Snow melt ?? (SE)

Mark Eatherton1

Am doing something similar except were being covered in cement. Follow the maufacturers recommendations as it pertains to flowing cold water etc. during the hot pour.

As for manifolding, consider using large bore PEX for the supply and return to the distribution manifolds. In the cse of the driveway, put one manifold at the top of the drive, and one at the bottom. Straight shot, no U turns. Hold the manifold boxes outside of the profile of the driveway.

Also consider purchasing the "cut length" rolls of 5/8" PEX that Wirsbo has to offer. You'll save a butt load of money just by doing that alone.

Put the supply line into the lowest part of the system to make purging a breeze.

We use large sprinkler boxes for the manifolds

G'Luck!

ME

Steve Ebels_3

Snow melt ?? (SE)

I've done a few slab warming jobs but this one has a couple things I've not dealt with so I'm looking for advice.

First off, it will be under asphalt and all I have done is cement.

Secondly it's 4,000+ sq ft consisting of a 40x40 pad in front of the garage with the second part being a 10X300 drive way.

Third the drive has a slope gradient of 10% or a lettle better meaning that I have about 30' of drop from the level of the house to street level. Raises some ?marks in my mind about head.

I think it would be advisable to provide runoff areas as the drive goes down to allow some of the drainage to exit other than all running down on the street. What do you think?

Give me your thoughts

Constantin

...hmmm...

... we recently had a discussion of snowmelt under macadam, so that'll have some good pointers for the application of asphalt over PEX.

I think it was Mark Eatherton that had a good post and/or article on using sprinkler boxes to distribute warm water in large pipes (1½" or 2" dia?) down to manifolds as needed. That would largely take care of the head as you could segment the drop quite easily.

As for the run-off, I would provide a drywell well-below ground and have some drains running at a diagonal across the driveway. Make sure that the drain is heated such that the water does not have a chance to freeze again until it is deep underground.

I would not let the sauce run into the street. Too much liability! Just imagine what kind of a skating rink you could open if all that water was allowed to refreeze on a flat surface! We had a slow leak here from a water-main valve and it covered 10 sq ft of the sidewalk in three days with 1" of ice.

Steve Ebels_3

Just talked to them today

The plan now calls for concrete with exposed aggregate. Looks like boiler placement is going to have to be outdoor, located approximately in the halfway up(down) the 10x300 foot slope. Much easier to deal with insulation under concrete than Blacktop. No sand bed to transfer heat through and not 300* product to worry about. Good idea on the manifold location Mark. I'll have to see if there's a way to incorporate that purging thought into a design like this is turning out to be. I think it can be done.

Mike Norgan_3

Snow Melt

Steve, Can you say Vertomat. I think you can.

Mike Norgan

Steve Ebels_3

Nothing would thrill me more

> Steve, Can you say Vertomat. I think you

> can.

>

> Mike Norgan

Steve Ebels_3

Nothing would thrill me more

This job just screams for a Vertomat. It's a 7,800 sq ft house with what looks to be a combination of radiant slab, hydro-air, panel rads and of ciurse the snow melt. All of which totals up to about 1.35 million btu's. Unfortunately, I think I've pushed this guy about as far as he'll go. He started out wanting three furnaces in the house. Period.

Ron Schroeder_3

More and more questions

If you have already covered this then please forgive me. Why did you customer tell you that he wanted three boilers? Why do you disagree? Let's talk.

Steve Ebels_3

Not boilers

Furnaces, as in scorched and burned air. No snow melt was in the original plan. No boilers were in the original plan period. I'm fighting the good fight here but it's uphill all the way.