Snow melting on my tongue (of garage door)

Dave Carpentier

Where my garage's 10' door sits, the slab sticks out by around 6". (AKA "The Tongue")
With the in-floor heat lines passing by (just inside at the door) on their first loop or two, the slab stays fairly warm. Snow melts there always.
This year, I made a set of 2x10's with handles to lay on it to provide at least some minimal insulation. The 2x10's are not melting the snow away quite so fast.

Anyone have a better solution ? Some kinda bags ?

hot_rod

Probably too late now, stopping the tube back from the door help with that loss, underslab insulation out a couple feet under the driveway concrete helps with loss to the ground.

A thermal brake between slab and driveway is another option. There is a plastic H cap made to cover the exposed edge of that thermal break piece. Zip the top off and fill with polyurethane caulk.

A piece of 2” foam or a small folded concrete blanket would be a bit better then a 2X

GroundUp

So you have to move things every time you open and close the door? The right way would have been to hold the tube away from the door a couple feet, but it's too late for that now. Is there glycol in the system? Can you maybe abandon that loop?

pecmsg

Dave Carpentier said:

Where my garage's 10' door sits, the slab sticks out by around 6". (AKA "The Tongue")
With the in-floor heat lines passing by (just inside at the door) on their first loop or two, the slab stays fairly warm. Snow melts there always.
This year, I made a set of 2x10's with handles to lay on it to provide at least some minimal insulation. The 2x10's are not melting the snow away quite so fast.

Anyone have a better solution ? Some kinda bags ?

Is the "Tongue" getting the hottest water first?
What temperature are you running it at?

Dave Carpentier

Its 22 years ago now, but as I recall we laid it out in a "spiral counterflow", with the perimeter getting 2 runs closely spaced. So the hot line passes maybe 8" inside the door. The good news is, the door never freezes to the slab even when it gets wet (lol). The driveway past that is all gravel. If we ever pave/concrete, I will thermal break.

I push into the slab at about 115f, but that long garage loop does flow fairly slow ( .25 or so ? ).
When I redo the heating system c/w buffer tank, I should really take that loop off of the main house manifold and put it on it's own circ to get the flow rate up, and the house zones can balance easier on the existing manifold.

-hotrod : Maybe I'll try attaching some foam on the bottom of the 2x10s. Its 3 pieces (4ft and 2 3ft with handles).

-Groundup : Cant abandon, thats my main heat. We only open for vehicle work a few times in a winter, but I do have to move-open-close to get the snowblower-lawntractor out when it snows. Not a pain yet but this is the first year doing it.