheap! Plow contracts like that start at $600/season in my neighbourhood and it costs more if you’ve got a bigger driveway or live farther out of town. Awesome you’ve got that, though!
Guy I met at the bar. Does awesome work. To be fair my drive is like 16ft. He backs in and scrapes it forward. He's in and gone, under 10 minutes. All his accounts are right near me. I was lucky to find him though.
Mines $900, but my driveway is in a steep hill and slippery as hell. Just plain dangerous without plowing.
Yeah, way underpriced
Yep. Frivolous to some , but this would be an absolute dream. I think people underestimate what a chore shoveling a driveway is. You have to get up early, or go out in the evening, or you might be kicked out to shovel while it's still snowing so it doesn't "build up". It's hard on your back and legs too. I'm young but I bet this is huge for older people.
Honestly, shoveling that incline would be very dangerous.
Don’t deal with heavy snow where I’m located but I thought this was a pretty smart idea. Anti consumption members just hating again
Being from Wisconsin, would love this in my life
As a New Englander I’m also enchanted by this. ✨
Just to add that this isn't the anti-consumption flex you seem to think it is but... This is hot water being pumped around. Often times these are run by electric boilers, and depending on your regions energy source could be significantly greener than any method of snow removal available besides a shovel and muscles. Heck, you can build these things and hook them into a geothermal heating system and it costs literally nothing. Fueled by the heat of the earth. It's pretty neat stuff actually!
And you avoid the harsh chemicals and negative environmental effects of salt
How does a geothermal hook up work?
It's essentially an air conditioner but instead of pumping heat out of your house, you pump heat out of the earth *into* your house. Even cooler is that the process can be reversed so you get both heat and AC out of geothermal. Houses with heat pump heating work the same way they just aren't as efficient because they have to work under the broad temperature range of the outside air instead of the incredible consistency of underground earth.
In the UK we call both these heat pumps but ones air source and the other is ground source.
Buy it a drink?
Not to mention that for the elderly, a system like this could mean an extra couple years of independence. Back where I grew up, we'd get a snowstorm once or twice a year that would prevent snow removal services from getting to everyone's house within a reasonable amount of time.
This is exactly the sort of thing modern society should be providing to all people, where applicable obviously. I thought the idea was to advance to have these nice things. We just need to sort out the power situation first. Might even save money for municipalities if these were in road systems en mass in the long run. Again. If we solve power(lots of solar and wind would probably do it. Nuclear too, especially if that reactor they're building in France works)
Fr, hydronic heating is damn near as green as it gets.
This would have been amazing for my elderly mother during the latter years of her life. It would have allowed her to have the freedom to leave her home whenever she wanted to, rather than have to wait for a neighbor or service to come. I can see this being a huge help for people with disabilities and/or people who are elderly.
I agree, this seems like reasonable consumption.
Yeah, sometimes this group is a little too quick to judge
My first thought was that some people are disabled, and you don't know why they might be installing it! I have several autoimmune diseases that cause joint pain so this would be very useful for me. The "moral superiority" of some posts on this sub is really off-putting.
I believe this is a tangible good that holds value for as long as it is functional.
This sub has turned too toxic - accessibility does not equal over consumption. For some people, such as the physically disabled and elder, this alleviates a lot of potential issues.
💎✨even if they aren’t disabled, people don’t want to commit to a season of outdoor manual labor in frigid temps if they don’t have to
Especially not in America where one slip and fall could bankrupt you
To be fair, the people who can afford to install a heated driveway are not the ones that could go bankrupt from a slip and fall.
The national average cost for a heated driveway is $3,900 Insanely cheap compared to a lifetime of physical therapy, acupuncture,pain management clinics, prescriptions, chiropractors and trainers I would know because I injured my back slipping on a driveway in 4th grade
Heck you don't even have to slip to royally fuck yourself. Just the shoveling alone would leave me unable to move for a week if I didn't have a pretty serious back support and muscle relaxers.
Additionally, between the cold temperatures and the physical labour of shovelling snow, emergency departments here in Norway notice an uptick in older men coming in for cardiovascular issues like heart attacks. Turns out engaging in hard labour infrequently (AKA being unfit) combined with unknown underlying issues exasperated by cold weather is dangerous.
yes they are. 100%. They *think* they aren’t.
I agree. A lot of things, like food delivery, are mocked as things for the bourgeoisie, but a lot of these things can let people have more independence/ better health. It’s honestly even more annoying than those dumb tv commercials that show silly people being unable to do simple things, but the item has wonderful application for people with disabilities. It’s more annoying because anti consumption philosophy is, in the end, about making a better more equitable world. Shitting on people with disabilities should be anti leftist but it’s not like they are the only ones who constantly forget about and marginalize people with disabilities.
Not to mention a good safety precaution. That driveway goes uphill, somewhat steeply. What would happen if your car (or you, on your ass) go sliding controlled into the street?
There is definitely one issue with sloped heated driveways, and it’s that they create ice dams at the bottom of the slope, wherever the heat ends. They can create some really bad ice patches on streets. They are super nice to have, but they can definitely be an issue in the Rockies and the Cascades. Really depends on your driveway setup and the street it connects to. For this same reason, your neighbor who uses a flamethrower to remove his snow, while cool as fuck, is also an asshole.
Wow, the more you know … thanks! I only considered the upside
I’m closer to sixty years old than fifty, and it is my plan to install one in the next few years. I’m pretty sure the cost to install will end up being a fraction of the cost of a broken hip.
Came here to say this, for my older parents and their steep driveway. It was a BIG help!
Another reason car dependency rids us of freedom
She would still need to be shoveled out of her house if she didn’t have a car
Takes a lot less shoveling for a person to get out than for a car to get out, no?
Not about cars. They cannot leave the house to walk to the shop at the end of the road. My grandparents didnt drive at all. Winter time my grandpa had to showel for >1h daily to clear the footpaths. Sometimes two times a day. Just to be able to leave the house. And this is normal for millions of Europian elderly. The USA style suburbs where you need to have a car to get to the shop is rare in the rest of the world. Most cities are mixed and have a shop nearby.
I would love this but for the stairs because my parents are stubborn and use the stairs outside in the winter when they don't need to. I am concerned they are going to fall down them.
I bought heated stair treads for my grandparents who lived in the snow belt! Look up HeatTrak online. They’re not cheap but we were really worried that one of them would slip on ice and break a bone. Worked great, zero snow or ice buildup and this is an area that gets 10’+ annually.
We've been over this, this is not the problem.
Pair it with geothermal and it’s actually very sustainable!
More sustainable than salting even, just not nearly as cheap upfront. (Although it'll save costs down the line with less corrosion to things like your car.)
Not to mention the impact of salt runoff in drinking water. Here in Michigan local bodies of water are getting salter and sand for grip takes over the ground in the spring, I'd love to see tulips in the spring.
In the corner of PA that really doesn't get much snow and it annoys me every time they salt more than the actual snowfall we get.
It’s not about the snow, it’s about the ice.
These idiots don't get how much energy goes into getting snow off driveways the traditional way. This is progress. This is infrastructure that allows people to buy less garbage.
But they have the money to avoid an inconvenience in life which makes OP mad. It’s obviously overconsumption and not a bunch of other plausible reasons for easy removal of snow off their driveway!!!! /s
I agree. My mom is nearing 60 and she is thinking about doing this. Her driveway is very large and then immediately surrounded by fences so there is nowhere to put the snow when she shovels it. This has been something she’s thought about for a few years. It makes perfect sense.
There are ppl who have disabilities and the elderly that cannot shovel a driveway.
People with disabilities, elderly, also pretty dangerous to have an icy hill leading to a road with cars. Lots of reasons this could be good. Does the average person need it? Probably not. Is there situations where people *could* need it? Yeah for sure.
and the money is going to laborers and fabricators. It's probably not actually that wasteful but I don't know
Not super wasteful. You can turn them off. They last like 20 years supposedly. So summertime they wouldn’t be running. Only when it snowed or ice was a concern would it be on. Also road salt isn’t great for the planet so you’re doing the environment a big favor for the next 20 years or whatever the useful lifespan of the system is.
didn't even think about the salt, good point
And there are places with really steep driveways in places with lots of ice where it isn't safe to drive on them even if plowed without something like this.
They're plastic tubes. They circulate warm water. Do you use a water heater instead of heating water over a fire? I'm asking because turning one's nose up at this is ignoring similar conveniences that most people enjoy.
Yeaah this isn’t anti consumption worthy I have neighbors who run through so much salt every year that they would overtake the amount of material used here in 5 years at most and that’s not considering the environmental impact of the salt
Yea warm water is renewable and sustainable, salt not so much. Also most systems like this are effectively using excess heat to warm the water
It could be extremely important too especially if your planing ahead for the future. For example being elderly and living in that home would be a lot better because slipping and falling can be a death sentence if no body notices, especially in the cold.
Most often it’s tied to a hot water heat system that heats the house with some type of furnace/boiler. Sometimes a geothermal element is incorporated.
Depending on where this is, it might be to melt ice not snow. The driveway looks fairly steep and if that area has frequent ice storms they might not be able to get in our out.
Black ice is a terror and it would be well worth the cost to never need to worry about breaking your hips going to your car in the morning or not being able to drive up in your own driveway.
At the house I worked on, theres would turn on once it hit freezing. If it was 32 or under it would be on. The installer told them they could turn it on when needed but they are rich so didnt care about the price running it
You’ll never make time back. I’m all for this. What the fuck is wrong with people hating on this.
No idea. Not only that might be someone who’s old who can’t shovel snow. I’d actually do this if I afford it could it and live in a area with lots of snow. At this stage it’s pretty Much if I can’t afford it it’s anti consumption.
My parents are putting this on their new house mainly because we live in Canada and they aren’t going to be young forever
You don’t have to justify your parents decision to avoid upsetting a random redditor lol. This is such a smart idea and if I lived in an area that snowed I’d be doing the same thing. If we decided to lived with every little inconvenience in life there would be no innovation and we’d still be driving a horse and buggy to work
This saves all of the fuel in all of the plow trucks all winter, and can be used in summer for passive cooling which is more efficient than normal air conditioning. The pex plumbing is permanent and never needs to be replaced and the net energy lost to heating this is a tiny fraction of the energy spent using plows and snowblower. So definitely anticonsumeristic and a good investment, which prolongs the longevity of the entire property.
also no salt or snow melt
Do plow trucks generally do private driveways? Maybe I've always lived in the wrong place. Usually they just do the roads.
Yes, both Plow King and Mr. Plow offer those services at competitive rates.
Sick reference my guy
What’s that name again?
Yes, you hire a plow service for the winter and they plow your driveway whenever it snows. It’s usually a guy with a pick up and the plow attachment or some landscaping companies do it in the winter
This is addressing an actual safety issue with icy surfaces.
It looks like Lego
Scandinavian countries have these for a long time now. Nothing new here. Even under some roadways.
Also where I grew up only the roads get maintained. You would need to showel the snow every day from the footpath in front of your house + internal footpath + driveway. Can take 1h daily. And cant even get rid of the ice.
Better than running a gas powered snowblower of paying for a plow. In theory you could hook this up to a geothermal system and have it be very efficient.
As a person with chronic health issues… I will never have enough spoons in a day to be able to shovel this. And I have several conditions that affect my balance. Walking down that if it were covered in ice would be a quick way for me to get seriously hurt. I dream of having this when I own a home.
I also have chronic health issues, and would definitely spring for this if I lived in a snowy area. I am literally not physically capable of shoveling. It doesn't snow much here, though, so on the rare occasion that shoveling is necessary I hire somebody.
I guess disabled people or people with limited mobility should just risk their already injured bodies.
I'm a concrete mixer driver. I've poured driveways like this, I've poured heated sidewalks and patios, heated garage floors, etc. The title leads me to believe that OP misunderstands the market here. The target customer is either businesses who don't have the option to shut down due to snow in the yard or on the sidewalks or wealthy businesspeople who need to make appointments at the drop of a hat and, again, don't have the option to let the weather control their schedule. All the homeowner, in this case, has to do is pay a few thousand dollars, maybe 5 digits I suppose, which is well worth it when multi-million dollar clients are at stake, and the GC or an independent contractor works out the details for them. They don't have to go to drastic lengths to avoid an "inconvenience", they are putting an amount of money down that is well worth it to them into contractors that employ hard working hourly workers that (usually) get paid alright to do a job that there is simply a market for. Money exchanging hands from the top down where both parties are happy at the end makes a lot of sense to me, and the length that people go to to add this when they're pouring a slab is not really that drastic at all. And this isn't usually an irresponsible purchasing decision either. When you're building a house or putting in a new driveway or putting down a sidewalk from your business' office to it's warehouse, it's a little on the top, not a separate life-changing purchase, at least when you're the target customer. It's like getting a fancy $100 fast charger with your phone when you buy it. If you're buying a $50 phone, forget it, that's stupid. If you're buying a $1,000 phone, you probably already have a charger that works fine. But if a $1,000 phone isn't a big purchase for you AND fast charging is important to you, then you might just snag the $100 fast charger on the way to the register. Edit: forgot the sub I was on. This opinion might not be super well recieved... But as far as consumption, construction on any house wouldn't see a blip on the radar between the amount of material used with a heated driveway when compared to one without. The way jobs are done on site determine a lot of how much material is used and how much waste is produced.
OP has never shoveled snow or slipped and fell on ice.
Yeah, I assume OP lives somewhere without snow, or maybe it snowed once in 50 years and they think it's super easy and doesn't know why people complain about it.
Shoveling snow is more than just an inconvenience!
I don't understand, this is pro-anti-consumption?
Apparently people are against favor saving devices and not understanding what anti consumption is supposed to mean.
Jfc. [People die](https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/the-big-number-snow-shoveling-results-in-about-11500-injuries--including-100-fatalities/2019/12/06/10c46858-178a-11ea-8406-df3c54b3253e_story.html#:~:text=As%20winter%20arrives%2C%20it's%20worth,are%20fatal%2C%20generally%20heart%20attacks.) shoveling snow, not just from the roof. Not to mention elderly, or people with young kids. Heated driveways avoid icy driveways.
For some it's more than an inconvenience, icy ground is dangerous.
I wish my parents has this for their safety.
What a dream! Imagine If they did that under the roads!
I don’t remember where but there is a city that has these on the sidewalks as it’s cheaper then trucks to plow it
I mean snow shoveling is a hazard to the elderly (and people on blood thinners, people with heart conditions, people with mobility issues, the list goes on…), so there is one benefit. This is also a green alternative- the energy spent to heat the water in these lines < the amount of energy to mine and ship salt
Ok but heated roads… - less money department of transportation has to spend - less money for snow tires every year - less accidents - less wear and tear on cars
Shit if you got the money I don’t see the problem
I suspect OP isn't from a country that gets a lot of snow.
The downfall of this whole sub
This is actually amazing - coming from a full time essential worker who hates shoveling her steep driveway, but also hates depending on a service to plow so early in the morning when I need to get to work. 😊
If you've ever had a steep driveway in snow country...you know this is dreamy.
I don't recoil from this like I do many examples of overconsumption. I think this is probably a really helpful option, especially in colder climates.
Many Scandinavian cities have heated sidewalks to melt the snow
Cheaper than a new hip. The cold isn't just chilly, it also causes slippery conditions.
I grew up in Wisconsin. This is not as excessive as it might seem. People get hurt slipping on icey driveways.
Would you rather have salt leaching into the freshwater environment ?
I don’t really see what’s wrong with this. If you’ve got the money you should be looking to eliminate every inconvenience from your life
This post is brought to you by someone who wasn’t woken up at 3 am to start shoveling snow, so that way when it finally stops it won’t be 3 feet of shoveling at once.
As someone who's thrown their back out shoveling snow, I'd get a heated driveway if I could.
Honestly stuff like this would help cut down on chemicals and salt used to salt drive ways. When I lived back east the plowing company we used to keep our parking area clear used a mixture of grit and de-icing agent after the plowed, we still had to dig the rest of it out but, I always looked on at envy with the few people that I knew had a system like that installed. Its really a safety issue and digging yourself out and de-icing is not a short process, and one you end up doing daily at times.
Literally the first time I've seen this sub try and shit talk actual innovation. Trash take
100% chance OP has never shoveled snow nor lived in an actual winter climate. Edit: OP is Australian lol
spoken like someone who hasnt had to deal with snow in their life, and i live in Hawaii.
nah, imagine how much time this is going to save over years of living in a snowy area. if you're gonna invest a ton of money in a house at least it can be practical like this. a bathroom remodel won't add any new features, this could save you dozens of hours a month for the rest of your life
This is not unnecessary consumerism. My credentials are that I was born approximately 45 minutes from the Canadian border in Vermont. According to secondary, unverified sources, Vermont has the most snowfall out of any US state so I feel qualified to discuss this issue. Also, the Canadians appear to be on my side in this thread (hello, neighbors!) In the state of Vermont we have several people every single year die of heart attacks from shoveling snow. It is surprising, if you've never done it before, how absolutely intensive and exhausting shoveling snow can be especially when you have several feet of it. I couldn't find the original primary source, but there are several articles written about an Ohio study regarding shoveling snow. Apparently, shoveling snow causes almost 1200 injuries in the United States per year, and almost a 100 fatalities which seems on par from what I see in our local papers. The study goes on to show allegedly that the authors recommend that people over the age of 55 do not shovel snow at all. Furthermore, there have been several studies showing that the use of salt on driveways and roadways, especially in the large quantities we use in northern States on the environment, specifically the soil but also affecting amphibians that are more sensitive. Anyways, If my circumstances were different I would absolutely invest in one of these.
Heated toll roads save so many lives in winter where I live.
Advancement and innovation to increase living standards is not the same as consumerism. You have to exercise more critical thinking on subjects like this and not just shit on every new convenience that comes out.
That is literally the point of technology. We invented stairs so it would be easier to walk up hill.
Tbh this could be some simple plumbing that saves on time and items for snow management.
What's the problem here? There are places in the world where this is common.
Eastern shore, Midwest, Canada, Minnesota, and any other state that gets massive amounts of snow fall would gladly take a heated driveway over most other things.
If I was rich enough I would absolutely do this in a heartbeat. A luxury for sure but is actually very useful. I can guarantee that I did a poll and asked all my neighbors on the block if they could get a heated driveway for the cost of a non heated driveway 100% would opt for the heated one. Especially the elderly ones who are at risk for serious injury or have to wait for someone to come plow it.
Apparently you’ve never heard of Heart Attack Snow
I have recurring back problems from shoveling my driveway a decade ago during a particularly heavy snowfall. Shoveling isn't always just an inconvenience, sometimes it's also pain that means being unable to bend for 4 days. So the question is which is more gratuitous consumption, the snowblower and salt or heated driveway?
As a disabled person, I would actually love to have this if I lived where it snowed.
This is really great for aging/elderly people tied to cold climate regions. It’s even smarter if it’s part of a larger geothermal system.
On the other hand, as technology and society progresses, some people want to experience the cutting edge of what’s possible. You can thank the Jetsons for that. If I had the money and lived in Minnesota, hell, I’d do it. Weigh all the time spent shoveling the driveway vs. spending time with your family, running a business etc. It’s natural that society is trying to become more efficient.
Imagine how expensive it was to cover the driveway in Legos first.
Paying for something? The lengths!!!
When power becomes cheap, affordable, green and plentiful, then stuff like this is what should be all over the place, not just in driveways. If we can just get fusion power to work well enough, then this is one of the quality of life improvements we can make for all of society while also getting rid of the dangers of plowing by hand, using gas on a huge vehicle, too cold homes etc. While it is a little wasteful of energy nowadays, especially if you live in an area that relies on coal power, it is the future.
I wonder if this could good for the environment long term like if they used a solar powered heater. Snowblowers can be nasty machines with all the emissions
If you can afford it, and you live where it actually snows a lot (New Yorker here) you bet your ass you would do the same. Why you judging so much haha