Diysnow melt systems for driveways

Bestsnow melt systems for driveways

For the life of me, I don't understand why more people don't park a small refrigerant compressor, a pre heat storage tank and necessary mechanicals and harvest all of the free solar energy falling on the driveway when it's not melting snow. Seems to me, under the right circumstances, a person could harvest more FREE energy off of the slab, then the slab uses for melting snow on an annual basis... I know for a fact that Mari Andrettis olympic size pool is heated by his snow melted drive way in the summer. Their slab would probably last longer as well, because the heat that causes expansion is being relieved of its duty.Heck, a person COULD make water with one of these systems if they were so inclined... (see where I'm going with this?)Good article Dan.MEPS, The IKEA store in Denver (Centennial) Colorado uses their snowmelt system to reject excess heat out of the VBH loop field, so I know its feasible :-) There is also an office building in Aspen Colorado that uses its SIM for heat rejection that has received national awards for energy conservation, and no cooling tower.Plenty of opportunity to harvest solar. I think a HP system viability is driven by $$. Studies show average homeowners spend around $300.00 per year for DHW. Probably most of the snowmelt system owners really are not concerned or aware of how much or how little they spend on DHW.Heck in Colorado I suspect many of the large residential snowmelts are at homes that are barely lived in. The DHW load is mainly their recirc systems