sidewalk heating

Fred Polski

My goal is to heat a sidewalk when it snows or when we get freezing rain. It would not be used all the time,,,only when inclement weather strikes.
I recently poured a concrete sidewalk containing about 350 ft. of 1/2" pvc tubing. The tubing is snaked throughout and is about 2" beneath sidewalk surface. Total sidewalk space is about 400 sq. ft. Could I use an electric 20 gallon hot water heater to heat a glycol solution and then pump it into the walkway?

kevin coppinger_4

pvc tube???

for starters...you have got to do a heatloss...unless you do that you are guessing. Did you insulate? you don't know if you even have enough tube to make it work, hopefully so...snowmelt requies a lot of engrgy fast....get the #'s done then you know.kpc

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Singh_3

1/2 pvc tubing or 1/2 pex tubing? big difference.

mikea23

PVC or pex it doesnt much mater 400Sq on one loop of 1/2. With a loop lenght of 350 feet thats about 12" spacing get the jack hammer

hr

depends on your expectations

I plan on at least 100 btus per square foot, or in your case a 40,000 BTU load. You would need a dual element tank with two 6 KW elements to get there. 12KW X 3.41= 40,920.

The tube spacing is a bit wide and the diameter a bit small for that space, but it would do some melting, slowly

PVC wouldn't be my first choice, but I have actually seen PVC on hot water baseboard systems!

PVC is not a very glycol friendly product however When I did CPVC fire sprink systems we had to use glycerin as the antifreeze. Glycols will go after PVC.

My neighbor in Utah, the Vanguard rep had a 50 gallon 40K input gas fired WH driving some 1/2" PB in about 800 square feet of drive. I'm amazed at how well it actually worked. Slow, but it always got the job done.

hot rod

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steven e heat

please tell me no!!

please tell me you have several loops of 12 " tube. otherwise your lookin@ bout 100' of head.