Installing a Heated Driveway | This Old House 

Where’s the pump? How’s it wired, installed,controlled? Hello?

That’s it ? What about the hookup and all the rest of the stuff

"Wow they finally listened to us and made longer videos! They're showing the concrete installation, they're going to show-" _video ends_ This Old House, you HAVE to show longer videos. People LOVE to see all the steps. WE WANT TO SEE THE FINAL PRODUCT FUNCTIONING.

Can you start saying what the average costs are involved with these jobs?

Looks like a LEGO base

Heated driveways are quite common in my country as we have geothermal heating and after heating the house, you can use the leftover heat in the water to send through the driveway, so far we haven't used insulation beneath the concrete in any driveways I've seen, but it would be interesting to try it out and see the benefits of the insulation.

Ive got one. The cost is the pex is cheap. The heat isn't to 72 and only used to beat the ice buildup. It's magic. Naysayers

Finish the job! Need more details! How’s the finished result? How does it work?

Alternative method: Move to Florida

All the nay sayers have never dealt with a snow melt system like this. I installed a massive unit to condition the parking and sidewalks at a hospital. It made me a firm believer. The unit uses very little power to produce insane results. Winter slabs heave when not conditioned, when you conditions these slabs the insulation under them makes it very difficult for frost to drive it’s way underneath and heave so your slab stays level and crack free longer. If you’re doing new concrete the best investment is to install loops even if you don’t currently plan on doing hydronic. It’ll pay for itself the first time you don’t have to shovel snow or pay someone to.

Title: Installing a Heated Driveway Alternative title: Installing a LEGO Driveway 🟩🟩🟩🟩

Can a heated driveway like this tie into an existing boiler system for in floor radiant heat?

This old house learned from the underpants gnomes. Step one: pex running heated antifreeze under concrete. Step two: ???? Step three: big, big profits!

Holy crap! *Do you know how much energy that will consume?!* With just some rough calculations, assuming a 14' x 20' driveway, every ¼" of precipitation would take over 15,300 Wh just to melt the ice, plus about 107 Wh for every degree F that ¼" of precipitation is heated. So, to thaw and heat ½" of rain-equivalent precipitation just 4 degrees F would take over 31,400 Wh of _delivered_ energy, not _produced_ energy or the energy to heat up all of that concrete. Good grief. Is TOH still going to call this an energy-efficient house?

This right here is my dream

No mesh or rebar?

So flat legos can heat my driveway

Wow living in a different world from some of us who can barely put the money out for cheap new curtains on Amazon.

Could that be heated with a wood burning boiler what's the pros an Con's of using a wood burning boiler

Awesome!

No rebar?

Let’s heat the driveway. 🤣

What sort of boiler is used to heat this driveway, and does it need its own power station to run it. Another too short video. Is This Old House on a spendthrift budget?

What about heated pavers?

What about the cost? The finished product?

Nice long video

Extremely irresponsible use of energy.

Any reason why you couldn’t make a full video? 🤨

Awesome! I want that for my driveway! 🤓👍

Are they out of their fu@*ing mind!? A heated driveway!?

I wanna be nice if they would’ve let the video run a little bit longer.

You have an advertiser that screems, I hate that!!!!

What happens if the equipment malfunctions? You have to dig up the driveway to repair it? Fun!

I can think of a million different things to spend money on and a heated driveway is at the bottom of the list.

Step 1 should be outlining the bank job you'd have to pull to pay for this heated driveway

Went from talking about it to showing it, a quick walk by and done.......... eh

Wow... that was worthless. How about showing and explaining how the heated driveway system works? How about showing the heating source and control system? Bush league.

I didn't learn a goddamn thing.

No way that actually works in the coldest part of the winter. Probably creates a mess of half melted snow and ice in your driveway. No way it keeps up and warms enough to get the water off the driveway.

This seems deeply immoral to me, just put up a cover or learn to shovel.

longer videos pls...

These new two minute videos are extremely annoying and devoid of any useful content.

Only thing I don't like is coupling the pipe under the driveway. I would rather see the pipe coupled inside basement or in some type of box in the ground. That looks to be only place pipe may fail outside.

What a terrible video. It just showed 2 minutes of pipes being stapled into Lego

Come on TOH, Make these videos 12-15 min, I wanted to see the Crete being done !!

Saw this video pop up and was super excited!! Unfortunately, there was next to no information. Longer video, more in depth explanation, heating source information, product information etc would have been nice.

For all you brainiacs trying to figure out how much snow weighs and how many BTUs / Kw it takes to melt a foot of snow, I have news for you. Start figuring on the cost to jack up the slab surface to just a bit over freezing then multiply by the hours of operation. In a good portion of the USA we're talking maybe a 10 - 15 degree rise at most. IOW, not all that much. Systems like this COULD melt a foot of snow (and cause a serious ice dam) but they are basically meant to be switched on when the snow starts and prevent it from accumulating. Under ideal conditions most of the snow would be evaporating / melting at a similar rate to the snowfall. A 25 Kw system would run maybe $4 per hour to run so $40 for a 10 hour snowfall. Who ya gonna get to clear your driveway for $40? Yeah, there's installation costs but if you are fixing the driveway anyway it's not that much more. (and you could heat the driveway with a small wood stove instead of electric) I have older customers with electric versions of this systems and they claim several hundred feet of driveway costs under $100 to melt and a plow guy gets $150. So yeah, it can be cost effective.... but might take 20 years to break even. In the meanwhile you don't have to wait for a plow and the driveway is clear for the entire storm. NOT breaking a hip while sliding on the ice is worth something, right?

Cost calculations for 3" of snow on a *small* 25' x 15' driveway are below. (Spoiler: a small driveway with 3" of snow would cost ~$11 to melt off.) I'm rounding here and there to keep things easier to follow: 1. Volume of snow, in cubic feet: 0.25 x 25 x 15 = 93.75. 2. Snow to water conversion is ~10-to-1, so we're talking 9.4 cubic feet of frozen water. 3. There are about 60 lbs of water per cubic foot, so we've got ~600 pounds of snow (ice). 4. To melt 1lb of ice takes ~150 kJ, which is 150 kJ / 3600 seconds in an hour ≈ 0.05 kWh. 5. So our 600lbs of ice will take ~30 kWh to melt if we were 100% efficient. 6. If actual efficiency is ~40%, we need 75 kWh. (Is 40% optimistic? Maybe.) 7. In the Midwest, energy is ~$0.15 / kWh in much of the areas where it snows, but it can be more, so it's ~$11 to melt 3 inches of snow on a small driveway. Reflections... - If you think efficiency is closer to 25%, then cost is more like $18. - I assumed a pretty small driveway. If you've got a larger driveway, well, good luck. - If it snows 12", that's nearly $50. - I'm missing costs: heat the snow/ice to melting temperature, heat the slab (partially factored into efficiency), and evaporating any water left on the driveway to avoid ice forming. Maybe this tacks on 30% more, so we're talking about ~$15 for a 3" snow, or $60 for 1 foot of snow. I personally think that's very expensive. - If I melt the ice into an ice dam at the bottom of my driveway where the heating stops, I've created a new, potentially bigger problem. - For coal-sourced energy, 75 kWh of energy results in ~200 lbs of CO2 emissions. That is *a lot* of emissions for only 3" of snow on a small driveway. Even if shoveling off the snow before heating to reduce the overall costs (my first idea in another comment), there's still a lot of sunk cost to heat the slab to melt off any residual, so this may not be a cost efficient option. The ice dam issue also concerns me quite a bit, as does the pollution from all the energy required. I'll personally pass on this melt-the-snow-on-my-driveway idea.

I like the videos but make them longer please

Great video, but way too short. How is it hooked up? How do you add the antifreeze? How do you heat it as I am sure you can't use a boiler with antifreeze in it? What does it look like with snow on it? What products are being used other than a larger PEX pipe, how large? so many questions!

$2200 monthly electric bill....

These videos get shortened more and more. Please don't

Fittings under concrete? Yeah, no. One of those leak, you are screwed. Contractor would be fired on site in less than a second if that was my build. Thanks for the free work to that point.

"Kids these days are so lazy" ... You wouldn't know because you've replaced them with "technology."

Geez wouldn't it have been chaper and easier to build the house on an 8" higher grade?

I'd consider this, but I wouldn't stop shoveling. You can get the bulk of the snow off without paying crazy energy bills, and then melt/evaporate the residual off to avoid ice and injuries. [Update: I've posted another comment with estimated costs, which are higher than I expected. Melting off 3" of snow on a small driveway (15' x 25') would cost $11. I also worry about an ice dam at the base of my driveway, as well as that this $11 in energy might generate around 200lbs of CO2 emissions and other pollution depending on how my energy is generated.]

Waste of time watching

A heated driveway? This old house definitely isn’t out of touch with the common man...

I don't think making plumbing connections under a slab is a great idea, long-term...

Imagine if and when that thing springs a leak how do you fix it in concrete

Absolutely 0 important, interesting or relevant info.

Would love to see how it actually works and what it’s hooked up to. Weird cut off of the video...

Crazy project! I loved this so much!

I took a slightly different route and embedded uranium in my driveway: keeps it warm to melt the snow *and* it glows, plus it takes no energy to operate!

I'm looking at building and evacuated tube solar hot water heating system for in floor heat in my ICF house and I'll also run pex in the sidewalk and driveway. I'll install a geothermal system to supplement. Energy bills will be almost non-existent even in February.

And you thought changing your car's coolant was spendy. I can only imagine what this costs!

What happened to the rest of the installation🤷🏽‍♂️🤷🏽‍♂️

For the love of the environment please don’t heat the outdoors thanks...

um... that didn't hardly show anything.

heating driveways... what a waste. should be forbidden!

Cool, but would pavers over sand be better in case there was ever a problem?

Heated driveway is just about the most American and lazy thing I've ever heard of.

You are not supposed to have junctions under the concrete.

What would Greta have to say about your antifreeze and plastic abortion?

No rebar ,as those connections in concrete not good idea.

No rebar? drive will crack over time.

where is the rest of the job????

What’s the name of the styrofoam

What a waste of energy. But on the bright side, this will help speed up climate change so there will be less snow in the future.

Go global warming go!

Show the whole system

Tf is Lego gonna do

Or and hear me out guys.... pay the local kids 10 bucks to shovel it

2 SHORT

Heated driveway! I thought that was right up there with prescription windscreens!

Have you ever done that on a sidewalk? I see Richard was smart enough to get out before the cement came.

I recently bought a house with a medium long driveway. I don’t know yet how bad an icy driveway will be. I mean, you can clear your own 20 meters of “road” but for the rest of the way on public roads you still have to beat the ice and snow. Just take a run from inside the garage and slide towards the road, hoping not to hit your home 😂

Seriously you'd have to be a jerk with all the concerns about the environment and global warming to install such a system. And make sure you park a typical American gas guzzling V8 on this, fools.

Intro riff guitar still needs to be tuned. re track it !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Can believe they used crimp joints on the pex and didn’t fuse the pieces together. Major cost when the joints fail.

That's gotta be crazy expensive

On this job they used concrete for the driveway. Could you use conrete pavers over the tubing instead of concrete. In my city they charge you more for a concrete driveway.

Really neat concept but it's a horribly wasteful use of energy unless you could provide the heat from underground.

I knew a video that's 2.22 long isnt going to show us how its done. This is basically a video showing us an option to for heated concrete.

Hang on. Heating your driveway! What is this world coming to? Their should be a law against this

getting ready to sell your house and organs to pay for heating bills

Did you remember to turn the driveway on during the snowfall lmao? What a strange thing to say.

All those poor neighborhood teenagers who now can't shovel snow...

Then, it leaks and poisons every dog and cat in the neighborhood...

I want to see if this actually WORKED!! IN SNOW conditions!!